Just took a few to prove that we actually met!

Good news all around for BFPUG.

First, we have the NEiA space reserved for the fourth Wednesday of each month through the end of this year. I guess not many people think much about that, but now it’s something that I know I won’t have to think about at all, either!

Second, Ted Patrick is confirmed to speak at our August meeting. Ted is a recent Adobe employee. His title is Flex Evangelist. In other words, if you want to know about Flex, he is the guy to ask. I’ve known Ted for a couple years, worked with him on a project, partied with him at conferences. He’s one of the most intelligent and forward thinking guys I know. So it’s a real treat that he is coming all the way out from San Francisco solely to speak at BFPUG!

Finally, in breaking news, Joey Lott will be our speaker for the September meeting! I shouldn’t even have to introduce Joey, but he is the author of several books, including Complete Flash Remoting MX, ActionScript Cookbook, Flash 8 Cookbook, Flash MX 2004 ActionScript Bible, Programming Flash Communication Server, and the upcoming releases, ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook, Programming Flex 2, and Advanced ActionScript with Design Patterns. He has also done training CDs and videos for Lynda.com, spoken at conferences around the world, and is an all around cool, famous guy. He has recently moved to our fair city and become active in the BFPUG and Design Patterns Group. LA’s loss, Boston’s gain!

Last night, Christopher MacDonald, UX designer from EMC gave us some insight in what it’s like to be a designer in a developer’s world. He showed a really cool internal EMC application that allows service and sales people to drag and drop components to create configurations of EMC hardware and connections, and gave some background on how it was created, the forces behind the design, etc. He also showed some other cool projects he’s working on, and some examples of the power of Flash 8 in creating design assets - stuff you’d have to do in Fireworks or Photoshop previously.

Michelle Yaiser of NEiA also gave away three passes to SIGGRAPH, which is coming to Boston next week, as well as three copies of a game CD developed by students at the school. Apparently, there will be more CDs to give away next month, after the conference is over.

With Sam and Chris, the two guys who have led all the design patterns thus far, both unable to attend, Todd and I considered cancelling the meeting all together, but decided to go forth anyway and see what happened. As it turned out we had a full house and a great meeting. I counted 15-16 people, including a newcomer to the area, Joey Lott!

Todd Yard led the discussion on the Composite pattern, giving some nice examples, and naturally we got off onto all kinds of tangents. Sample files here:

www.27Bobs.com/stuff/BFPUG/BFPUG_Composite.zip

Next month, Doug Martilla will be presenting the Iterator. To reiterate (oh, that was bad), here’s the plan we are following for future meetings: http://www.industriallogic.com/papers/learning.html

Next meeting will be Wednesday, August 2, 7:00 pm at Brightcove.

We have confirmed Ted Patrick, Adobe Flex Evangelist, to fly down from the Mother Ship and talk to us about Flex 2 for this August’s meeting. More details when we get closer to the time.

The July BFPUG meeting will be on Wednesday, July 26, 7:00 pm, at the NEIA. As usual, directions on the site.

There seems to be no shortage of heavily technical subjects to talk about on the Flash Platform. So I wanted to try to squeeze in a couple more creative / designer type sessions.

This months presentation will be by Christopher MacDonald. He is a Flash UX (User Experience) Designer at EMC in Westboro (more details below).

The presentation will show the “real life” of a Flash Designer in a developer’s world. Chris will present and explain the RIA he and his team are working on including the choice of infomation architecture, how assets were/are created, and what every designer needs to know about Actionscript!

He will present examples of his work going back several years including a eLearning Coporate Application and a few “concept-type” prototypes he has used to convey design ideas to clients.

He will also present a live tutorial on how to use Flash 8 filters in the IDE to create effects that before could only be created in Fireworks or Photoshop.

We had about 50 people come to the last meeting, and I’m hoping we can get that many - or more - this time. We also had a great time afterwards, going out for a beer and food after the presentation. I suspect that tradition will continue.

See you there!