I would like to say it’s been a lazy summer with nothing to report but that just isn’t the case. I know Roger has been busy with many things and I have too. I’ve recently been working with an ad agency in LA building a redesigned website for their company. I also worked as a graphic designer on a new NBC web series called Fact Checkers Unit (I now have an IMDB page, so legit!). Last but not least, my wife and I bought a new house in Highland Park. Yay adulthood! Naturally, we’re up to our ears in conduit and drywall dust. Like this blog, it’s not much to look at but it (finally) has running water and (some) walls.

I have lots of little code snippets I’m excited to write as well as a few lengthy, academic posts on programming. I hope to have a little downtime soon to share with everyone. But if I don’t, I guess I’ll see you at Adobe Max in LA!

Keep on Scriptin’™ everyone!

I’m going to keep one as a trophy but if you can read chinese and you’d like a copy, let me know and I’ll send you a present*!

*(If you’re outside the US, i’ll ask you to pay for shipping)

By the way, even though I attend conferences for programmers, I believe these guidelines are good for any conference attendee.

1. Talk to people

   When you break it down, the whole reason to go to conferences is to talk to people. The sessions are good too but I tend to find satisfaction from them only about 50% of the time. People are why I’m there. Don’t be surprised if people aren’t rushing up to talk to you, especially if you’re attending a conference with lots of programmers. Make an effort to approach people and start the dialogue. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You can literally walk up to a stranger and say “Hi. My name is Mims. How’s it going?” and you’re doing it.

2. Know your story

   You’re going to get a lot of chances to tell people about yourself, your company, your projects, and your brand so make sure you know what you’re going to say when someone asks you. There’s a good chance that you’ll be speaking to your industry heroes which can feel very intimidating. Know your own story and be able to communicate it concisely and confidently even if in you’re head you’re thinking “I’m not worthy.” Keep it short and positive.

3. Be interesting

   In other words, have good conversation skills. Of course, this is easier said than done for most people. But even YOU can be interesting with a couple of little tricks. Aside from telling your story, ask them about their story. It’s mysterious but true, asking people about themselves makes you seem more interesting! Furthermore, someone wiser than me once said that if you want to find success, ask your clients what’s keeping them up at night then tailor your service to help them solve the problem. Asking about what’s been inspiring them at the conference is good too because it’s usually something they’re excited to discuss and there’s a slim chance they’ll accidentally tell you their million dollar idea.

   Also, don’t talk forever, just say “Hey, great meeting you. I’ll check out your stuff.” and you’re done. You don’t have to wait for an awkward silence, you can end it on a high note.

4. Bring lots of business cards

   Your card reminds the people you talk to of the conversation you had with them and tells them how to find out more about you. That’s really it. You can make really flashy, expensive cards but printing them on your inkjet works just as well in my opinion. What doesn’t work is when you don’t have one. They’ll go faster than you think so bring a bunch.

   Also, when you trade cards, you can write a note on the back of your card about the project you discussed and do the same for yourself when you receive a card from them.

5. Not a vacation

   It can be tempting to get drunk every night, or blow off sessions, or even to see some sights while you’re away at a conference. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have fun and I’m definitely not saying you shouldn’t have drinks with your industry colleagues. Just remember that you (or your company) are paying a lot for you to be there and every minute is an opportunity to learn something or make a connection with a new client, employee or friend.

   

6. Do some research about the speakers / topics / sponsors

   Obviously, it’s a good idea to review the schedule to see which sessions you may want to attend. It can also be good to do a quick background check on the companies that will be speaking. A quick visit to their website will do usually and you may discover that they did some work you really admire. Chances are, they did or they wouldn’t be speaking. If the schedule is too overwhelming, you can always bring the program home and research retroactively.

7. If a talk is bad, it’s okay to leave

   Unless it would be an obvious or odious disturbance to the session, there’s no rule that says you have to sit through a boring or irrelevant session. Duck out respectfully and go into another session or just mingle in the hallway.

   

8. Attend some sessions that aren’t targeted at you

   I’ve found that some of the most interesting talks at conferences are ones aimed at other jobs. It’s eye-opening to see what business-people, project managers, and programmers from other languages are talking about.

9. Use Twitter

   Like it or not, at a conference, Twitter is the little bird that tells you what’s happening all around you – what talks are worth attending, what news is being announced, where the party is at, and who you need to talk to. Using and watching hashtags suddenly makes your tweets visible to people who otherwise wouldn’t see you and vice versa. I meet lots of strangers through twitter at conferences. For example, this year I had lunch with the cool dudes at Tribal Games who I met simply because they tweeted “going to lunch, who wants to go?” An icon that shows your face helps too – I recognize a lot of people from their icons! Finally, if you don’t have separate accounts, try not to twitter about your personal life at the conference.

10. Don’t waste the momentum

    You’re going to meet people, see new things, and be inspired on multiple fronts. When you get home, do something with all of that good energy immediately. If you just go back to your routine of clients, meetings and daily bullshit, it’s going to go away.

Mims

Prepare to be devastated, ladies and gay gentlemen, for I am getting married next Saturday the 19th! As the day has been drawing closer, I’ve been more and more consumed by wedding planning as well as general stress and excitement which is my main excuse for dropping of the face of the blog.

After the wedding, I’ll we’ll be making my our way through Europe, driving from Barcelona to Amsterdam via Provence, the Black Forest, and a few Belgian breweries. I know many of you hail from Europe so give a shout out if you know some great, strange places to visit along the way!

In between tasting cake and buying championship quantities of wine for the wedding, I’ve managed to keep busy with some really great gigs. I recently built the media-rich Toyota Tundra Experience site in collaboration with Bad Assembly and Saatchi & Saatchi LA which launched this summer. I contributed Gumbo skillz to the insanely extravagant Cannes Multi-Touch Wall with Schematic. I’m also very excited for a project I recently finished in collaboration with the very talented and funny Duncan Brothers and Atom (It’s not launched yet but I’ll announce it when it is).

Sadly, I’ll be missing Adobe MAX and the infamous Flashapaloozastock even though they’re in my own back yard! But after returning in mid-October, I’m looking forward to getting back out there and working my face off! That includes dabbling in some new technology like XNA or iPhone, blogging about some of the stuff I’ve learned on my last few gigs and hopefully, getting my shit together and finally speaking at some conferences. I’m also working on a completely revised version 2.0 of KitchenSync, my incredibly underused tweening and sequencing library.

I hope you’ve all had a great summer!

Roger

Gentlemen, WE CAN REBUILD IT. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s finest programming book. The ActionScript 3.0 Bible Second Edition will be that book. We can make it better than it was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.

That’s right, I’m hard at work tearing the AS3B to pieces and building the second edition from the ground up, and I can’t wait to share it with you. I’ll post more about it when it’s ready to go to press. You won’t believe all the awesome new features in this book!

While writing, I’ve been traveling the world with my trusty laptop. This summer I’ve trekked out from my home in Brooklyn to Peru, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Montauk, Pittsburgh, Orlando, DC, Los Angeles again, Seattle, Portland, and Puerto Rico. Don’t worry, I’m taking lots of photos. I love traveling!

I’ve been working on some really cool projects, too! I made a website for the most wacky, creative filmmaker of our time. I helped to design (and hopefully I will soon program) an iPhone app for a gorgeously illustrated series of books for teens. Sorry I can’t be more specific!

When I’m not doing all this I’m rollerskating, going on long long bicycle rides, watching lots of movies, exploring all the amazing restaurants in NYC, and having adventures. I’m taking an intensive culinary class at the French Culinary Institute this Fall. I also got my motorcycle license and I can’t wait to use it more! Sadly, I’ve completely fallen off learning piano, but I really hope to start again soon!

What have you been up to, readers? Did you have a great summer?

Caleb

Caleb has left New York City. He is now studying hard at Cornell University in Ithica, NY. Aside from the mathy homework, he is kept up at night trying to determine what has gone wrong with his ray tracer. However, there may not be any better reason for a nerd to lose sleep!

Tomorrow morning I leave LA for Flash On Tap in Boston. I’ll be attending the workshop on Red5 on day one in hopes of improving my pitiful Flash server skillz then I’ll be schmoozin’ and boozin’ for the rest of the weekend. Alas, I won’t be speaking but if you know of any speaking opportunities, I’m looking.

Hope to see you there, I’ll be the guy who looks like this:

In addition, I should mention that this is on top of Adobe’s existing program to give free licenses to students; and that you can always build Flex and Flash apps with Adobe’s free Flex SDK and its open source distribution.

Free Licenses for Education and Unemployed Devs

Last night, I participated in the Iron Flash competition at the LA Flash Users Group in Venice Beach. As in Iron Chef (my favourite television show), the participants are all skilled Flash users pitted against one another with the goal of creating something interesting within a strict time limit and featuring a common “ingredient”. In this case, the ingredient was a set of pictures of ‘pucks’, specifically, R. Blank’s dog Puck, Puck the faun, Puck from the Real World, and a hockey Puck. We had 3 hours to make something out of any or all of the pictures. My fellow competitors were Jon Ruppel of Hooky Interactive and Ben McMaster (also at Hooky) who both made some awesome stuff in such a short time. UPDATE: All of the entries have been posted on the LAFlash site.

It was a great experience, and not just because OMG I WON!!!

My entry was a video game featuring Puck the dog. I was considering other physics based games involving the hockey puck and the dog somehow. Then I thought of using the dog instead of the hockey puck and somehow that reminded me of the sport beloved in Canada, Curling! The scoring system is a little wonky but if I may say so, it’s not bad for 3 hours work. Here are screenshots (click to link to the game) along with the source code:

Download the source code

I’ll be the guy that looks like this:

• Banner ads
• ActionScript 2.0
• Last minute crazy hectic projects
• Working with recruiters (Actually, this one was from a couple of years ago)

Some people say I’m crazy or that this sort of work is unavoidable or that it may be shitty but is highly lucrative. However, I always try to avoid projects where I cannot reasonably predict success. Banner ads, AS2 projects, and last minute work all have in common that they seem more subject to chaos than the usual job. Banner ads are difficult to plan because they require loads of tweaks, tedious restraints such as file size restrictions, and duplication of effort for multiple sizes or multiple ad standards across target sites. Or at least they have in my experience so far. ActionScript 2.0, aside from being nearly obsolete, tends to encourage poor programming practices by being a hybrid of non-OOP and OOP paradigms. Last minute fixes and jobs that need to be done ASAFP are rife with issues: the time a developer needs to familiarize himself with unfamiliar code is usually not considered, formal architecture and design is omitted leading to freestyle coding, and because the deadline is so short, if even a tiny issue arrises the project is fucked. Of course, any project can get out of control, but with a little forewarning and careful choices, chaos can be avoided. These types of projects tend to practically guarantee that there will be issues and that there won’t be a smart way to negotiate them.

As for recruiters (or staffing agents, or talent scouts, or whatever else they call themselves), in hard times they might seem like a necessary evil. Still, I feel that I can almost always find a much higher quality match with an employer or employee by direct referrals from other colleagues and friends in the industry – even if it’s through linkedin. Besides, I’ve had enough shady recruiters call me with “incredible offers” on nights and weekends to make me want to disconnect my phone.

So no offense to anyone else who is stuck making banners for their job. I know that all of these things are a neccessary part of our industry. However, I personally don’t want to be involved anymore. I seriously am going to add a “no-banner” clause to my next contract. Instead, I hope to focus on some of the following things that make me happy…

• Game and application development
• Working with people whom I respect and enjoy
• Writing books and blogging

Wish me luck!

(this post under 140 characters)

Follow me

Wrong.

I’m just as lazy as the next guy when it comes to updating my portfolio page. In fact, I have for the past many years neglected to keep my portfolio page up-to-date as I imagine some of you probably have.

Since about 2003, it’s looked like this mucous-coloured collection of bad links:

As of this week, it looks slightly better!!!

But more important than looking better, the work on this page is up to date!!! I used object oriented PHP and mySQL for the backend and it actually stores an archive of every project I’ve ever worked on. The images are pulled in from Flickr using  phpFlickr. It also generates XML data from the database so I could move this to Flash later (5 years from now).

Even though I’ve designed and re-designed my site over the past few years and had very lofty ambitions, I actually managed to finish the new portfolio page and the homepage in less than a weekend. I know it’s not gonna win any FWA‘s, but I’m proud of myself and I hope it is an inspiration for you to stop thinking about updating your site and start updating your site.

From the WSJ (tipped off to me by twitter)

If anyone at Adobe, specifically on the Flash side of things wants to give us an update, that would be great.

[Update: an upbeat explanation by Mike Chambers]

As a member of IGDA I was recently informed of an event in January called the Global Game Jam and I wanted to share it with you. Basically, game developers around the world meet up for an intensive, creative session to create a game from nothing but a few rules and a group of strangers. It sounds really fun and I hope to be a part of it next year.

Global Game Jam