December: We had a good (small) time with the Flash Meetup group for our December meeting/party, last month.
January: We’re taking January off.
February: Back to monthly meetings. We’re probably going to go back to the meet-at-a-bar-or-restaurant format for awhile. Post on the mailing list, or leave a comment here if you have thoughts on that.
Based on Adobe’s announcements last week, folks are probably feeling a range of emotions and have some thoughts swirling around their heads. So let’s get together and discuss some of those thoughts — and try to peel back the layers of hyperbole and really understand what the real impacts will be on the Flex/Flash community, both in the short-term and the long-term.
But before doing that, let’s spend a little time on a very practical topic that many folks have expressed interest in: “Psuedo-Threading in Flex”
So we have 2 topics this month:
1. “Recursive Psuedo-Threads in Flex” — Taylor Brown has volunteered to show us what he’s done to get “psuedo-threading” to work in Flex. Please bring your own thoughts and examples as others have mentioned they’ve implemented their own variants as well.
2. “Perception vs Reality, A Discussion” — Wow! A lot can happen in a week! Let’s get together to discuss. Beers will surely accompany this part of the program. 
Thursday, Nov 17
7-9 pm
Opal Divine’s Freehouse
700 West 6th Street
John Head has volunteered to speak about Adobe’s positioning of Flex and Actionscript, this month.
John has some interesting background, and it should be an informative session. Hope to see a lot of folks there.
REMINDER: This month’s meeting is the third Wednesday, rather than the third Thursday. Wednesday the 19th, at the normal location (see sidebar).
All. We’re going to meet for beer and conversation, this month.
We’ll be at Opal Divine’s on South Congress (Penn Field) starting around 7:00. We’ll let the host/hostess know where we’re at, if you aren’t familiar with faces.
Sorry about the late post, for anyone who relies on the blog, rather than the mailing list.
The August meeting will be back at the Source 360 offices (see sidebar for address and map). We’ll be meeting on Thursday, the 18th.
Terry Ryan (terrenceryan.com) from Adobe will be presenting on Mobile Flex. Should be a pretty exceptional meeting, so double apologies for the late notice/reminder.
It’s an honor to have Terry Ryan join us this month. It’s always special to have an Adobe employee fly in to present, but the fact that he’s willing to do it in the middle of August makes it that much more impressive!
We had 15-20 folks last month so we’re looking forward to another solid turnout this month! As if Terry’s presentation isn’t incentive enough, keep in mind that Source360 will be providing pizza and beer! (maybe that will help entice some of you North Austin folks to make the short drive down MoPac)
Hope to see everyone there.
When:
Thursday, August 18
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location:
Source360 Group office
The Palisades building
3006 Bee Caves Road, Suite A300
Top corner of building closest Bee Cave Road
Roman Villareal and Chris Martinez, who run the Flash Platform UG and Flash Meetup Group, have organized a CS5.5 Camp event at St. Edwards University on August 9, 6:00 – 9:00 pm.
The event is free, and so is the food. I think it will probably be very useful in getting a feel for how Adobe is dealing with the shifting landscape, in regards to Flash. Since Flex is directly dependent on Flash, this is likely to be a worthwhile event for Flex developers.
You can get more information and sign up for the event at the Austin Adobe CS5.5 Camp event page.
July’s meeting will be up north at Pervasive Software – the topic that evening will be a show and tell of what Pervasive is doing, which should be very interesting. A description of the presentation from Nikki Peckham, the Director of Integration Engineering at Pervasive:
The presentation will cover the scope of the Flex development for the Pervasive Data Integrator version 10 product where all of the GUIs were written using Flex. It will highlight some Flex issues and solutions encountered during development.
These include:
- Multi-tab vs modules vs MDI Interface app
- Need for REST functions (Get, Post, Put, Delete)
- Embedded font
- Action Script timeout issues
- Line drawing performance
- Nested datagrid
We’re going to do a joint get-together with the Cold Fusion UG at The Gingerman, this month.
Remember that we’ve switched from third Thursdays to third Wednesdays – so the meeting is Wednesday, 6/15.
Also, our upcoming schedule is looking pretty good:
July’s meeting will be up north at Pervasive Software – the topic that evening will be a show and tell of what Pervasive is doing, which should be very interesting. A description of the presentation from Nikki Peckham, the Director of Integration Engineering at Pervasive:
The presentation will cover the scope of the Flex development for the Pervasive Data Integrator version 10 product where all of the GUIs were written using Flex. It will highlight some Flex issues and solutions encountered during development.
These include:
- Multi-tab vs modules vs MDI Interface app
- Need for REST functions (Get, Post, Put, Delete)
- Embedded font
- Action Script timeout issues
- Line drawing performance
- Nested datagrid
August’s meeting will feature Adobe’s Nick Hippe talking about Mobile (and possibly FMS, as well).
September we hope to schedule Taylor Brown to talk about multi-threaded-like logic in AS3.
Philippe gave a very thorough presentation on the ins and outs of localization/internationalization, last night, followed by a lot of discussion. Thanks Philippe! And thanks to everyone else, too.
The presentation is linked, here.
For May’s meeting Phillipe Bettler will be presenting on internationalization.
Taylor Brown was planning to share how his You Need A Budget application runs semi-threaded processes, but we’re going to have to reschedule for late summer or early fall.
As usual, there will be pizza and beer provided. Thanks to Charles and the rest of Source360 Group for sponsorship and location.
