I can hear you think: hmmm, nice sales talk.
Read on…

In order to make this mission a reality, Adobe showed its commitment with a few (BIG) announcements:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
  Now everyone can create swf players.
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
  If you like, you can create a flash player for your specific device.
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
  a rich offline portal solution for mobile operators and content providers
• Removing licensing fees
  I think we can haf fun with this one…
  Now you can embed the flash player on the device of your desire

Now you have a reason to be excited about the future of flash and AIR.
The blogosphere has gone crazy about this last day…
Read more about this topic on next interesting blogs:
Peter Elst
The flash mobile blog (Mark Doherty)
Scott Janousek
Ryen Stewart
Aral Balkan

And these resources
press release
Open Screen Project

Yeah, as off 6 PM today the new 2M08 site is live.

Peter Elst, Ralph Hauwert and Aral Balkan are just a few (big) names that have confirmed to come to Kortrijk and speak at this free conference.

You all owe the multi-mania crew a big thank you for giving their very best to organize this event every year.

Updates wil follow shortly, no doubt!

Together with Dietlev, Freek, Joren, Pieter and Andy we left for Amsterdam saturday night. After checking in to our hostel wel left it to explore Amsterdam since it was the first time for everybody.

Looking for the hostel in the dark. Freek needed some light.

Sunday, we attended the Papervision3D workshop Presented by the developers of the API. Their session was based on the Great White release (PV3D 2.0).
The session was not as technical as I hoped it would be.
The day warmed me up for the rest of the conference.

Sundaynight there was a kick-off party in club Escape.
Thomas Joos joined our trip from here. Afterwards we moved to a place called “The last watterhole”… do you need more explenation?

Keynote by Adobe
The next morning the day started with the keynote from Adobe where the Flex 3 and AIR 1 releases where announced!
On stage we saw Serge Jespers who showed off the same features as he demostrated for the user group: auto CRUD generation from database, skinning of Flex components, minimizing the initial download size, …

Richard Galvan showed us a sneak for Astro and Deasel. Some nice new features:

• Z-axis might be added for display items.
• Easy tween creation on stage. Just right click and drag.
• Kinematics

Next, Aral Balkan was up with his new session titled “beyond the buttons”. A talk about how people should look further then technologies and tools.
After Aral I went to see Carlos Ulloa with his session on Papervision3D interactive experiences. He showed some awesome stuff he made in the last year.

Afther the lunchbreak I saw Nikolai Cornell on some projects he did. Nice to see not all projects have to be viewed on the computer screen .

Particles are easy. Thats what you think when you saw Seb Lee-Delisles session on his particle egine. He realy made it easy!
After Seb I went to see Chris Allen on Red5. I saw the session allready at FOTB07. I want to start experimenting soon with Red5 because it looks so easy.

Closing session for day 1 was ‘new works’ with Joshua Davis. This was the second time I saw the session and it blew me away. Again!

Aral Balkan and Phlash5

In the evening we went to the (influxis sponsored) party. Phlash5 played a one-hour set with songs like Photoshop (is not a verb), I’m sory for my english and Papervision saved my live.
Aral is hoping to preform again on Multi-mania and Flash on the beach. Since I’m attending both and realy liked the gig, I hope he get what he wants .

The next day Koen De Weggheleire kicked off the day with his session on bitmap manipulation in Flash. Everybody enjoyed the session and it was actually understandable.
I hope to see more of Koens sessions in te future (fotb08 maybe? .

Koen enjoying his presentation

After Koen, Jared Tarbell was up in the main conerthall. His session titled “The Circle” was awesome. I saw most of it allready on FOTB07 but it was again sensational.

Robert L Peters presented a session that was based on his own working rules. I love people who can stick with their own rules, spacially when they say you should re-invent yourself and have fun .

After a long lunch, we missed most of the Big Spaceship but saw enough to see some nice sites and games they developed.
After Joshua Hirsch from Big Spaceship I went to see Ralph Hauwert on Flash 2D and 3D effects. His session was not realy what the title described. I was told that Jon Ruppels session on adaptable interfaces was awesome and I’m sory I couldn’t see it.

Next I went to see Serge Jespers’ session but he was not there. Richard Galvan gave some demos of the new features in Flash CS3 and what may come in Diesel (Flash CS4).

The last session I saw was on Flash mobile and presented by Mark Doherty. Since I’m just starting out in the mobile world, it was a good starting point for me. I hope to see him more in the future conferences.

The last night Adobe gave a party. We all got a t-shirt and a poster for the launch of Adobe Air 1.0.

When FITC comes near Belgium again, I will attend it again definitly and I hope to do it again with the same friends.

If you’ve got a flash lite enabled phone, get it here, install and enjoy fitc!
Read his blogpost about the app here.

I’m following the next schedule together with Joren on saturday:
10:00 – 10:15 | Welcome (FOSDEM Staff)
10:30 – 11:15 | Tux with Shades, Linux in Hollywood (Robin Rowe)
11:30 – 12:15 | How a large scale opensource project works (Robert Watson)
12:30 – 13:00 | Status update of Software Patents (Pieter Hintjens)
14:00 – 15:00 | Welcome to Free Java Meeting – Introductions (Rich Sands, Fre Java)
15:00 – 16:00 | Mobile Java (Ray Gans, Free Java)
16:00 – 16:45 | JRuby (Charles Oliver Nutter, Languages)
16:45 – 17:30 | Elisa – Enjoy your multimedia world (Alessandro Decina, GNOME)

And one hour later I’m on my way to Amsterdam!

Singularity is the first large-scale online web conference in the world.
Singularity is over 100 of the world’s top web visionaries, developers, designers, thought leaders, and celebrities.
Singularity is three days of talks over multiple tracks.
In 2008, Singularity will define Web ‘08.

So, the conference is all online…
But what about the networking and social gatherings that come with a conference? The point (read as: what, I think, will make this thing big) is making this thing global by creating local hubs. Everyone can organize a gathering where people can join to view a session or even host sessions themselves!
As far as Belgium goes, I realy hope that the Adobe User Group (aug) will organize something…

While attending LIFT, Aral gave a interview to Zian Marro from télévision suisse for Nouvo. You can see the interview here:

Sunday Feb 24th
Papervision 3D 2.0 – Workshop

Monday Feb 25th
09:00 – 10:00 | Adobe Keynote (Mike Downey)
10:15 – 11:15 | RIA Meets Desktop, Introduction to the AIR API’s
11:30 – 12:30 | dont like any of them at first sight :-s
13:30 – 14:30 | From Screen to Space: interactive experiences (Nikolai Cornell)
14:45 – 15:45 | Kaboom! Flash pyrotechnics and other particle effects (Seb Lee-Delisle)
16:00 – 17:00 | Branding Experiences: An architecture of play (Tali Krakowsky)
07:15 – 18:15 | New Works (Joshua Davis) [excited allready :-p]

Tuesday Feb 26th
09:00 – 10:00 | Play with pixels, bitmap manipulation with flash (Koen De Weggheleire)
10:15 – 11:15 | The circle (Jared Tarbell) [cant wait!]
11:30 – 12:30 | dont know yet (André Michelles presentation at fotb07 was very nice!)
13:30 – 14:30 | We do it ’cause we love it (Niko Stumpo)
14:45 – 15:45 | Flash 2D & 3D effects (Ralph Hauwert)
16:00 – 17:00 |The rest of the iceberg (Hoss Gifford)
17:15 – 18:15 | Beyond the knowledge: the art of playing (Erik Natzke)

Probably this will change a bit when I read all the descriptions, but I think there will be some good sessions.

Some speeches I saw at fotb08. They where so good, I can see them 10 times more .

Also excited about Koen‘s session about bitmap manipulation. Saw it almost 2 years ago, would like to see the evolution.

I’m sure this will be an awesome week .

This is his point of no return . I hope he can meet the created expectation .