Image via FITC

My session at FITC San Francisco went very well, and I’m super-humbled to have taken part in such an awe-inspiring event. To those of you who were not able to attend or make it to my session, fear not! I’ve posted the slides, and will be presenting this topic again on September 9th in a Connect session, for the Boston Flex Application Incubators Group (#BFAIG). See details here, and register at bfaig.eventbrite.com.

In case you need to be sold a bit more, check out @RJOwen’s comprehensive review of @FITC day 1 on @InsideRIA.

By the way, this was my first FITC event ever, and I cannot believe I let myself go this long without attending. The sessions from Theo Watson/Emily Gobeille, Eric Natzke, Brendan Dawes, Keith Peters, Robert Hodgin, and Yugo Nakamura were simply astounding. I have not been blown-away and filled with admiration and wonder like that in quite a long time. I can’t do the experience justice by describing it, but once again, RJ saves. the. day.

Even if I didn’t win a ticket to a FITC event next year playing trivia on Colin Moock’s Megaphone platform, I’d gladly pay full ticket price to experience it again. Simply amazing job once again, Shawn!

P.S. Some notes about the slides: The photography used in the backgrounds are my own original, award-winning work. My work made it into my alma-mater University of Cincinnati’s Art Gallery, in the ‘Best of the Decade’ exhibit. I have a lot more photography work hidden away, so I decided to use it since I’ve been trying to do something different with my slides.

Also, Chuck Freedman and I will be presenting at the FITC Unconference at MAX and at RIAUnleashed about multi-player gaming on the litl OS! Go grab the SDK and start submitting channels to the litl Channel Store!

UPDATE: I’ve just been informed that my presentation is now being featured on the Slideshare.net home page! I’m batting 1000 on Slideshare! Thank you all for checking out my slides!

Check it out! http://www.slideshare.net/ssod

Check out my @FlashAndTheCity 2010 slides posted below, or you can view them on Slideshare
at http://j.mp/SuttleFATC10

Sitting here, after a whirlwind weekend in New York City for Flash and the City, I’m really very thankful. The last 8 months have been intense, and the amount of work Elad, Jose, Jesse and I put into this event is difficult to quantify. What makes it all worth it was all of the compliments and outstanding feedback from the community, other speakers, attendees and sponsors. As a first time conference, (which at times we were all too aware of), I think we made the best possible showing we could. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect, but for our rookie season, I think people were generally very pleased and even more happy that New York has a new event.

I’d like to thank all of you that came to my session (including other speakers), and for the wonderful compliments, and tips/pointers for next time. I am still getting feedback and people who weren’t even there have said that they’ve heard great things. I could not be more humbled or personally satisfied.

I’d like to thank Elad for letting me be a part of this and giving me the opportunity to help shape the future of this event. I can’t wait for FATC 2011. It will be even better with your feedback.

Even more importantly, I’d love to thank my wife for being so patient with me over the last months while organizing the event and for spending part of our anniversary in New York. You’re the best, I love you.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to join a special group of developers in Boston at litl to kick the tires on the web book and preview the upcoming SDK in a hands-on training session. I wanted to take this time to publicly thank them for having me and giving me a sneak peek at the truly innovative work they are doing. I also wanted to mention, that the more people I meet at litl, the more I realize that this is a company that gets what makes a great user experience. As I said on the episode of RIARadio which featured Chuck Freedman and yours truly, litl is a company that is filling a niche that people didn’t even know existed. So, as a developer and an organizer of Flash and the City, you can understand my excitement to have them as a sponsor.

Even more to my point, litl has chosen Flash and the City to make several unbelievable contributions, including an expansion of the private SDK beta, sponsoring the Hudson River Yacht Cruise,  giving FATC Award winners their very own litl web book, and most recently, announcing the launch of a Flash-based web-TV product! According to litl’s Chief Evangelist… Chuck Freedman:

“I can say that we will have a Flash-Based “Web-Connected TV” device on the market, running litl OS as well as ALL channels built with our new SDK.”

“In the coming months, our SDK will be expanded to include “accelerometer movement, video chat, trackpad gestures, and microphone input” that will allow open development of “gaming, communication, entertainment and other experiences.”

“We believe that our platform’s use of Flash will be the best and easiest way for developers to deliver great content and applications to the TV!”

I don’t know about you, but the prospect of being able to develop for Flash-based hardware, including TVs, with an open-source SDK is simply incredible! I’m so grateful that litl will be at Flash and the City to kick off their development platform. @ChuckStar and Katryn Rotondo will be giving an overview of the litl SDK in a new session on Sunday morning at 11am, and several others from litl will be on hand to answer any questions and demo the web book.

Also, if you attend my session, I may be mentioning and or/demoing the sample channel I built. No promises though. A lot can happen and NOT happen in 3 days.

See you at Flash and the City!

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! [Ed. note: Don't actually pinch me, I bruise easily ]

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’.

[Ed. note: This is how I reacted when I first received the news that I'd be speaking.]

UPDATE: Posted my session info on the Flash and the City blog, and made my speaker promo video:

So, as many of you know, I won 2nd place in Phillip Kerman’s ‘Why Max?’ video contest. That means, I get preferred VIP seating at the MAX Keynotes. However, I don’t have a ticket. I really would like to go though. So, what I’m attempting to do, is come up with a way to give someone the VIP seat, and find a way to go myself. What I want is to go to MAX and get to meet so many of you. However, I am willing to entertain offers for some sort of trade for goods, services, items from my Amazon Wish List, or my ultimate goal (and not-so-secret dream), a full pass to MAX 2009. Of course, I will take whatever I can get, but I’d like to make up for my time and effort at least a little bit. I have never been to any conference this large. In fact, I have only been to one conference. Ever.

Please ping me on @kevinSuttle and let’s make a deal. There are only 2 weeks left before MAX 2009, so hurry!

Update: Well this was a massively embarrassing fail. I will, unfortunately, not be attending MAX this year, though I am trying desperately to make it to FlashPitt and RIAUnleashed. However, the bright-side is that I have decided to give my VIP seating to somebody who really deserves it. I’ll update soon on who that is.

SUPER AWESOMETASTIC UPDATE: As it turns out, I won a 2nd contest of Phillip’s! This time the prize was a ticket to FlashPitt! Gigantic thanks again to Phillip Kerman (@phillip) Robert Hall (@rhall), Flash Camp Philly (@flashcampphilly), and my cat-like Twitter reflexes.

ULTRA FULL OF WIN UPDATE: I have decided to give my VIP seating privileges to my new friend, and Flash limit-bender Sean McCracken, aka “@Seantron”, a stud developer for @Influxis. People like Sean who further the community deserve to be recognized and rewarded. I’m just trying to do my part in making that happen. Here’s to you, Sean! Enjoy your time at MAX 2009!

Update: I’ve made it into the top 5 finalists, with my good pal Jesse Freeman (aka The Flash Bum)! Thanks to everyone who has shown support for my entry!

Update x2: I lost. Maybe next year I will speak or actually be able to afford it.

Update x3: I won preferred VIP seating for the MAX Keynote, but I don’t have a ticket. Trying to come up with a way to wheel and deal to procure an actual ticket.

HUGE thanks to Adobe and Phillip Kerman for putting on this contest.