As you will know if you have been following my blog, I attended and presented at Flex Camp Miami yesterday. We ended up with 86 attendees from all over the country, which was a great turnout considering the state of the economy and Miami's tech community.

I have to say that when I was originally invited to the event, I was expecting it to be fairly basic in terms of the content being presented. When we looked in to hosting a Flex Camp in Orlando, Adobe had asked us to keep it along the lines of an "intro to Flex" event (which was actually one of the reasons that we didn't pursue the issue, since we have built up an intermediate Flex crowd with the sessions at Adogo). However, the final lineup for the event was full of great topics, and I can honestly say that this is the first conference I have been to in a while where I was interested in and able to learn something from every offering.

I'd also like to mention that the organizers and sponsors did an awesome job. Universal Mind and Adobe showed up in full force; I think at least 30% - 40% of the attendees left with either a book, a training DVD, or a Flex Builder Pro license. One lucky bastard even left with a $2,500.00 copy of the CS4 Master Collection - not a bad ROI for a $20 registration fee! I personally won a copy of Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0, which I am really excited about since custom skinning is my weakest area in Flex development right now.

Not to be forgotten is the fact that the event would neither have been as successful nor possible at all without Brian Rinaldi having organizing it. Brian put together the whole event and organized sponsorship from Adobe and his employer at the time (Universal Mind). Unfortunately, nobody has been immune from the state of the economy and Brian was released from his employment shortly before the event, making his attendance difficult on several levels. While the sponsors did Brian proud in terms of delivering a solid event, if you were an attendee, I encourage you to let Brian know your appreciation for all his hard work. If you are an employer considering Brian for a position, you can rest assured that his attention to detail and work ethic leave nothing to be desired if the quality of the Flex Camps he has organized are any measure.

For those of you who missed the event, fear not - Universal Mind is planning to do another Flex Camp in the Florida area later this year. There was talk of doing it in either Tampa or Orlando - either way, Adogo will be lending as much assistance as we can to ensure it's a good one.

I'm going to do an individual blog post on each of the topics presented, which I'll be linking to once they are finished. I also have some pictures, but since I left my SD card adapter in my other laptop I'll have to wait until I get back to Orlando to publish them.

All Flex Camp Miami Roundup Posts
Welcome and Keynote (Greg Wilson, Adobe)
Working with Data in AIR (David Tucker, Universal Mind)
In Search of AOP for AS3 (Maxim Porges, Highwinds)
Merapi or How To Blow Your Mind with AIR (Andrew Powell, Universal Mind)
The Art of Storytelling (Christian Saylor, Universal Mind)
Continuous Integration and Flex (Brian LeGros, Highwinds)
Spring & BlazeDS Integration (Jeremy Grelle, SpringSource)
Mate Flex Framework (Laura Arguello, ASFusion)