I confirmed with Elad Elrom earlier today that I have been added to the speakers list for the Flash and the City conference in New York City, May 13-16, 2010! Have you seen this speaker list?! Take a minute, and look at it. The people on this list are some of the people who literally built our industry and the Flash community. And now, I am blessed enough to share a podium with the likes of such Flash greatness. I still can’t believe it. GIGANTIC thanks goes to Elad and Jesse Freeman (a.k.a The Flash Bum) for putting together an absolutely elite list of speakers and event. Somebody pinch me! Now, let me back up a bit. I’m getting ahead of myself. I just attended FlashPitt a few weeks ago, which was a fantastic conference in Pittsburgh. If you’re wondering why I didn’t blog about it, I saw the ridiculous amount of tweets I barraged you all with (sorry about that), and figured I had said enough. In my defense, I had not read the rules, and this is the first conference I have attended since creating my Twitter account. Yes, I’m serious. So, that said. I will not be live tweeting every slide from the upcoming RIAUnleashed – Boston, on November 13th. I will be taking notes and paying more attention this time [Ed note: Twitter distracts you, who knew?] I am incredibly excited about the speakers and content for this one. And it doesn’t hurt that I am a huge Red Sox fan. I’m especially excited about meeting so many new people and putting live faces to the online profiles I see all the time. I love meeting people and cannot wait to meet you at RIAUnleashed and Flash and the City. I’m not sure if I will attend any events in between those two right now, but if I do, I’m looking forward to meeting you there too! Which brings me to my next point: conferences are good. Why? For several reasons. 1. You get to be with actual humans. Twitter is great, but face-to-face human interaction is always better. I am saddened that I actually have to remind others of this. 2. You get to pick the brains of some incredibly intelligent and creative speakers. At FlashPitt, I got to hang out with Scott Janousek, and Phillip Kerman, two respected veterans of the Flash Community, experienced conference speakers/authors, and all-around great guys. While at lunch, I had a fantastic conversation with them about industry, publishing, and the Flash Community at large. I had such a good time with those fellas, and in just a short while, I gained some highly valuable insight. After the conference, I got to meet THE Seb Lee-Delisle, an impossibly polite gentleman and humble genius. I had to run to meet my wife, so I couldn’t hang out, but just in those few minutes, I got to see how cool of a guy he is and was floored when he told me he had read my InsideRIA article featuring his Big and Small project site. I definitely owe him some drinks the next time we’re together for missing the chance at FlashPitt. Though, he is speaking at Flash and the City as well! 3. You get inspired. This is probably the main reason conferences even exist, and rightly so. The speakers that present at these conferences are not chosen at random. They have incredible minds and want to open yours with their ingenuity and ideas. For example, at FlashPitt, Josh Sager showed a demo where a Red5 server would interpret musical chords and parse the data in Flash Player, Seb wrote a 3D engine in 1.5K, and Julian Dolce ran a socket server from XCode to preview his Flash-compiled iPhone app SWF! Mindblowing stuff happens at these conferences. To come full circle, I am incredibly honored to be speaking at Flash and the City. I am preparing my session now, and welcome any advice/feedback from those of you who have done this on a regular basis. About my topic, as of right now, it will be very generally focused on multi-touch in Flash Player 10.1. I am hoping that after Flash CS5 Beta comes out later this year, that there will still be cool stuff to show in May that hasn’t already been shown off. If not, I have backup ideas. My main goal is to not put a powerpoint up and read it to you. I want to do my best to A) keep you awake, B) remember my name, C) say “WHOA! I’ve never seen that before”, and D) really have fun. I’m being completely serious when I say, ‘I hope to see you there’. This is how I reacted when I first received the news that I’d be speaking. I posted my session info on the Flash and the City blog, and made my speaker promo video: