What kinda person is Tom Ortega?

I was chatting with Brendan the other day. He asked what kind of person am I to attempt to carry a full time job, put on conferences on the side, manage a successful user group, write articles for the Edge and Adobe Development Center, be a good husband, be a good father of two, and be a good cub scout den leader.

This got me to thinking. Most people only know the Northern California Tom Ortega. Prior to my move to the Silicon Valley, my list of activities were quite different. In Southern California, my plate consisted of holding a full time job, being a good hubbie, being a dad of one and a whole lot of commuting. I didn’t blog, didn’t really participate in any tech community and flitted from one business idea to the next with none taking shape or form.

I had always wanted to move to the Valley. I mean, for a geek, it’s the closest thing we have to a mecca. John forwarded me a job post in October of 2005 and before you knew it, my family was moving to the Bay Area. My wife wasn’t too keen on moving at first. One thing that helped convince her was an idea of mine. I explained that it would be easier to make a name for myself in the tech space in the Valley than elsewhere. Therefore, after a few months of settling down, I got started on that task. This meant I would have to break out of some comfort zones, but oh well. If I wanted to be comfortable, I would’ve stayed in Southern California.

The biggest fear I had to overcome was public speaking. Despite my keynoting at 360|Flex, presenting at MAX and heading up the Silvafug meetings, I actually don’t like public speaking. However, in this day and age, being shy doesn’t get you very far. Therefore, I do what is required. When in Rome (or the Valley), do as the Romans, right? I can still remember the first time during a Silvafug meeting where I realized internally that I was no longer scared to talk in front of people.

So I don’t like public speaking, big deal. Who does? That still doesn’t explain how I take on so much stuff and don’t go crazy. The closest thing that I’ve found that explains it well is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. According to the test, I’m an INFP (Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving) which translates to Introverted Feeling with Extraverted Intuition. You can read all the details here, but there’s a few I’d like to point out and explain how they relate to me.

“INFPs are focused on making the world a better place for people. Their primary goal is to find out their meaning in life. What is their purpose? How can they best serve humanity in their lives?”

Prior to coming up north, I was constantly struggling to figure out how I was going to do this. Now, I’m slowly discovering the many ways I can serve some portion of humanity. Granted, my articles, user group meetings, and conferences don’t make the “entire” world a better place for people. I can only hope, however, that it does make it a nicer place for those that I serve.

This also explains why profits weren’t a priority for the first few 360|Flex shows. It was more important to me that we learn how to put on a good conference. It also explains on why I didn’t insist that we get paid for the first year of the business either. Now, John agreed to all this as well, for his own reasons that you’ll have to ask him about. Overall though, we both just wanted to help developers by giving them a better bang for their buck.

“When it comes to the mundane details of life maintenance, INFPs are typically completely unaware of such things. They might go for long periods without noticing a stain on the carpet, but carefully and meticulously brush a speck of dust off of their project booklet.”

I so fit this description. My wife is constantly asking me how I can walk past my dirty socks in the living room or ignore the cluttered countertop in the bathroom. “How is it that you put on a conference for hundreds of people in your spare time, but can’t remember to pick up your socks everyday?” Truth of the matter is, I just don’t even see it. I wouldn’t say my head is lost in the clouds, but that description isn’t too far off.

The thing is that I tend to move from one focused task to another: answer conference emails, play with kids, eat dinner, work on a bug for work, etc. This helps me from going crazy with my workload. I never view all the work at once, that would be too scary. Instead, I just focus on what needs to be done that day and that makes the list more manageable.

In business, I’m constantly breaking jobs into a set of processes. I then optimize these processes to achieve optimal results. There’s no reason I can’t apply that same logic to my marriage or bad personal habits. Therefore, I’m trying to pick up those socks and help minimize the clutter. To work on this “unaware” fault, I recently added a new task, “Be a better hubby.” This way it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of other ToDos.

“INFPs have very high standards and are perfectionists. Consequently, they are usually hard on themselves, and don’t give themselves enough credit.”

Recently, I was explaining to John that I think it’s this perfectionism that prevents me from wanting to hire employees. Even on some menial task, I think to myself. “Why pass on that task? They’ll likely not do it right.” I’m starting to work on this as well though. A good businessman can delegate and help others grow. I just have to work on letting go.

For those of you that have hung with me, I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m hard on myself. That’s because I know that there’s room for improvement in all that I do. My problem is that I think all those improvements should have been done like last year. If you see me, be sure to remind me: “You done with those improvements yet?” LOL

“INFPs are usually talented writers. They may be awkard and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they’re feeling on paper.”

I hope the talented writer part is true. People really like my Edge and ADC articles. I have some good poems for my wife (they’re not all good since i’m supposed to write one daily). Deep down though, I can’t wait for the day where I can kiss all you tech and business folk good bye to just sit and write fiction all day. I have plans for novels upon novels to write. Nothing feels better to me in life than when I sit at a keyboard or notepad to create a world that exists only in my head. Someday, I’ll do that. For now though, I’m having too much fun doing all the other stuff.

Hope that helps you get a better view of the wackiness that is me.  Got some quirks of your own you want to share?  Drop them in the comments.  This way, I know I’m not the only crazy one.  :)  If you figure out your Myers-Briggs Type, add that in there too.

Dad, what’s a url?

I can’t help but think how archaic the internet still is. Case in point, URLs. Is this the bane of internetters or what?

Let’s start with the prefix:

http://

Seriously, do we really need to have that crap anymore? How many folks are trying to FTP, Telnet or friggin Gopher these days from their browser?

I can already hear the conversation that I’ll have with my kids someday. “Hey, Dad. What was the letters and slash stuff?” “H-T-T-P-colon-slash-slash.” “See, told you. Crazy stuff back in the day.”

Next up is the infamous triple letter combination:

Double-u, double-u, double-u

dub, dub, dub

Triple double-u

However you say WWW, it’s about time we get rid of it. I think it’s safe to say we all realize that it’s the World Wide Web now.

Now, some corporations are guilty of not only keeping this around but going a bit on the extreme side of it. What I mean by that is adding WWW in front of subdomains. I won’t actually call out the URLs, but it would be something like this:

www.reservations.airline.com

So after dropping those two items, that leaves us with just the domain and the suffix. I suppose we can’t really get rid of those just yet. Realnames tried, but failed pretty miserably.

Yes, I realize that browsers support just a domain name and the top level domain suffix. They will then add the rest that I’m proposing we get rid of. However, I’m saying we need to consciously do away with them too.

Some of you are likely asking, “What are we to use then? We need addresses. That would be like addressing a letter to ‘The house of Tom’ and hoping it would arrive in your mailbox. It just won’t work.” To which, I say, “Sure, it will.”

In a way, we’re both right. Of course, I’m not saying we do away with unique identifiers: domain names, IP addresses, cell phone numbers, etc. Somehow, someway, some computer has to manually track each and every entry on the internet. However, there’s no reason why we as humans have to conform and remember the crazy unique identifier. When having a conversation, I may want to tell someone about my tutorial on the Flex Component Kit for Flash. I definitely wouldn’t say, “Yeah, just go to http://lordbron.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/flex-component-kit-step-by-step/ and you can see my tutorial.” No, rather, I’d say, “I have a tutorial post on my lordbron blog.”

A lot of folks dial their cells by either voicing the callee’s name or looking up a name in the phone book. Numbers are a one time thing that we enter, and to be honest, I’m too lazy to have both people manually enter the numbers. When exchanging number with new contacts, I ask for their number, dial it and say, “That’s my number.” This way, they just hit save and never even have to type my unique identifier. Tell someone in the early days of the phone that you’d be able to say, “Call mom” into the phone and it would automatically connect you with your mom and they would’ve said, “You’re crazy.”

There’s a few ways that I think we can get around the URL (or unique indentifier) issue:

• Merge the URL bar with the search box
• Utilize RIA technologies like AIR and Prism to do away with the need for a browser
• Widgets (to an extent)

Merge the URL bar with the search box

Now, I know, this may sound crazy but hear me out. There are two areas where you can go in a browser to find a spot on the web: the url bar and the search box. Most times, you’ll know the address and you enter it in the url bar. As you start to type, it autocompletes and you choose the site/location that you’re trying to get to. No reason why we couldn’t add that functionality to the search box. It could look like the current search box drop down only with a divider. Anything above the dividing line takes you straight to a site you’ve already been to, anything below the line takes you to the search results of your preferred search engine.

Firefox and Internet Explorer already will take whatever you type in the url bar and submit it to a search engine for you if it doesn’t resolve to a URL. Therefore, it just seems silly to me that we have two input boxes when in reality we only need one. I’m for simplification and this would greatly reduce me having to switch from the url bar and the search box via keyboard shortcuts.

Utilize RIA technologies like AIR and Prism to do away with the need for a browser

I know there are those out there that love the browser and praise it as the end all be all of the internet. Seriously though, let’s rethink this for a second. Yes, when I had my cutting edge GeoCities site in 1997, the Back and Forward buttons were the bomb. In 2008 though, when making a Flex App or when using GMail, Forward and Back are not only a bit rough, but oftentimes useless.

“What about Bookmarks?” I can hear the masses ask. To which I say, “What about ‘em? Do you miss bookmarks in Word? Outlook? Calculator? Flash Authoring? Photoshop?” No, and therefore, you shouldn’t “miss” them in web apps either. An application is a workflow, not a linear object like a book. Therefore, book marks are pretty useless.

Plus, with blog readers (for RSS “bookmarks”) and del.icio.us (for non-app website bookmarks), you really shouldn’t be user browser bookmarks anyways.

Therefore, I think technologies like Adobe AIR and Mozilla Prism are way more useful than the browser. You escape the Forward/Back metaphor AND you totally control the experience. If you don’t know what I mean by controlling the experience, just do this comparison.

The eBay website vs The eBay Desktop

Seriously, why go back to the eBay website after you’ve tried eBay Desktop? eBay is all about a fun experience. The AIR app delivers that, the website…not so much.

Widgets (to an extent)

Some websites, just don’t need to be websites. Case in point: weather.com While I appreciate being able to go there to lookup weather, it’s a heck of a lot easier for me to flip my weather widget over on my Mac and enter a new location for it. I know this probably doesn’t make weather.com all that happy, since I’m bypassing their ads. It’s the truth though, so it is what it is.

As you can see, we’re on our way to a better internet. We just gotta keep on trucking and improving until we get to the point where my kids can ask, “Dad, what’s a url?”

360Flex Atlanta Contest and Conference

360|Flex Atlanta is almost upon us. This will be the third installment of our little conference. John and I have been crazy busy, working to get things done. John has actually been carrying my slack this time around! (Thanks, partner, I owe you!)

One of the things that’s very exciting to us though is that we have an API Contest this time. eBay, Ribbit and Degrafa have all joined our API contest. Make a widget and win yourself a Wii, PlayStation 3 or XBox 360. This is in addition to the wonderful prizes that they will also be giving away in their own contests! Make 1 Flex app and win 2 possible prizes. If I wasn’t running the show, I’d be making an entry for all 3!

Sunday, February 24th, will see the kickoff of the conference. We will have an all day Flex 101 session to get new comers up to speed on Flex before the show begins. The guys from Digital Primates are teaching the class AND buying you lunch. If you do go, be sure to offer them a huge thank you for their generosity.

Monday, February 25th, will be the kickoff of the Conference. Matt Chotin will be delivering our keynote, talking about the soap opera, err, I mean development of Flex 3. I’m looking forward to this, though I will likely miss it as I’ll still be welcoming attendees. Sorry, Matt, customers first!

I’d go over every session of the show, but it’s easier if you just check it out for yourself.

In case you’re wondering what’s in store for the conference, let me give you a quick rundown:

Hundreds of attendees

30+ Sessions/Speakers

4 Days of conference

3 Contest prizes to win

3 Parties

2 Keynotes

2 Caring hosts

1-gig Thumb drive

1 Free Hands-on Preconfernce Training

1 kickin’ conference

Plus, you’ll get some conference goodies, grub, drinks and even a few articles of clothing.

And you get all that for a mere $480. If you’re serious about Flex, then you need to come. See you there!

The concept of Tiny Business (i.e. smaller than Small Business)

Business is changing. We’ve been hearing this for quite sometime now. As a whole though, business really hasn’t changed much. You still have massive companies, with many different layers. Even Small Businesses tend not to be very “small”. I think I’d like to coin a new term, if I may be so bold: the Tiny Business.

By tiny, I’m referring to employee count vs company reach. My business partner John Wilker and I put on tech shows for 300 to 400 attendees under the tiny company known as 360Conferences. We’ve done two so far and two more are in the works. Running a tiny business is hard, very hard. I’m sure all tinies have it hard, but what adds pressure to ours are two things: Part-time and Industy Transformation.

First, I’ll talk about the Part Time aspect. John and I have full time jobs as developers. I work at Workday and really enjoy my job. Last week was an incredibly busy time for the UI team. It was so busy that not much time went to 360Conferences. As the dust settled on the Workday front, the work for the 360|Flex Atlanta show picked up steam. I mentioned to John, “I never realize how much we do for 360Conferences while we do it. When we’re in tune with work and family, things get done at an amazing pace. However, jumping back in after a week off, it seems overwhelming.”

At first, I thought I was being a bit over dramatic. My wife says I’m full of “drama” and she’s probably right. However, I was thinking there was some merit to my feelings and received some validation in Atlanta. Ang’elle, the gal helping us out at the OMNI Hotel, was about 3/4 of the way through our onsite visit before she asked the following: “Now, are you guys a 3rd party planning company? Someone’s hiring your company to do this show, right?” We told her no and explained that we put on 360|Flex for developers. We tell her it’s not an Adobe conference. “They support us, but it’s not an Adobe show per se.” She followed up with, “Well, how big is your company? How many in your department?” John and I laughed, then explained we were the entire company. “The buck stops here…literally.” She ended with, “You’re kidding, right? I was thinking there was a whole army back home helping you do this event. Wow.”

Now, if John and I were just repeating a familiar formula of planning high-priced conferences, things may be simpler for us. We’d be taking a known pattern, adjusting it to fit our topic (Flex) and then be calling it a day. However, John and I also felt the need to throw another challenge into the mix, “Rather than just do a better conference for Flex, what if we changed the way conferences were done as a whole?” This is where the Industry Transformation aspect comes in.

To be a memorable and honest business, you have to be ready to take on an industry and change the playing field. Being a tiny company also helps play a roll in that. With it being only John and I, we can turn on a dime. We can come up with, discuss, hash out, re-argue and refine a point over night. We can then implement that new aspect the very next day as a concerted business effort. The effects of that power cannot be understated.

We’re not the first to enter into this foray of low-cost, developer-centric conferences. We’ve never claimed to be the first, but we would like to think that we’re one of the better ones out there. That’s the thing about trying to be a truly disruptive company vs. one that just talks about being one. You have to listen to your heart/gut as you destroy the business norm, but you still have to make sure the customers are happy. If no one likes what your disruption brings, then your disruption is more to feed your ego than it is to provide a better environment in the particular marketplace you serve.

It’s also incredibly lonely being a market disrupter. The old guard doesn’t like you, rightfully so since you’re killing their business. Being a tiny business doesn’t help either. I have John and my wife to fall back on when I get discouraged; no department, no manager and no Big Boss. John, the poor guy, then has to not only support the workload we share, his full time job, but also my floundering spirits. My wife, the poor gal, then has to deal with not only two growing toddlers, but a husband who then needs a little TLC. Both of them are amazing though and I’m usually back to high spirits soon enough thanks to their efforts. There’s one more source I can go to for support as well, and more often than not, I forget about them because I don’t see them when I get home and they’re not IMing me all day. However, this source plays just as big a role in the grand picture as my wife and my business partner. That third source is my customers.

Yes, MY customers. I work hard for them. I literally give my blood, sweat and tears for them. Sure, you can say every company does that, but let’s face it, the heart, the love, the passion are usually not there. Like I tell John, I wake up with customers on my mind and go to bed with them in my heart. Heck, I even include my customers in my prayers, “Heavenly Father, help me find better ways to serve my customers.”

I am proud of every single one of my customers. Whenever one buys a ticket, Eventbrite sends John and I an email. I see their names long before I see their faces. They maybe faceless for a little while but not for long. John and I greet every one of our customers at our shows. If you can’t welcome your own customers to your show, you shouldn’t be putting on a conference. Sorry. We hand greet all 300 to 400 of our attendees and sponsors. Nothing makes me smile more than when I say, “Hi, <insert customer name>. I’m Tom, welcome to 360|Flex.” and they do a double take. They look back at John then me, saying “THE John and Tom who planned the show?” To which, we answer, “That’s us.” The person gets a smile and you can tell that you have made them feel special. We’re not super stars, but we can make our customers feel like they are the most important thing in the world to us. This is because, quite simply, they are.

We sent out a little note to past customers at 2am on Friday night/Saturday morning. We asked them to share the experience they had at our conference with others as we’re nearing the final 30 days of 360|Atlanta. By Saturday morning, we had a few email responses and blog posts. I have a feeling that we will continue to see the “love” be poured out by them over the next week or so.

I thank my wife and John all the time for their support. To my customers though, I wanted to send out a huge thanks. Not just for your monetary support, but for all the kind words (and constructive criticism) you send our way. I know John feels the same, but he’s just not as mushy as I am. I’m a softy though, and my customers help me feel the love.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of truly serving a customer of your own. You should definitely give it a try. Nothing beats the feeling, especially if you’re lucky enough (and humble enough, I’d say) to learn how to serve them correctly. That’s what business is about: Not money, but people. Sadly though, many businesses fail to remember that.

John and I aren’t perfect. Far from it. One thing you’ll notice at our shows is that we bicker like an old married couple. The reason for that is because while we cannot promise our customers perfection we can promise passion. We will do everything in our power to try to achieve the closest thing to perfection that you can get at a show. It’s not because of your money that we strive for perfection. It’s because you are a real person who deserves the best experience. Your money is merely a vehicle to help us achieve that goal. Too many businesses these days feel like their customers owe them something. I hope those businesses die off and let those who care take over. I have a feeling that the replacement companies will be Tiny Businesses: small in size, but big in reach.

Not to be a Sony Fanboy, but…

We recently got an HDTV for my PlayStation3. You fair readers may recall that I waited in line all day to get my PS3 on launch day. I wanted to support the Cell architecture and Sony for investing in such cutting edge technology. 1080p TVs were way to costly back then though, so I waited on that. Recently, my wife saved up and bought me the Sony KDL40V3000.

The TV is amazing. Up until I brought this bad boy home and hooked it up to my PS3, I was getting tired of watching movies. After I watched my first Blu-Ray Disc movie though, I’ve been hooked again.

Not to mention playing games. Before my TV, I played a few here and there but it just wasn’t very exciting. Now, with so many great looking games for the PS3 (Ratchet and Clank is my current favorite, followed up quickly with the HD PSN version of Lemmings), gaming is once again very engaging. And these games are only at 720p, mind you!

The reason for my post though has nothing to do with the visuals of the TV or the game/movie feature of the PS3. Instead, I’ve just recently given EyeConnect a spin on my iMac. I have over 40 gigs of music on my machine which sits roughly 15 ft from my PS3 in the living room. Now, I could copy all my music to my PS3 or copy it to an external drive and hook that up, but why? It’s just right there. The iMac has wifi and the PS3 has wifi. They should be able to share, right?

With the magic of DLNA (Digital Living Network Association), I load EyeConnect on the Mac, turn it on, enable sharing via iTunes and iPhoto, and magic! My PS3 now has all my music and my photos. It’s pretty amazing on how simple it is to get it working.

I’ve been working hard since early New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day to meet a deadline at work. I have no computer speakers (they don’t tend to last long when your kids use them as hiding places for things), so I was worried that I’d have no way to hear my music. Hardcore coding without music just isn’t an option and my iMac has horrible quality speakers. (Yes, I could have used headphones, but I hate using headphones at home when I’m alone.) DLNA pulled through for me though.

The biggest surprise though is just how good my music sounds coming through the TV. My previous TV was bought in 2000 granted, so I should have expected some increase in speaker quality. However, the music sounds amazing considering they’re stock TV speakers, the music is MP3 and is being broadcast over wifi. Sometimes, technology just blows me away. Great job Sony on the DLNA support in the PS3 and the excellent speaker technology on the TV.

Now, if I can just find a free moment to learn how to program my multi-core Cell chip via Yellow Dog Linux, I’d be a happy man.

For you MacHead/PS3 fans, here are the total steps I used (courtesy of _Liquidus_ , thanks!):

1. Download Eyeconnect and install it.

2. Go into your SYSTEM PREFERENCES and click on the SHARING folder.

3. Click on the SERVICES tab and select PERSONAL FILE SHARING as on.

4. Click on the FIREWALL tab and select iTUNES MUSIC SHARING on,
iPHOTO SHARING on.

5. While still in the FIREWALL tab click NEW on the right side and
choose PORT NAME: Other and enter 2170 in the TCP PORT NUMBER and type
in EyeConnect in Description, click OK, select the newly added item as
on.

6. Go into iTUNES and go into the PREFERENCES, click the SHARING tab
and check the box beside “Share My Library on my local network”.

7. Turn on your PS3 and run the Media Server search and your Mac
should show up (mine did)

Secret Matrix Footage Reveals the Truth about AIR

I get a phone call late last night. The voice sounds distant. I hear talk of Zion and of Neo. I try to ask what they are talking about, but the voice just says. “Visit the site. See the truth.”

I quickly run to my computer and pull it up. My eyes are open. I can see now. We must share the message with the world. We must let the truth be known.

See for yourself. Spread the word. Freedom is in the AIR.

< Sorry, you get the blue pill (i.e. the vid was pulled) />

The software-formerly-known-as-FDS has gone open source!

In case you haven’t heard, the server side messaging component of Flex is also going open source.

The Computerworld article:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9052638&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

From internet news:

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3716331

CNET’s coverage:

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3716331

Bravo, Adobe!

Thoughts on Consolidation, Part 1: Adobe 3rd Party Tech conferences

As John can attest to, I see the world in business terms. One common past time of mine is looking at particular industries and seeing how close they are to saturation, whether it’s time for consolidation, and who will consolidate with whom. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on two industries: tech conferences and Flex (maybe RIA) consulting. This post tackles tech conferences. I’ll make a separate post for Flex consulting.

The tech conference market is way past saturation. I foresee a consolidation happening soon and let’s be honest, it’s long overdue. Particularly with these smaller, lower cost conferences winning rave reviews over bigger, more expensive ones. I’m not tooting my own horn, as we can take 360Conferences out of the picture and still see the same effect. For example, FOTB vs FlashForward plus the rise of BarCamp style events.

Post 360Flex San Jose, we were in talks with various companies about conferences. The thing that struck me as odd was a statement made by someone in the conference space. “Conferences are big money.” Price points aside, there’s a lot of money involved in conferences. Our last event in Seattle made more than a quarter of a million for the Red Lion Hotel alone and we’re a tiny show in the conference paradigm. The same individual noted to us that if your conferences get big enough, hotels will pay your company for each room booked at their facility, etc. We don’t plan to ever have a show that big, but it was an interesting point to know.

Once we smaller events start to take away enough customers from the Big Shows, they will react. Right now, we’re seen more as mosquitoes that are more pesky than anything. Eventually though, these individual sores will add up. When a substantial decrease in per show revenue starts to take shape, that’s when the Big Shows will strike.

Currently, they could hurt us by simply dropping their price point to match ours. This will take care of the biggest differentiator between us and put us in more heated competition. They wont’ do that just yet though for two reasons: profits and budgets.

Let’s tackle profit first. Let’s say we small guys give them a 10% hit in their numbers. 90% of their old numbers is still a lot of friggin’ money. You can just hear some middle manager somewhere saying, “Why are we going to walk away from a cash cow? No one really takes those small conferences seriously.” Silicon Graphics said the same thing about PCs running Windows NT and look what happened there. Money makes you comfortable and slow. It’s one of the curses of success that companies must constantly strive to avoid.

Next comes budgets. People are amazed that John and I alone put on the 360Flex conferences. Granted, we have some temps hand out surveys, but that’s it. Now, we don’t do all the work, of course. We have partners (web hosting, ticketing, etc.) and a creative agency (for fliers, signage, etc.). However, our conferences currently do not support any full time staff. Nobody gets paid to work on 360Flex for their day job. You look at these Big Shows and companies, they have dedicated event staff demanding full time salaries. Some even have event departments.

Yes, John and I wouldn’t mind being full time employees of 360Conferences. However, the employee count should stop there. We’re hoping to never need more than 2 employees, but I’m guessing we’ll likely bring on board 1 more person in the future. (If for nothing else, to be the tie-breaker.) We will never have an office that we pay rent on. Nor will we ever have middle management or even peons. No work is below us and if it takes too much time to do, then we’ll find a partner to do it for us. For these factors alone, we’ll be able to out budget a majority of these high priced conferences. We need less, so we can charge less.

Therefore, as you can see, the Big Shows won’t be able to compete on our terms anytime soon so that leaves: mergers and acquisitions.

I’ll be honest. I think a lot on merging. I scan the landscape of just Flex/CF conferences and imagine consolidation to make it easier on attendees, speakers and even sponsors. For goodness sakes, there are 4 events between February and June of 2008 that serve the Flex/CF technologies: 360Flex in February, cf.Objective() in early May, WebManiacs in late May and CFUnited in late June. The crazy thing about the last two are that they are a month apart in the same city, Washington DC!

I thought about merging with Jared. We could easily rename CF.Objective() to 360CF or something of the sorts. It would be a good fit because it would give us a mid-US presence and he’s a low cost small conference as well. However, he’s dabbling in Flex so it’s not a straight CF show anymore. Plus, he’s growing exponentially so there’s no need for him to merge with us.

I also chatted with John about approaching Fig Leaf to merge with what was at the time FlexManiacs. Let’s face it. Fig Leaf is probably more interested in the training business their show funnels their way then they are about the show itself. Therefore, they should just shut down their show and become the premiere sponsor of our 360Flex East Coast shows. This will save them the time and hassle of trying to do their own show, but still drive whatever training business they want their way. However, they became WebManiacs so now that deal doesn’t make much sense. Plus, going up against CFUnited on CFU’s hometurf is suicidal.

CFUnited is tough to get a bearing around. It makes no sense for us to merge with them, because their an old skool Big Show type conference. At twice the price of the other shows mentioned, they aren’t shooting to compete with us. They do have their CFUnited Expresses though that is their approach to low cost conferences. If you’ve been to one of those Expresses, drop a comment and let me know your thoughts on them.

The way I see it going down now is WebManiacs dying off and CFU winning the DC front. CF.O chipping away at CFU and 360Flex trumping CFU’s play for the Flex attendees. CFU will then have to react to us, but I just don’t see how yet. If you care to speculate, drop a comment.

That’s just the Feb to June timeframe stateside events. 360Flex and CFU are both headed oversees this year. One conference on the other side of the pond that John and I are going to attend is Flash on the Beach. I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about this show and how it’s ran. Hopefully, while we’re there, we can chat it up with John Davey. The refreshing thing is that he started FOTB for the same reason we started 360Flex: to fill a void. He’s in it for the community as are we, so it’ll be great to see what we can learn from each other. Davey competes against FlashForward, another of the Big Shows. While FF has its following, a lot of folks have said that it’s been going down for the past few years. Lynda is still probably licking her wounds from the failed DX3 fiasco, but it’ll be interesting to see how they react to FOTB. Like I said though, FF is a Lynda Event production which means to me there’s a bunch of staff sucking up budget money.

Well, that’s my thoughts. Remember, they’re just that: thoughts. No merger talks ever took place. No consolidations are going down (that I know of). However, if you agree (or disagree) express yourself in the comments. I look forward to the dialog.

Digital Primates (Even More Monkeys in the House)

In case you haven’t heard the news yet, Digital Primates and Nimer-Tapper have merged!  It makes sense that these small, but highly qualified dev houses merged into one.  They’ve written a book together, so they know how each other works under time constrants.  I’m sure they worked on projects together as well.  By combining, they’ll now have the bandwidth to take on lager projects (since they have more man power combined then each did separately).  Plus, their community efforts will likely grow (if that’s possible since they’re everywhere) because more troops can share the workload while others are participating out in the community.

Any business transaction that allows for more (or continued) community involvement is a good transaction in my eyes!  Congrats guys! And keep up the good work.

Viewing the web through a Prism

I love my web apps. I use GMail religiously (on a computer and on the mobile). John and I use a suite of web apps to run and manage 360Conferences. We use 37 signals apps (Basecamp, Highrise), Buzzword (for docs), Google Docs (for spreadsheets) and Google Calendar (for scheduling). While AIR is an exciting technology, it is primarily a developer technology. By that, I mean the average web user will gain no benefit from AIR unless the web app developers choose to take advantage of AIR. It is for that reason that I find Prism so exciting.

Prism seems to be aimed specifically at end users, not just developers. For example, take Workday. Prism provides us immediate benefit. It allows us to break free from the browser. Workday is a web app and not a web site. We have no use for a back button, bookmarks, etc. Our application provides all those navigation methods much more efficiently (and dare I say, elegantly) internally. Prism allows us to break free from the broswer mold and put some shortcuts onto the desktop, quick launch bar and start menu. The best part is we (the workday developers) did not have to do anything to get this functionality. Prism allows our users to do create that functionality quickly and painlessly.

Another thing that’s great about Prism is that if a web app uses a plug-in and you have it installed for FireFox, then it’ll work. With AIR, we’re locked down to Flash Player and PDF only. While that is great for building new apps that integrate elements of those 2 technologies with the desktop, it’s a bummer for apps out there that utilize other plug-ins, like QuickTime.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m excited about AIR too. It’s just that, like I said earlier, Prism provides immediate benefits with no developer tweaking. Adobe should emulate that capability. It shouldn’t be hard.