Jeffry Houser's Adventures at the premiere Flex Conference

I'm sure plenty of folks will be writing about the recent 360|Flex conference in San Jose. Once again I think that John and Tom hit it out of the park. But, my opinions are probably biased since I've become good friends w/ both of them. Instead of writing the obligatory ego praising yes-man post; I thought I'd share this video of my slippers.

Tom found it hard to believe that I wear through a pair of slippers every few months. But, it just so happens that a home body like me wears slippers more than shoes. My shoes last a long time; but I burn through slippers quickly. Why were we talking about foot apparel? It's just one of the many awesome conversations I had about 360|Flex. Don't worry, though. There were plenty of Flex and AIR and HTML5 related conversations too.

Here are some of my other thoughts, in random order:

• I was walking through the hotel corrider on Saturday and was recongnized as "The Flextras Guy". It is a bit odd to be recongnized for something other than producer of The Flex Show.
• The Flex Show got to interview a bunch of conference attendees. Blaine did most of the interviewing. I did the editing. Because of a paperwork snafu; I held off on posting Tom's exit interview. Bad us! If we don't work it out, I'll give the recording to Tom / 360|Conferences and they can post it on their respective sites. I can be pretty particular about having all my ducks in a row. We hope to get this addressed soon. I also delayed some of Elad's talk about Flash and the City. It wouldn't be appropriate to put such a long 'promotion' in episodes paid for by a competitor. They'll show up soon, though.
• I started drinking Pepsi again. Tomorrow is detox time.
• I think I really screwed up my community keynote minute by not preparing. I spoke a bit about The Flex Show, which was great. I spoke a bit about Flextras, which was also great. Tom told me to mention the Flextras Friday Lunch podcast; but it just didn't come out of my tongue. That was a mistake. I could have also used it to push The Flex Show USB Drives and AskTheFlexpert. Oh, well.
• The last day of the last session, had a Panel about the future of the Flash Platform. This rocked. It works out really well to bring everyone back together for the final session. I was surprised so many people stuck around for it. Usually things are empty by end of the third day of a conference.
  They had panels on Day 2 also. Between keynotes, panels, and parties, attendees started and finished the day together. I got to be on the final panel. For the first time I felt I contributed positively to a panel. I've never seen such a large crowd hanging around on the last day of the conference. I hope I was as brilliant as I thought.
• I got a lot of good feedback on my presentation comparing Spark and Halo architectures. I was a bit worried about content repetition because two other people were using a similar "slide deck." Additionally I had less Spark experience than either of them.
  Deepa covered me by showing up and answering a handful of questions that were beyond the realm of my experience. She actually apologized for 'taking over' when I went to thank her. I was thankful to have her there.
• I did not get to be interviewed on RIA Radio. They were just too busy w/ other folks and I didn't get the chance to slip in. But I hope to make that happen soon. Zach thinks it'd be awesome to have "The Flex Show" folks on RIA Radio, and vice versa. I think it'd be fun too.
• I am starting to know more and more people in the community by name. Although I met a bunch of new faces too. Some of them were twitter friends that I met for he first time. More people seem to know me than I know them, though. That will, hopefully change, over time.
• I got to meet Dan Wilson in person. Despite the fact that I've been a bit of an ass about not liking model glue he didn't beat me up. I appreciate that.
• This is the first time I got to chat w/ Jesse Warden in depth. We met briefly at RIA Unleashed, but this time we had some free time to speak. He is a bundle of energy.
• I spoke to Ted Patrick about the stuff that I'm doing with Flextras. He said he thought it'd be interesting if Adobe had some type of program to certify components for quality. I thought it was an interesting idea; although I'm not quite sure how it would work. There is a huge difference between a "one off" components and a component that is built to be easily extensible and bullet proof.
• Kevin and Liz may be the most sickeningly adorable couple ever; but it gets me high to see two people so in love w/ each other.
• I did not get to have dinner w/ John the final night. It's a bit of a bummer; as we have become pretty good friends. I really enjoy our off-air chats. Thankfully we did get in some face time at dinner the day before.
• If none of that is appealing to you; we also had Screaming Monkeys from Digital Primates and Root Beer Floats.