Flashforward 2008

I had the chance to attend this year’s Flashforward and for the most part I’m glad I did. This years theme was Passion, Professionalism, and Partnership. With several dynamic speakers and many cool presentations that test the boundaries of the application, the conference was definitely inspiring.

The conference started with a musical journey through the business process as lived by designers and developers by Miha Pogacnik. Often labeled as a “Maker of magic”, he is able to lead one through the ups and downs of the project development process and open ones’ mind to new avenues of decision making an awareness. The outcome is a very strange picture that he illustrates in between the flurry of his bow and the verbal explanations that follow.  This picture shows the highs and lows and allows one to see where they may be in the process.  It was a good kick off to say the least.

This years format wasn’t like the ones in the past.  It was informative and very inspiring. It focused on being passionate about what we do and feeding that passion.  I wish there were more hands on sessions where we could have learned more about the advance animation and coding presented.

There were other presenters who captivated the audience with awesome displays of stunning visuals set to music that left every one hungry for more. Some of my favorites were:

• Craig Swain from Crash!Media
• Erik Natzke : showed some phenomenal art he renders using as3
• Grant Skinner from gskinner.com
• Robert Hodgin from the Barbarian Group

The presentation that took the cake was “Project Managment From The Developer’s Perspective” given by the Bitch Who Codes, Stacey Mulcahy. She had the auditorium rolling in the isle and ready to thump project managers in the head!  You can get her presentaion here. It’s a 36 meg file.

The other presentations were good. A few seemed abit out of place in relation to the flow of the conference an didn’t have the desired impact.