This was the first year that I have been able to attend Flash Forward and so, I didn’t have any preconceptions of this event going into it. But after coming out the other end, I’m a little worried.
Being the manager of a Flash user group, you start to build a picture of what Flashers really want by there emotional responses. And thus, for around seventy-five percent of the conference I felt this vibe from everyone that could be simply compressed down into … “WTF?”.
Now for moments I thought it was just me, after all it’s my first FF experience, right. Then at the film festival after party I spoke to numerous people about how they felt so far about this years event. The main two themes that resulted from my conversations were .. “I came to see code, where’s the code?” .. and .. “I don’t think i’ll come next year”.
Now if I’m honest, I enjoyed the the abstract inspiration side of the conference that seemed to take up most of the schedule. Being someone who can recite the Player API in his sleep, I was glad to gain new perspective from others and not just the same old tutorials. But I felt like I was in the minority.
It seemed to me that the majority of people in attendance were from the creative world (brands/ads/experiance) which seems correct. And by the line-up in the schedule it did seem like those people were the target demographic but I think the new FlashForward team misinterpreted this demographics needs.
It seemed like the line-up was a mirror image of the people in attendance. But to put it another way, the content seemed redundant to the audience. People wanted to be schooled and tested, not just wrapped up in fluffy feathers. These people paid just over one thousand dollars (and maybe a plane ticket) just to get in the door and it seems to me that most people felt that they just didn’t get value for money.
As for Beau Ambur’s hosting skills of the event, I’m indifferent. It might of been nicer to have seen more rotation of the hosting position as the blocks of presentations occurred, though he did improve as the week went on. He started the first day with “i” in almost every sentence while doing couch Q&A and he did answer a lot of his own questions resulting in the guest only being able to respond by saying “yes”. But by the end of the third day, he seemed far more relaxed.
The single track setup of the conference was kind of cool. It indeed gave everyone the same talking points at the end of the day. But with Flash being so multifaceted, I think it failed in reality because of different Flash demographics needed different things. This is something I see extremely often when running a user group. You never have a full member attendees because people pick and choose what they need.
The venue was in a fantastic location for out of towers; trolleys whizzing by, top of a hill, fog dissolving above our heads. The wether was good. The lunch boxes were alright. The seats at the venue we’re awfully cramped for tall people. The gallery was a little spares and didn’t feature anything interactive. Lots of fantastic people in attendance. Matt Maxwell …. LMAO!!
Thank you to everyone who made this conference happen and hopefully all the bugs will be worked out by next year.
I’ll end with a small bit of advice. If you get the chance to speak to one of your Flash heros for the first time .. don’t be hammered drunk. *sigh*
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