A Brief Introduction to HTML5, And What It Means for the Flash Developer

We have a great lineup for Flash Indianapolis's February meeting. Tony Dewan will be speaking about HTML5 and what it means for the Flash Developer. You can learn more about Tony by visiting his homepage: http://tonydewan.com/
And be sure to follow him on Twitter: @tonydewan

Topics Covered:
- What is HTML5?
- What's it mean? What's included? Who? When? Why?
- HTML5 compared to Flash
- Flash solution/tech compared to HTML5/Open Web solution/tech
- Usage
- What can I do and how?
- Demos!

Schedule:
6:00pm: Doors open. Everyone can meet and greet.
6:30pm: Presentation Begins.
7:30pm: Open Floor Discussion
8:00pm: McNivens?

Directions:
We will be in the conference room of Noodles & Co.
903 Indiana Ave
Indianapolis, IN

RVSP Here. <- Please RSVP as RefreshIndy may get involved as well and we need to make sure we have enough room.

Quit Shouting & Listen (not to me)

I am tired of all the technical preaching and predictions going on right now. Especially tired of the finger pointing and name calling that a few have resorted to. You can keep the funny images coming... those are worth a chuckle. But for the rest, put down the pitch fork, step off the soap box, and listen. And when I say listen... I'm not saying listen to me.

Listen to your clients. Listen to your clients' consumers. What do they want?

Do the consumers want to sit back and watch/read or do they want to jump in and interact? Do they want to be able to access sites from any device or are they happy accessing some from home and others on the go? Do they expect them to run the same on all devices or are they understanding if performance or features are cut? Are they willing to seek out and download a version of the site to get it to work? Are they willing to pay for a version of the site to get it to work?

Are your clients willing to pay extra to have multiple versions of their site? If not, will they be sacrificing experience or market penetration? Ex: Should the client resort to text so it can reach everyone or should they keep their immersive experience and ignore a percentage of the market?

The consumers have the power. It does not matter how Flash Devs feel about Apple's dictatorship. It does not matter how Apple-fans feel about plug-in performance. Even though these two groups are very vocal, especially of late, the only thing that really matters is what is important to the consumers.

Reminder - Flash Hackerspace Tomorrow! (Indy)

Flash Indianapolis's January meeting is tomorrow from 1-5pm. The best way to describe it is that it is a 'Hackerspace'.

There will be computers available, but feel free to take a laptop.

Location:
ITT Technical Institute has graciously offered Theory room 13 and Lab 12 for us to meet in. Their building is located here:
9511 Angola Court
Indianapolis, IN 46268-3160

There will be signs posted to the Theory room.

See everyone tomorrow!

Catching Up, Yet Looking Forward

As the title suggests, I am still catching up from the holidays.

1. I have a backlog of Freelance portfolios to sift through. I completely plan on e-mailing everyone back, if you haven't heard from me then I just have not gotten to you on the list. Again though, there is no specific project in mind yet, this is just preparing for a potential upcoming rush.

2. I need to respond to the feedback I got from the beta testers on SmogOut. Great feedback... hoping to implement as much as I can before it goes final this week.

As for the future...

1. I am sure I will be posting and tweeting about SmogOut soon. From the test its either love or hate right now, I think mainly due to difficulty and learning curve. I am wondering if I can ease it without making the game less addicting to those who love the challenge... we shall see.

2. I just taught my first class at Butler tonight for Online Portfolio. I think we have a great group. Well rounded: Electronic Journalism, Broadcast News, Audio Production, Elementary Ed/French, Biology, Web Design, TV Production, and my personal college choice: Undecided. It should make for some interesting discussions and diverse portfolios.

For a first post of 2010... that is admittedly weak. Hope to follow it up with a strong series from the SmogOut game. Thanks for the read.

Augmented Reality Christmas Card [Flash, Papervision, FlarToolkit]

Happy Holidays from The Basement!

Todd, Amy, Dan, and Joseph have been very busy these past few days getting their heads wrapped around placing Papervision into FlarToolkit and coming up with a Basement Christmas Card: Check it out.

Dan took the lead on sound. Joseph did the 3D modeling and Animation. Amy designed the 2D aspects of the site. Todd brought it all together in Flash.

Special thanks goes to the Papervision team as well as Saqoosha and the Spark Project for their open source contributions.

Flash Freelancers Needed

2010 is looking as though it will be a busy year for The Basement. We are looking to add Flash designers/developers to our current entourage of freelancers. If you are interested in working with us, please submit the following information to mark[AT]thebasement[DOT]tv

1. Name
2. Location. Anywhere is acceptable; however, bonus points will be given to those in Indianapolis and are willing to work in house.
3. Portfolio
4. What types of projects are you most qualified for? Banners, Microsites, Websites, Games, RIA, etc.
5. What types of projects are you most interested in working on? (See list from #4)

That is all we need at this time. Once projects start coming down the pipes we can get into the nitty gritty details.

Feel free to send any questions or hit me up on twitter.

Flash Break Out - Indianapolis Flash Event

*Update* We will be meeting upstairs in Theory room 13. Park wherever and there should be signs pointing to the room. Also, ITT has opened one of its labs for us. If you don't have a laptop, no worries, bring your work in on a flash drive or e-mail it to yourself and you should be fine. Thanks!

Flash Indianapolis is going to kick off the new year with something a little different. Instead of meeting for an hour during a weeknight, we will be holding a Saturday afternoon event. Instead of having a speaker, we are going to let everyone to bring their laptops, their work, and their questions. We will focus on collaboration and discussion. It will be an open room, anyone can request help on understanding a topic or a specific problem they are working on. People can branch off into side tables to discuss things they are interested in. Some people will be answering questions, some asking, some both... there will be no assigned roles. Questions can be anything, but please try to tie it into designing and developing on the Flash Platform.

Feel free to get the discussions started on the forums as we will get much better answers if we have time to prepare and collaborate before the event.

Anyone is welcome to join. You do not need to be a member of Flash Indianapolis nor do you have to even live in Indianapolis. Feel free to spread this around and invite your friends.

Day:
Saturday - January 30th

Schedule:
1:00pm: Doors open.
4:30pm: Wrap up and Recap. Share findings.
5:00pm: Head to Rock Bottom for Dinner and a Beer

Location:
ITT Technical Institute has graciously offered Theory room 13 and Lab 12 for us to meet in. Their building is located here:
9511 Angola Court
Indianapolis, IN 46268-3160

Feel free to RSVP here.