Day 1 at FITC Toronto 2008

  As I get out of the cab, I see no advertisements and no signs of where the event might be; in fact I am kind of worried about whether or not I am at the right hotel; yet, thankfully a doorman takes one look at me and says "the computer convention is downstairs"; either the laptop was sticking out of my bag, or I must really look that geeky. I take the doorman's advice, and I head to the escalator.

    As I let it take me into the core of the Hilton, the FITC banners and Head Hunter ads become ever more clear. Suddenly I am behind a group of Designers and Developers, all trying to pick up their passes. Thankfully, it doesn't take too long for the crowd to clear and usher off to their presentation of choice. When it is my turn, I am given my press pass, and a grab bag, filled with mostly pamphlets, but also a few neat stickers, nifty temporary tattoos, and a paperweight.

    It is now 9:45 am, and I am late for the How to B.S. Better seminar, so I browse the kiosks. Each kiosk has something to give away; pens, blow up beach balls, and I even get some playdough. At the Aquent booth they have Rock Band for the PS2, and when I get a chance, I show everyone how bad I am at it. I tryout a great interactive installation called BATTLESHIP, and I get as much information as I can from James Eberhardt, on how it was implemented using a modified WiiMote, Bluetooth dongle, the wiiflash server, and flash sockets for communicating back an forth. Suddenly it is 10:35 am, and I am 5 minutes late for Becoming AS3.

    I try to slip in quietly and find a seat; yet, it is so packed, I consider myself lucky to find a spot on the wall instead; oh yeah, this becomes a pattern for the rest of the day. R. Blank, is the presenter, and I have to tell you, he is good at it. He goes through the various basics of migrating from AS2, delves into inheritance, and talks about a few things I, currently migrating myself, was unaware of; such as: the undocumented function addFrameScript(); how the Sprite class can be considered a Movieclip without a timeline; or about the fact that in AS3 an object must be on the display list to be visible. This is one of the better technical lectures of the day, and tons of people pile to the front of the room at the end to pick his brain; it obviously should have been longer.

    I move to the 3D Now talk, and I am shown the various capabilities of the Papervision3D engine. Although the talk, to my disappointment, was more of a panel discussion, rather than a DIY, it did offer a great question and answer session with a couple members of the Adobe crew. Someone asks if their will be added hardware support for 3D acceleration, and gets the response “we need to figure out 2D first” from an adobe rep; however, with all the interest in this field, and the attention it draws to the flash player, it does seem a logical step. Given the cooperation that adobe seems to be lending to the Papervision3D team, I would say that it would be a fair guess to assume further development and continued support is highly likely.

    I bounce around the next few sessions, and I watch the keynote speaker Mike Downey go over the benefits of Flex development; yet, then comes Erik Natzke's show stealing presentation Beyond the Knowledge: The Art of Playing. Although not actually a how-to, it relays some of his methods for the conceptualization and breakdown of objects into their physical elements. This session is filled with great ideas, great music, and exceptional artwork formed from the use of flash programmatically accessing pixel information and doing very creative things with vectors and filters. A great piece of advice he relays to those that wish to do something similar, is to hit those old math and physics text books, or to go out and buy the dummy versions; for, if you really want to be able to apply it to your own work and create something new, a good understanding of these concepts is required.

    After the Toronto team wins the Cut&Paste design challenge, I say “see-ya-later” to a few people I have met. This was a great day for rubbing elbows and capturing concepts. I only hope tomorrow will be as good. A few people are still trying to get me to come to the after party for the free food and alcohol; yet, at this point my elbows are sore enough and I repeat my goodbyes. I jump back into a cab and head home; time to try out what I have learned.

Again, I would like to say thank you to FITC for hosting the event, and to Actionscript.org for providing me with the opportunity to be involved.