So my thoughts on 360|Flex... Frakkin' great! Beyond selling out, we ended up with 442 registrations! w00t!
Day 0:
We had record (a common theme for us this time around) Sunday turnout for the FREE (for registered attendees) pre-conference training. Yahoo!, Ribbit, RIAone, Lynda.com, and OpenFlux training all rocked the eBay Hizzy!
The speaker/sponsor dinner as well as the welcome reception were huge successes. Great turnouts for both!
Day 1:
Registration went smoother than normal, though still slower than we'd like. My wife was with us to help and it would have SUCKED had she not been there, so thanks honey! The keynote went well, Mark Anders talked about Flex 4 and some cool Degrafa stuff. I unfortunately wasn't in there, but it sounds like it was a bit confusing as to exactly what 'Flex 4 and Degrafa' really means. I'm sure it'll be more clear as time goes by and we get closer to Flex 4 release. It was nice that Tom and I got to actually speak at this keynote. I think Tom did in Atlanta, but it's hard for us to stop welcoming people on Monday morning.
The sessions, of course, were killer. We heard nothing but great things from attendees walking past us.
Lunch was a bit of trouble. Food didn't come out fast enough, or in great enough quantities, but that's always a problem that plagues us. It's easy if you're big, you just toss what doesn't get eaten, but we try to walk a fine line; not ordering too much or too little.
The party was fun! Tons of great conversations, Guitar Hero, BoFs, BBQ and Root Beer Floats. What else is there!?
Day 2:
Day 2 is always, kinda easy peasy. There's no keynote so it's mainly just keeping things running, making sure everything is working well, and such. It's probably the most relaxing day of the 4. Food went a bit smoother, that's always nice. It's great to be able to adjust on the fly like that!
The party was rockin'! Cynergy and Adobe rocked the house, open bar, great food, more Guitar Hero (of course!) and even more great conversations, especially during the Flex and Adobe Developer Connection teams' BoFs.
Day 3:
The sad day. As much fun as I have doing our Wednesday keynote, and I really do love doing it, it's sad that everyone I've been chillin' with for the last 3-4 days will be heading home. The keynote went well. We had Workday try again since their Monday keynote didn't pan out. Sadly we realized that it was a bit unfair to other sponsors. Oops, sorry guys. We won't make that slip again.
The video's were absolutely hilarious!!! Stucki FTW! Polygeek and Jeremy you rock! The Ribbit video was AWESOME, 'You know Doug won't be there?' OMG!
We also had the pleasure of not only announcing that we made a profit, but that we were able to give $7,000 to
Second Harvest Food bank, plus $1,000 in gifts for those that participated in our second ever Charity Flex Code Jam, organized by
Ali Daniali. We speak more on giving back on the
company blog.
We announced the winners of our newly introduced MVP program. Details for the MVP program as well as the winners can be found in an upcoming post to the
company blog.
Michael Labriola, an MVP winner, sent this to us to be shown Wednesday morning since he had to leave early. It was just a bit too late, but it's too funny to not be seen!
We announced our next two events also,
360|Flex Camp New Jersey and
360|MAX.
The east coast folks have been asking for a showing. While it's not a full fledged 3 day 360|Flex conference, 360|Flex Camp is a 1 day single track Flex Camp on top of a 1 day training with the 360|Vibe :)
We're really happy to be involved in bringing a more community vibe to MAX. 360|MAX will be a single track event running the length of MAX North America. We've got a nice little area all to ourselves, our own schedule, our own sessions and everything. Come prepared to participate! Drop a note to
info@360flex.com if you're interested in sharing something to the MAX audience. Note: You must already be registered at MAX to participate in our event.
