Calling Interested Parties

For those of you who haven’t heard, I have recently taken up a f/t position with Adobe Consulting based out of Sydney. Unfortunately this means that I will no longer be able to run the Perth User Group (although I will continue to have input to the community through the Sydney UG).

With that in mind i’m putting a call out to interested parties who are keen to take over the management of the Perth UG. Ideally you should be passionate about Flash/Flex technologies and have a strong desire to foster better relations within the Flash/Flex community. Unfortunately the role is unpaid (ie: volunteer), but you do get the bonus of the occasional pieces of Adobe swag as well as the eternal adoration of Adobe and people within the community. You also make a lot of great friends and network contacts.

If you think you fit the mould please ping me a mail c/o matt at schematic dot com dot au

Welcome to 2007!

Happy New Year guys. I hope you’re all rested and refreshed from your break. I was fortunate enough to have a white Christmas in Japan which was fantastic.

So I just thought i’d give you a quick overview of some of the upcoming events you may be interested in attending/watching this year. This list is bound to grow so be sure to check back regularly.

WebDU - For those of you who haven’t heard about this great event, it’s the premier Adobe/Macromedia conference of the year for the Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) region.

This year the even is scheduled for the 22-23 March at the Hilton Conference Centre in Sydney.

The conference is made up of some of the best speakers from around the world (including yours truly) all waxing lyrical on Adobe technologies (mainly Flash, Flex and ColdFusion).

Full details of the conference (including costs) can be found at their site - over here.

Hope to see you there!

Tech Wednesdays - Are a series of weekly online Breeze presentations run by prominent Adobe team members. These insightful education/information sessions are a font of knowledge on new and upcoming products. Check back here regularly for the latest TechWednesday session.

WA Web Awards - This event has gone from strength to strength and is now in its third year. The WA Web Awards aims to showcase of the outstanding work of West Australian web designers and developers.

The date of this years awards has not yet been confirmed, but based on past years events, its most likely going to be in mid-late August.
If you (or your company) are keen to enter this years awards, jump on over to the WAWA site and sign up for their mailing list to be kept in the loop.

December Meeting

As we enter the festive season we’ve decided to hold our end of year meeting in true celebratory style (as we have for the past 3 x years) with other Perth User Groups at the 2006 Perth Massive.

MASSIVE is an annual event that pulls together the all facets of the Digital Media Community for one end of year celebration. Come along and share this celebration with people and communities from your digital district!

This is an event for everyone - web designers, architects, film and television, gamers, animators, programmers, musicians, designers, artists of all kinds, all are welcome! Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to meet and celebrate with your Digital Media Community!

Full details on our Next Meeting page. See you there…

Adobe MAX AsiaPacific (APAC) Round-up

OK - I’m finally back in sunny Perth after an extended tour of South East Asia speaking at the Adobe MAX conferences in Taipei, Singapore and Seoul.

Later this week I’ll be posting a round-up of all of the conferences (including a copy of my presentation slides for those who are interested). The slides need to be tweaked slightly (to reduce their file-size) before I can post them.

We’ll also have an update on our next meeting which is tentatively scheduled for Wed December 13th.

FlashDen - New stock Flash file site launched

Looking for a quality one stop shop for royalty free stock Flash files (video, audio, effects, etc). Or perhaps you’re a Flash designer/developer looking to supplement your income doing what you do best? Well look no further, FlashDen is here!

Based out of Sydney, Australia, FlashDen is a new flash community that provides a stage for Flash designers and developers to promote and sell their work. At the same time it’s an online store that allows designers to purchase royalty free flash stock files including components, effects, templates, and video.

FlashDen has been roughly 6 months in the making and is built using Ruby on Rails. It uses a micro-payment system to facilitate purchases (and payments). With FlashDen partners moderating all content coming into the community to ensure that the quality of submitted material maintains a high standard. Potential authors also have to pass a copyright quiz before being being accepted to ensure they are aware of their copyright/author obligations.

In a nutshell, FlashDen members can:

• Buy stock flash files (including components, video, animations, pixel fonts, etc)
• Sell their stock files,(including components, video, animations, pixel fonts, etc)
• Authors can advertise/promote their own website and services in the profile page

FlashDen is free to join and sell (from), and offers forums, editorial, inspiration and tutorials for all things Flash. They’re currently on the hunt for more talented designers/authors before they start offically advertising in late September so drop by and sign up now.

As an incentive, FlashDen are running a comptition to win an xBox 360. The author who has accrued the most credits for the work they’ve uploaded as of Janruary 1st, 2007 will win the prize - it’s that simple! So what are you waiting for?

Enter the Adobe Breeze Sync SWF Contest and win $US5000!

Adobe have launched the Breeze Sync SWF Contest to Flash and Flex developers. The contest aims to encourage developers to build collaborative rich internet applications and widgets for Breeze.

There are four categories - eLeaning Application, Web Seminar Application, Team Collaboration Application and Ice Breaker/Gaming Application.

Unlike a lot of the competitions that Adobe run, this competition is actually open to a wide range of countries outside the US including the United Kingdom, Australia, Netherlands, Brazil, Canada (except Quebec), and Japan.

To enter simply take a squizz at the T&C’s, fill out an entry form, build your RIA, and deploy it to the Breeze Exchange. The Breeze Exchange (like the Adobe Exchange) allows developers to post and charge for custom Flash applications that Breeze end users can download and use in their everyday jobs.

For those that came in late, the Breeze Meeting Sync SWF SDK, allows you to extend the functionality of Breeze Meeting by synchronising Flash and Flex-based multi-user applications and content so that users can collaborate on them in real-time. Developers can leverage this SDK to create interactive learning simulations, product demonstrations, sales ROI calculators, financial modelling, or interactive ice-breakers, to name a few examples, for use by general Breeze Meeting users. Full details on the Breeze Meeting Sync SWF SDK can be found here.

Full details of the contest - including terms and conditions - can be found here.

Flash Birthday Photos

As you know earlier this month Flash celebrated its 10th Birthday.

For those of you who couldn’t make it across to SanFran for the cocktails and canapes Mike Downey (Flash Product Manager) has posted a stck of photos of the celebrations over at Flickr.

The guys from Nectarine in Melbourne put together a special animation for the event and there was a surprise appearance from Strong Bad and Homestar Runner

I especially loved the Flash rune ice sculptures that were used for their cocktails - perhaps we could get one for next years WAWA’s with the finger icon.

Flash Video Production Presentation

Adobe’s Scott Fegette has posted a pre-recorded Breezo seminar on producing video for Flash and the Web. In it, Scott discusses video production workflows and best practices for producing online-delivered video using Adobe After Effects 7 and Flash Professional 8.

He delves into some great video optimization tips across all phases of a production schedule, including: preproduction, principal photography, editing, postproduction, compression, and both progressive and streaming online delivery.

This great presentation covers all the bases you’d need to address when producting video for Flash, and is well worth a watch. You can view the full presentation here.

September Meeting

Just a quick heads up to let you know that our next meeting is (tentatively) scheduled for Wed 20th September. At this stage it is heavily dependent on a few factors (the most being me being in the country).

I will keep all members updated when we have a final date locked in - so whatch this space (and your in-box)

Happy Birthday Flash

Just incase you were hiding under a rock for the last couple of months. Flash celebrated it’s 10th Birthday earlier this month. Who would have believed that what originally started out as a simple vector based graphics application would have evolved into the behemoth we know today.

Adobe has a stack of resources and info to celebrate this auspicious occasion, including;

Flashback to the Future
Flash 10 years 10 (developer) Perspectives
Flash 10 years 10 (designer) Perspectives
Most influencial Flash site of the past decade - some rippers in there!