Prologue: Tom attended the Flash in The Can 2010 event in San Francisco and has documented his experience. The opinions and/or views expressed in this series of posts are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Springbox.  

I love technology, especially when it comes to my iPhone. I also love public transportation, and what better place than San Francisco to find an easy and cheap commute from the hotel to FiTC. Or not. First, the buses couldn’t keep up with people walking on the sidewalk due to all the construction going on. Second, the iPhone mapping failed to inform us of closed streets, so we had to backtrack in order to make it to the conference. I know, cry me a river. 

I was a little surprised at the small amount of attendees. The last conference I went to for Microsoft development had probably 10 times the number of people. (The dark side is strong.) It actually ended up being advantageous, as it was easy to ask questions during the presentations and you got to know other people in the field. Matt and I broke off. I went to check out a presentation, gave it about 5 minutes and realized it was a dud, then headed over to a different topic on (breathe) creating cross-platform mobile apps in Flex with OpenPlug ELIPS Studio. It’s a very interesting tool that allows you to create one Flash application and deploy it to several phones. It comes with a price, but is worth looking into.

Mobile is the hot item at this conference. It’s no surprise. The developer community as a whole was pretty upset given Apple’s rejection of Flash. We are nervous and excited to see what Adobe will do about it.  The Keynote address was next, put on by Kevin Lynch, the CTO and VP of Adobe. Unfortunately no mountains moved, nor did any bridge sway or building crumble. I wanted to hear the “F*** APPLE!” speech with crowds roaring and shaking fists. Alas, Kevin only skimmed over it and didn’t use a single F-bomb. I decided this was probably best. It made Adobe look like the better man, not taking cheap shots at someone who so publicly shot them down. What also struck me are Adobe’s actions since this big Apple debacle. They aren’t just sitting around doing nothing. They left Apple doing whatever Apple does, and focused on another platform: Android. It’s taking a market share larger than the iPhone, and it’s a ripe time to start developing Flash content for the smartphone. Droid 2, to set themselves apart from Apple, is even providing Flash on their phone right out of the box. That’s bad ass. The other key item to note is AIR 2.5 will support publishing as an Android application. Capital BAD ass. Listening to these speakers today, I get the strong sense that the market for Flash is about to get bigger… and fast. 

After the conference was over we headed to Slide, a small basement club a few blocks from our hotel. Disney was hosting a party there, and when you walk in, you literally take a slide down into the club. What a perfect fit for a club on 6th Street in Austin! Except, well, there are no basements in Austin. We ended up meeting a few developers at Disney Parks and overall had a great time with these guys. They too are facing the challenge of the iDevice and are developing plans to tackle it. After a couple of drinks, we walked over to Chinatown for dinner. I absolutely love Chinese food, and unfortunately the Austin selection is weak at best. My friend Lindsey Simon who lives in SF and works for Google suggested we try the R and G Lounge. He was across the street at some Chinese dive where you have to have an invitation to get in. But whatever, the R and G proved to be way above any standards in Austin. Chef’s Special Beef melted in your mouth, and the Peking duck was a greasy mess of decadence. We closed the night listening to Willie Nelson with Mark at his Buddha lounge around the corner. What a great guy!  And kind of crazy.