I'd be happy to hear reports from folks who did attend...
The meeting was hosted and sponsored by roundpeg (http://www.roundpeg.com) at their San Francisco Headquarters. We held the meeting inside their state-of-the-art training room. The facilities and the roundpeg people were top notch.
The meeting started with an announcement from Erin Fife, a recruiter from Adobe. She was there talking up a "Computer Scientist" position within the Kiwi-Apollo team. If you know java and flex, this is definitely the gig to get. More details can be found on the yahoo group ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silvafug/message/53). If you want Erin's contact info, email me offline and I'll get that to you.
Next, we had an introduction from Compuware ( http://www.compuware.com). They spoke about their tools, products and services. They were also there to discuss the partnership they have with roundpeg. Ray, from roundpeg, then finished up with an intro about roundpeg and all the services they offer. Be sure to check out both sites to see their respective offering.
The Beginner Session I was presented by me. I showed off Flex Builder and how it fits within the Flex framework. I demonstrated how to create new projects, add files, compile and run applications. We were able to see what MXML and ActionScript code looked like. We saw how Flex Builder can help "auto-complete" your code for you. We created custom components and used them within our applications. All and all, I hope it was helpful for those who have not had a chance to play with Flex yet.
We then broke briefly for bio-activities (eating, drinking, and bathroom).
The Beginner Session II was presented by Mike Kollen. He started off with a presentation talking about Flex in general. He showed off some apps that they've created within Boeing and for UC Irvine. Mike was a polished teacher and he led us on a bit more "focused" lesson. We created a Tip Calculator within Flex. It was comprised of text boxes, labels, an image, a numeric stepper and a button. He showed us how easy it is to go from absolutely nothing to a neat little app in less than 30 minutes.
After Mike's presentation, we did our famous round the room introductions. We then opened the floor up for discussions.
Abdul-Karriem asked if Flex was going to be able to support his high data volume needs in an efficient manner. Almost the entire group joined the discussion offering opinions and alternatives system designs. I believe (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) was for him to try FDS and see if it worked for him.
Simon asked whether his firm should go the Ajax route or the Flex route. We were obviously biased towards the Flex route, but pointed out that it was not an exclusive decision. With the Flex-AJAX Bridge, it's possible to create web apps and utilize the best of both worlds.
Faisal reiterated that he's still looking for assistance with his project. Faisal, I can't find your original post, can you repost?
We also spoke briefly about some groups and activities within the SilVaFUG org itself, mainly the web site and future speakers. However, I'll make a separate post later with more details.
Thanks again to roundpeg, compuware and Mike Kollen for helping this meeting come together.
The next meeting will be September 14th at Abode SF. It will be our meet the Flex team meeting. Start thinking of your questions and topics you want discussed.
Breeze continues to demonstrate how valuable of a tool it is by providing the convenience of being a part of the community even when you're not there.
Mike Kollen's presentation was very good for those who are new to Flex (which was a good chunk of the audience).
Abdul-Kerriem kicked off a very engaging discussion that I think represents where a lot of people are. As a CF guy, he leans towards the Flex approach, but the battlecry of AJAX is also quite loud. So one of they key Flex advantages is it's ability to push stream data, the benefits of the subscribe/publish messaging approach, paging record sets, etc... So we had a very interesting discussion regarding pros and cons of different architectural approaches.
