Kevin Hoyt

James Ward at Flex Camp Chicago

What gets James Ward up in the morning? What does he think is exciting about Flex? In this keynote session from Flex Camp Chicago, James Ward talks about Flex, the surrounding ecosystem, and a little bit of the future for the product. Not to spoil the presentation, but among his top ten list is … You! Want to hear more? Tune in by downloading the audio file using the above link.

Kevin Hoyt at the Front Range PHP User Group

Zend and Adobe have partnered together to bring PHP and the Zend Framework, to Flex and the Flash Player. This partnership has started out with two key announcements, the first is that Flex Builder will run in the Eclipse-based Zend Studio. The second announcement is that AMF and Remoting technologies would be included in Zend Framework. To spread the news, Adobe Evangelists set out on a PHP User Group tour. This session covers everything from a basic introduction to Zend Studio and Flex, basic data connectivity and accessing remote objects, to building PHP-powered desktop applications with Adobe AIR.

Mike Alsup at jQuery Conference 2008

One of the great features of jQuery is its extensible plug-in architecture. If there’s a piece of functionality you need, then there’s probably a plug-in already available for it from the community at large. Maybe you’ve decided that you want to contribute your own plug-in, or perhaps just make something you’re already written using jQuery, more modular and reusable. Both of these great intentions are discussed along the way as Mike Alsup gives you an in-depth guide to authoring your first jQuery plug-in.

Richard Worth at jQuery Conference 2008

The popular jQuery framework has an ever growing set of components that are available. Many of these components originally started as community plug-ins, and have been formally adopted and architected to be as easy to use a jQuery itself. In this session, Richard Worth gives you an introduction to the jQuery UI project, talks about some of the core directives and architectural decisions made by the team, and gives you the run down on everything from getting started to basic styling.

Karl Swedberg at jQuery Conference 2008

Getting your head around any JavaScript framework for the first time can always be a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be. In this session, hear Karl Swedberg, author of the acclaimed book “Learning jQuery” gives you a head start on the jQuery framework. Learn the basics of selectors, enclosures, traversing, and manipulating the HTML DOM with jQuery.

Ed Finkler at Zend Con 2008

Adobe AIR opens up interesting possibilities for web developers, allowing them to leverage their existing skills to develop desktop applications. Aimed at current PHP developers, this talk will focus on common web application technologies – PHP, HTML, Javascript – and explore how to utilize them to create desktop “Rich Internet Applications.” Topics will include:

• How Javascript differs from PHP
• Getting PHP and Javascript talking to one another via JSON
• Security considerations for both the client and server sides
• Various hacks and tricks from an experienced RIA developer

Rashmi Sinha at WebVisions 2008

Ten lessons from running a social Web site.Rashmi will talk about her experiences building and running SlideShare. Including the launch and how to prepare for your own. When to pay attention to the community, when not to. How to live and die by metrics. And how to deal with scaling issues - not about scaling the backend, but the design, the community, the team. This talk should be useful for anyone thinking of building products and working in a startup atmosphere.

Gene Smith at WebVisions 2008

Tagging has been the subject of much discussion over the last several years, including presentations at WebVisions ‘06. But recent trends show that tagging is evolving quickly, and that today’s conventional wisdom might not be accurate for long. This session will explore five counterintuitive tagging trends that provide a glimpse into the next generation of user-generated classification.

Nick Finck at WebVisions 2008

Nick will explore the best practices of user experience by reviewing some of the most popular and highly trafficked websites today such as eBay, Amazon, Toyota, Flickr, Twitter, Netflix and more. Nick will identify and explain both good an bad experiences on these sites on the merits of visual design, information architecture, interaction, and ease of use. If there is time we will open the floor for audience submissions and to provide quick feedback and areas of improvement.

Dave Yewman at WebVisions 2008

Blogging has been a new phenomena and companies and businesses are now looking to make this a part of their marketing, advertisinIt’s often called Death by PowerPoint. It’s also known as Show Up and Throw Up. You know who they are; slide slaves who can’t speak without a cascade of bullet-ridden, text-heavy, animated PowerPoint slides. It’s not pretty, but it is preventable. Dave Yewman is a presentation coach who cringes at the sight of CEOs and senior executives trying to deliver good presentations based on bad slides. This session will offer five easy tips for preventing “Death by PowerPoint” and more importantly it will help everyone get to the point and deliver a clear, concise, compelling message - with or without slides.

Jim Turner at WebVisions 2008

Blogging has been a new phenomena and companies and businesses are now looking to make this a part of their marketing, advertising and public relations plans. Bloggers are now taking their newly learned skills and translating that into a career. The skills of a blogger, like basic knowledge of blog design and development, analytics, copywriting and other facets are making it possible to earn a living as a professional blogger.

AIR Applications have the power to enable rich experiences that are closely integrated with users’ desktops. How can you ensure that your applications are protected from attackers? In this recording you’ll get an answer to that question by exploring the threat model for AIR applications, detailing the common mistakes that developers can make, and highlighting the places where wise developers will pay extra attention.

ColdFusion 8 introduced a number of new and impressive Ajax features. The most notable of which is probably the complete Ajax-based forms generation, which uses Ext 1.1. There are a couple drawbacks to the ColdFusion 8 implementation however, most notably that it is Ext 1.1 when the current release is Ext 2.0, and that you have to have ColdFusion 8. Dan Vega has come to the rescue though with a project he calls cfExt. During a pre-release tour user group stop in Cleveland, OH, I had the chance to connect with Dan and get his thoughts on the project, its origins and its direction.

If you’re an Ajax developer, and if you’re not familiar with Ext, than this is the interview for you! I got a chance to get training on Ext directly from Jack Slocum and Brian Mosque (in Las Vegas nonetheless). While I was there, I couldn’t pass up the chance to help shed some light on this often overlooked framework, it’s features and the features of the upcoming Ext 2.0 release. Ext is targeted specifically at Ajax developers building enterprise applications, and has an amazingly rich and productive library. But who are these guys? Where do they come from? And why should you use Ext? Listen in for all the details!

My booth partner at RailsConf was none other than Adobe’s Suzanne Nguyen, Sr. Field Marketing Manager. Suzanne and I have had a lot of fun at other conferences, and she’s an amazing supporter of the community. In fact, no sooner did I arrive on the first day to help setup the booth, than did she have some great news for me about an exciting new program she’s running, Flex Developer Champions. In short, Adobe wants to help make you a Flex rock star! If you already fancy yourself as a champion of the Flex technology, then you should listen to this interview.

Andre Charland of Nitobi stopped by the Adobe booth at JavaOne and we got a chance to talk Ajax, Apollo and the future of the web. If you’re not familiar with Nitobi, they have some amazing Ajax components, an experienced development shop, and a new book on the way called ““. My first exposure to Nitobi was from an example they did that tied their grid control to Adobe Ajax Data Services (now LiveCycle Data Services). You don’t get much more cutting edge than that!