FlexAbility

Where: inTouch Technology Corp. 1 Broadway, Cambridge, MA – 5th Floor Training Room
When: Tonight at 7 pm – come a bit early and eat pizza and socialize

Brass Monkey is an SDK for creating cross platform experiences. At its core it is a networking library for interconnecting mobile devices and computers over a local WIFI. Brass Monkey allows a mobile device, for example a cell phone, to be used as controller. Input occurs through the device’s accelerometer etc. and is used to control a web based experience (Flash/Flex, Unity3D). Chris will show how to use the SDK, and demonstrate many of the possibilities this new technology opens up to developers.

Chris Allen: Chris is president and CEO of Infrared5. He is also co-project manager and a Java developer for the open source Red5 project, and has been a software architect and developer for major enterprises including Cambridge Technology Partners, Mass General Hospital and Scholastic.

Please RSVP at http://bostonfug18.eventbrite.com/

From the announcement at http://bostonfug.org:

“Daniel Rinehart will discuss his experiences and insights into developing for the 2.0 release of the Adobe AIR player. Daniel is known for his programming and architectural skill and his talk will be dense with worthwhile nuggets.”

I can personally vouch both for Daniel’s expertise and for his ability to clearly communicate technical information. If you’re interested in Adobe’s AIR technology, this meeting is definitely worth attending. For details, see the URL above.

See you there!

Douglas

The Boston Flex User Group presents Libby Freligh on This Business of Flex:

This talk is a departure from our usual technical focus, and we think it will be an especially exciting one. Our speaker, Libby Freligh, was a key player in the original definition, creation and launch of the Macromedia Flex platform, and our talk will take a fascinating look at the genesis of the platform from a business and product management angle, as well as a look at the present and the future.

Libby will start with a perspective on the early history of Flex platform, discussing how Flex evolved from an initial concept into the major force in RIA development that it is today. The rest of the talk will provide a business perspective on current RIA development, looking at how the landscape has evolved and how Flex and other platforms have essentially changed the terms of how software gets built now. Libby will also talk about her experience since Macromedia in designing and developing RIA products that successfully address the online market.

More info at http://www.bostonfug.org

Please RSVP at http://bostonfug14.eventbrite.com/

See you there!

The Boston Flex User group invites you to…

Where: Adobe’s Newton office – 275 Grove Street – Next to the Riverside MBTA station

When: Tuesday, May 12, 7:00 PM – All are encouraged to come at 6:30 or so, hang out before the meeting and enjoy Pizza etc. courtesy of Universal Mind.

Who: Alex Barnett

What:

SaaS Models: What does this mean for Flex developers?

Today, millions of Small Businesses are adopting the SaaS (Software as a Service) model. These businesses need their data to connect, synchronize and interoperate across the multiple back-office and front-office applications and services they use to run their business. How will this work? How can the cloud help Small Businesses get more out of their data and leverage the functionality of the cloud? What are the opportunities for ISVs and SaaS providers and Flex developers to connect and program against the Small Business data cloud? This presentation will describe how Intuit’s PaaS offering: the Intuit Partner Platform, is enabling a brand new class of cloud connected services, SaaS and RIA offerings for Small Businesses and partner with ISVs and SaaS providers to solve real problems for millions of Small Businesses. In this session we’ll also be demonstrating how Flex developers can use their skills to take advantage of this huge opportunity.

Presenter Bio:

Alex Barnett leads the developer relations team at Intuit, responsible for Intuit Developer Network (IDN) and developer engagement and evangelism for Intuit Partner Platform (IPP). Previously Alex was VP, Developer Community at Bungee Labs after spending five years at Microsoft Corp. in various community program management and marketing positions. Before joining Microsoft, Alex was at a director at a leading digital marketing and Web development agency (Bluewave) for seven years. Alex played professional cricket for eight years (Middlesex and Lancashire). He blogs at http://alexbarnett.net/blog and Twitters at http://twitter.com/alexbarnett.

Please RSVP @ http://bostonfug11.eventbrite.com

See you there! 

Please join us for the next Boston Flex User Group meeting!

Where: Adobe’s Newton office – 275 Grove Street – Next to the Riverside MBTA station

When: Tuesday, April 14, 7:00 PM – We invite you to come at 6:30 or so and hang out before the meeting. Pizza and drinks will be provided by Universal Mind.

Who: Mansour Raad

What:

Mansour Raad will talk about using the Flex API for ArcGIS. This session will be very hands on – he’ll show us how to build mapping applications to thematically render parcels, etc. He’ll also show us how to extend the API for other mapping features such as clustering, labeling, and heat maps.

You can check out his blog at http://thunderheadxpler.blogspot.com/

Please RSVP @ http://bostonfug10.eventbrite.com/

See you there! 

The Boston Flex User Group is pleased to announce…

Who: Joe Berkovitz
Where: Adobe’s Newton office – 275 Grove Street – Next to the Riverside MBTA station
When: Tuesday, March 10, 7:00 PM – Feel free to come at 6:30 or so and hang out before the meeting

What:

Joe Berkovitz, founder of music software startup Noteflight, will talk about the technical underpinnings and lessons learned in building a full-fledged music notation editor on the Flex/Flash platform.

Topics covered will include: MVCS architecture, audio synthesis, non-linear visual layout algorithms, and automated testing. A short excursion covering the new Moccasin open source framework for graphical editors might be worked in. And be sure to bring your Zippo lighter so you can hold it up and request “Free Bird”!

Prior to founding Noteflight, Joe Berkovitz was a Chief Architect at Allurent, Ruckus Network and Unveil Technologies. Even earlier, he was part of ATG for eight years developing many core components & originating a number of key ideas with patents granted or pending. Prior to ATG, Joe worked at Houghton Mifflin; Stratus Computer; and Bolt, Beranek and Newman, among others.

Please RSVP at http://bostonfug9.eventbrite.com/

See you there!

Where: Adobe’s Newton office – 275 Grove Street – Next to the Riverside MBTA station
When: Tuesday, January 13, 7:00 PM – Please feel free to come at 6:30 or so and hang out before the meeting
Who: Eric Hilfer, Director of Software Engineering at Tom Snyder Productions

What:

The Flex Automation Framework

Automated testing is an essential component of developing and maintaining software applications created by large teams. Flex Builder Professional provides an extensive framework for recording and replaying GUI-level user interactions for automated testing of Flex applications. Although the documentation mostly references using HP Quick Test Pro as the recording and playback agent, the framework can be used by other commercial testing agents, like RIATest, or agents that you can build on your own. Eric will describe his own journey of adapting the automation framework for testing Timeliner® XE, a massive AIR application, and will share some best practices (and some not-so-best practices) for extending the framework beyond the core Flex components. Some powerful examples will be shown of using RIATest to run data-driven regression testing of Timeliner® XE.

Please RSVP at http://bostonfug8.eventbrite.com/

See you there!

Speaker: David Coletta
Topic: Building an application for both Flex and AIR
When: Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 7:00 PM
Where: Adobe’s Newton Office

David Coletta from the Buzzword group at Adobe Systems will be talking about how to build applications that run in both the Flex and AIR runtime environments, using substantially the same codebase.

More details @ http://bostonfug.org/

Please RSVP @ http://bostonfug7.eventbrite.com/

See you there!

Time: 7:00 PM, Pizza & drinks at 6:30
Place: Adobe’s Newton office
Speaker: Brian O’Connor, Principal Architect at Universal Mind

Come hear about the benefits of LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS) and how to utilize them properly with Flex & Cairngorm, including:

* The differences between BlazeDS and LCDS.
* The different services and benefits offered by LCDS.
* How to model your Flex Services using Cairngorm and Data Management.
* And much more!

Details at http://bostonfug.org

Source code will be made available after the presentation.

Please RSVP at http://bostonfug6.eventbrite.com/

See you there!

Topic: How To Build Powerful Editing Apps Quickly With Degrafa And Object Handles

Speaker: Marc Hughes, Manager of Software Engineering at Tom Snyder Productions

Marc will show us two open source Flex libraries, Degrafa and ObjectHandles. Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework that lets you create graphical assets in MXML. He’ll show us how to create some visuals without any bitmap or vector based art assets and then use those to skin Flex components. ObjectHandles is a library he wrote to allow developers to easily create a Flex application that allows movement & resizing of onscreen objects by users. Marc will give a quick introduction to that and show off a few examples of it in use. After the introduction of these two libraries, he will demonstrate how to build a basic diagramming application using Degrafa and ObjectHandles.

More details at http://bostonfug.org