BFUG Bloomington Flex User Group

Okay, we are at it again. BFlex '08 has been announced. We will be hosting the weekend of Flex and ColdFusion training in Bloomington over the weekend of September 6 & 7, 2008.

This year, in addition to Flex, we are offering a day of ColdFusion training.

Check out BFlex.info for more information.

Help us determine the best time for an AFTERNOON meeting lasting approximately an hour and a half.

Just rank your top 2 choices.

Check out these snippets ...

News

Flash is moving to an xml-based authoring format!
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/03/flash_moving_to.html

360Flex Resources

The largest Flex-Specific conference was held a few weeks ago. Some of the most prominent community members held sessions on a large range of subjects. And, some of these presenters have posted their slides and/or examples to the web for us to see. So, without further ado, here are some links to this content:

• Andrew Trice's Programmatic Visualizations
  https://cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/andrewtrice?entry=360_flex_program...
• Doug Mccune's Presentation Examples and Slides
  http://dougmccune.com/blog/2008/02/26/examples-from-my-360flex-session-u...
• Jun Heider's Slides/Examples on Memory Management
  http://office.realeyesmedia.com/blogs/jun/?p=100
• Mike Labrioa's Presentation on The Component Life Cycle
  http://blogs.digitalprimates.net/codeSlinger/index.cfm/2008/2/27/Dense-a...

Hopefully you made it to the Flex Release Party on Monday, Feb. 25... and if you didn't you need to come to the next event! Our fearless leader Ben Dalton gave a great keynote address. A lot of new faces were in the room, and I am really happy that new people are finally getting some exposure to Flex, what it does, and how cool its going to become over the next 6 months to a year. Plus, there was free PIzza, a free copy of Flex 3, and a free copy of CS3! (not to mention loads of free schwag!)

I would really encourage anyone that is new to the field to ask questions, google for examples, and dig into the technology. We will be having a BFUG meeting sometime in the near future and I hope you will be able to join us!

Adobe has just hit the nail on the head. During MAX this week, Adobe announced "Thermo", a tool for designers to build out great looking Flex applications using their existing design tools. Let me rephrase: Designers can convert PSD documents into Flex Applications in a point-and-click environment.

Check out these videos to really get a feel for this new tool:

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGdr3dCmxe4

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9IjZJ0D_bo

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsfOe_MCEbg

Special thanks to Aral Balkan for uploading these videos!

Thank you for everyone who attended, virtually and in person!

Slides from the event can be found here.

The next event will be announced online and via email to our new mailing list. For those who attended BFlex, you will receive an email in the coming days with an opportunity to join the list.

Tonight's meeting will be accessible via Adobe Connect:

http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/bfug/

This is our first attempt at a live meeting, so please bear with us if we have technical difficulties.

Here is the rough agenda for tonight's meeting:

• About BFUG

  What is BFUG, who is involved, and "What would I get out of being involved?"

• Meet and Greet

  Getting to know you, getting to learn all about you ...

• Flex Overview

  What is Flex really? Why should we be interested?

• Technical Session: Handling External Data

  Working with external data sources and XML. Can be used in any back-end environment.

• Q&A

  Questions? There might be answers.

• Giveaways

  Tonight we have some great shwag to give away. Including: Adobe Mugs, Adobe T-Shirts, Books, and maybe some other surprises

The BFUG September Meeting will be held on September 24th at 6p.m. EST. in room 100B in the IU Research Park @ 501 N Morton St, Bloomington, Indiana.

Topic list will be announced the by September 15th.

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With BFLEX occurring this month, we will not be having a normally scheduled August meeting. However, we are now planning the September meeting. Please register on this site to receive updates about our upcoming meetings. I've got a TON of stuff to give away. So, connect up with me if you have any thoughts about meeting times or dates.