Austin Flex User Group

We’re going to push September’s meeting back a week from the 16th to the 23rd – so, it’ll be the _fourth_ Thursday, rather than the _third_ Thursday, this month.

We’ll have two presentations, this month, both about 30 minutes long.

The first will be on the use of video in Flash/Flex, courtesy of Kyle Glossy. If you didn’t catch Kyle’s presentation last year on his work with Adobe Consulting and the NFL, you missed something – don’t let it happen again!

The second will be on how the event model works in ActionScript , presented by Ross Henderson. Anyone who has sat down and talked with Ross can tell you he’s just _brilliant_. Unbelievably brilliant. The presentation will probably be pretty bad, though. BUT, there will be beer and so forth afterwards, so it’ll be worth sitting through.

August’s meeting was great. For some reason, about twice as many people showed up, as usual, including Anthony, Roman, and Chris from the Austin Flash Platform UG.

As usual, a lot of topics were covered, much was learned, some networking was accomplished, and two of us discovered that Bump may or may not work across platforms, while being jeered for using Bump by the rest of the group.

We also decided that it was time for the group to step up a level or two. So, next month’s meeting will feature two half-hour presentations, and we’ll be doing and Adobe-type event in the near future.

As it stands, right now, we’ll see a presentation on video, and one on events. That’s unofficial at the moment, but it’ll be nailed down in a week or so when the September meeting’s info is posted.

July’s meeting went really well, and we’re going to stick with the format.

Except this month. This month is has been too Summery to put together a meeting, so we’re just going to meet at the Gingerman (see sidebar for directions).

Inevitably, we’ll talk about some really fascinating aspects of Flex, as this is what happens when people in this group sit down and start talking.

Resuming in September, meeting will look more like this:

• 7:00 to 8 or 8:30 – Presentation of some sort at Unicast’s offices, downtown
• 8 or 8:30 until whenever – Hang out and talk about really cool things (or nothing) at the Gingerman

The new meeting structure worked out pretty nice, last night.

Corey Butler gave a very informative overview of the ExtJS framework at the Unicast offices – in a quiet room, on an actual projector, and everything. Then we headed over to the Gingerman for a couple hours of great conversation, beer, and one piece of pizza.

The informal conversations are always pretty amazing in this group – seriously, if you want to become a better developer, just come and listen to other people talk about what they’re doing. The presentation was great, too. Very useful for anyone interested in developing a Flex-similar experience in native HTML.

Check out the PPT: ExtJS Presentation

We haven’t done a proper presentation for awhile, but we’ve got a great space downtown available to us, so we’re going to give it a shot.

Corey Butler will be presenting on a JavaScript approach to rich internet applications, called ExtJS. The presentation will start around 7:15, once we get up there and get settled. Please plan to get to the offices around 7:00, as Security is rather formal (but the people are nice) – we will be congregating in the lobby until about 10 after, and then heading up to the offices as a group.

If you arrive late, it won’t be the end of the world, but please try to get there by 7:00-ish, if you can.

Around 8:30, or so, we’ll head over to the Ginger Man to continue the conversation.

For information about parking and security at the Unicast offices, see the Parking and security at Unicast page.

June’s meeting was great, but apologies again to those who showed up and couldn’t find us.

We mostly talked about localization and internationalization, architectural frustrations in particular projects, and making a living as a freelancer.

And we had some beers, which was nice.

This month: a very special No Topic meeting at Opal Divine’s. Feel free to bring some show-and-tell, things you’re struggling with, questions with no answers, etc. Or just come and have some dinner and drinks with other Flex devs.

Next month we’ll pick back up with topical discussion. If I can work out the logistics, we’ll have some speakers on the topic of alternative technologies, and we’ll be in a conference room with a projector, etc.

Another great meeting! We had a couple of short presentations on Modules (what, how, why) and a lot of good conversation on the overall topic of RSLs, Modules, and author-time libraries. Thanks to everyone who showed up with questions and insights. And thanks to the presenters, too.

Some good reading on Modules:

http://www.beauscott.com/2008/02/20/using-flex-modules-to-load-dynamic-applications-at-login/

and

http://lowpitch.com/blog/modulemanager-and-imoduleinfo-loading-flex-modules-dynamically/

and

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=modular_1.html

UPDATE: Our seed topic for May’s meeting will indeed be “Modules”. This specifically refers to creating and using Modules in Flex development, but any conversation about modular development practices and experiences will be welcome.

Also, let’s go ahead and plan to meet at Opal’s on 6th again. That seems to be a good spot, overall. But again, please let me know if always meeting downtown is preventing you from coming to meetings.

May’s meeting will be on the 20th. Not sure about topic, yet – maybe we’ll pick back up with how to use Modules to make your life easier.

Location to be determined. Let me know if you have an opinion or request. As it stands right now, I’d say there’s a 75% chance of meeting at Opal Divine’s again, and a 25% chance of meeting at the CSC building at Congress and Colorado.

If continuing to meet downtown makes it difficult for you to come to meetings, let me know (public at rosshenderson dot info).

Stay tuned for the exciting decisions for May’s meeting…