Alright… so unless you you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple years, you know that TDD, Source Control and Build Automation have fully hit the Flash design and development scene. It seems as though everyone is talking about it. A lot. And then commenting on it. A lot. (more…)

I’ll have a full recap on the conference later, but for now, here is our presentation deck. Enjoy!

Additionally, here is the handout we provided to the session attendees to help them determine if an API was right for them:

The eLearning Guild’s annual developer conference is rapidly approaching. DevLearn 09 is sure to be a great event with keynotes from Leo Laporte and more. The conference this year is particularly interesting, with a complete ARG being played around a “Zombie Apocalypse” scenario. Teams, points, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and more are all coming together in a very fun interactive way. It’s been great so far! I’m looking forward to see where it goes once the conference gets started.

The Iona Group will be going, with myself, Mark Tovey and John Feser all attending. Mark and I will be presenting. Our topic is about the use of APIs in eLearning. It’s a topic that is pretty dear to us. We have learned quite a bit about this through our experience getting Doctum up and running. The concept of building a resuable, sharable codebase is very prevalent in web and interactive development, but we have found that in the eLearning community it is relatively unheard of.

This could be due to a number of things, but by and large it appears to us that this may be in large part due to the fact that eLearning tools are not focused on separating content from presentation and behavior.

This practice is the foundation of of OOP and implemented in all of our work at The Iona Group. We’re happy to talk to others about it.

Here is the link to our presentation… check it out.

I just took an extended vacation. 10+ days actually. Went with the family to visit some friends and relatives. We had a great time. I was computer free for the entire time. *GASP*.

I was in an environment with a number of people that use a computer only as a communication tool, email, etc. Their level of web saviness and familiarity with computing in general is pretty low. They are casual technology users in general, not early adopters. They are all what you would consider white collar workers in various economic sectors. All are pretty successful in life, with nice homes, families and all the things that come with it. All of them great people, and people I consider myself lucky to know. Their lines of work and the careers they have built through their hard work are all things to be proud of, and rightfully so. I feel the same about the choices I have made in my professional life, too.

There was a clear dividing line between them and myself that was far more important, though much less noticeable than simply being a power user or a casual user of a computer. That line? A clear and driving force behind the work we choose to do. You see, I haven’t really ever considered a career path that didn’t involve design and interactivity. Since high-school, I wanted to be a graphic designer. I avidly learned Photoshop and Illustrator, Aldus SuperPaint and Apple Hypercard, etc… Once in college, I taught myself HTML and dug into Apple Media Tool, Director, and picked up Flash. Since then I have expanded into user experience design, application design and social media design. All evolutions of the same basic tenet, creating and providing superior experiences for the people that use my products, services or solutions.

The paths the others had taken or are currently taking, these friends and many of my other friends included, have been a little less clear. A few years in consulting, maybe a few in real estate or retail, on and on… not really in one sector or even one basic task/goal type. I find this a difficult life path to comprehend. To not love the work you do so much, that it is really about the only thing you want to do, so much that you are willing to take a lower paycheck or see a lull in your billable hours, just doesn’t sound rewarding to me. To be able to move from selling Widget A to selling Widget B without a blink just isn’t me. I love the weekend, but I’m never really working for it.

In the wake of the dot com bomb, I was unemployed for a while. Taking any sort of design oriented gig I could scrounge. Websites, brochures, banners, web games, etc. I interviewed a number of times for creative positions, but to no avail. At the lowest point, after the work dried up and we were seeking to buy a home to start a family, I interviewed for a position selling technology products at a full commission store. The interview was great, I was virtually a shoo-in with my level of expertise on computers, home entertainment gear and the like… then the big question, “What will you do if a position in your previous line of work becomes available locally?” My answer, “I’d probably take it.” They promptly shook my hand and showed me the door. I just couldn’t do it, I needed a design job!

It makes me think. What other career paths are out there that people take that they are so passionate about that they just can’t think of doing anything else? Teaching, Law, Medicine? What? I am anxious to hear your thoughts on this. Do you love what you do? Could you envision yourself in a totally different job or career path? I’ve made my decision. It’s like some sort of tattoo. Design.

Iona pulled in 6 regular Addy awards this year, in categories like Best Business to Business Website, Best Special Effects, Best Audio, Best Local Ad Campaign, Best Use of Text Messaging in Advertising and Non Broadcast video. (Check out the links to see the samples). In addition to the regular awards, two special awards were won, a Judge’s Choice award for the Bradley Gala Text Messaging project based on creativity, and an Award of Excellence given to Steve McNair and Scott McCormick (two of the founding partners of the Iona Group) to commemorate their 25 years of great service to the local advertising marketplace.

Congrats to all involved on these efforts. We did some great work and it got noticed. If you’re interested in learning more about the winning projects (toolsets, process, etc) mentioned in the post… let me know!

Green Projects are everywhere. Infrastructure, industry, and of course interactive exhibits. The company I work for recently launched a very cool installation at The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago that has a green focus, but with a bit of a twist. You see, they installed a water reclamation processing system in one of the high traffic restrooms at the museum. This facility takes the water flushed washed down the sink, cleans it, making it “grey water“. This grey water can then be used in the toilets. This conserves a massive amount of water. here’s where we come in.

The bathroom is touchless. The Sloan brand sinks, toliets and urinals (yes, now my blog has the word “urinal” in it, twice, even) are all automatic. In addition, the urinals are of the “waterless” variety. The hand dryers are those cool Dyson airblade ones. All of these devices report to a central server tracking usage. That’s right… the toilets let the server know how many flushes happen, the sinks report the water usage, etc.

We built an interactive presentation that taps into this data via a webservice. The data is then overlaid on some fantastic HD footage of water doing watery things. Washing up on beaches, splashing, gurgling, being water. We used Flash’s H.264 support to its fullest, displayed on 120hz 1080p displays. Looks great. On specified intervals, the metrics are updated, letting viewer know about the environmental impact they are making by using this facility.

Take a look at a couple images (I apologize for the photo quality, they were shot by my iPhone in some low light conditions)… Click on em to see the full size version.

The second image has some data on the display… This image was shot at about 10AM, and the facility had already saved 114 gallons that day! Cool. It states there that the current average savings is 2031 gallons per day. Woot! Now that’s some cool data you can use. All built in flash by The Iona Group. Erik Peterson was the primary developer. He’s on Twitter. You should follow him if you like pithy comments and electric pineapples (I don’t know what they are either). Heather Ford was the primary designer. Follow her on Twitter, too. She does good work.

What a fun project. A great client too.

The economic downturn is touching all facets of the working world. Advertising, Branding, Design and Development consulting companies are not immune. It’s observable through the cutbacks in staff amongst major firms like Razorfish, BBDO, Ogilvy and on and on. I have also had a number of colleagues and friends recently downsized at smaller regional companies. Sales are down, not surprisingly, with companies spending less on marketing, advertising and other typical expenditures in this realm… So what’s a small company to do in this sort of climate? How can you grow sales? Gain clients? Expand your offerings or deepen your specializations? The ways are myriad, but here are some things I’m kicking around lately and with it, gaining excitement and momentum in a pretty bleak landscape.

1. Stop selling “branding experiences”, pointless microsites or juiced up brochureware… While the spigot flows and the economy is good, these sorts of projects might keep on coming in, but, when people are tightening their moneybelts and stuffing their savings under their mattresses, these types of projects are met with dead glances from across the conference room table. For a change, give full and serious consideration to ways your can save your client money by making problems go away. Maybe its deeper integration with their CRM, ERP or other business process management software. Perhaps you can help them transition to webservices, better manage their metrics and conversions via smarter reporting or even hands on training. The point is, pretty and “Wow!” aren’t enough right now.
2. Use the time to augment your skills. You could then try selling these new skills at a slightly lower rate to get the bites. This allows your designers and developers to stretch, feel good about their professional path and pick up some techniques they might never have thought of before. I recommend getting a company subscription to a training library like Safari or Lynda.com.
3. Get those clients started on Social Media. You twitter, you blog, you facebook, you linkedin, but, your client doesn’t… why not? Fear? Lack of time? Lack of motivation? Perceived lack of expertise? Well, you have all of them. Help push them into the world of communication with their customers. This is one area set to take off. Many multinationals are are already playing there, but I doubt the local establishment or even the regional clients are playing here with any sort of regularity or defined effort.
4. Take some work for a nonprofit/501(c) organization. You might get some amount of revenue from this, but you’ll most likely have to seriously discount or even consider doing pro bono work. Use these types of projects to do award wining work, or try out new tools, cross train your staff or even venture into new specializations or vertical markets. In the end, it won’t make you wealthy, but you may find some tax advantages or even¬† *gasp* feel good about the work you do!
5. Submit, submit, submit! Beyond the typical CommArts, How Magazine, WebbyAwards and Addy Awards, virtually every trade association gives their own awards for marketing and design efforts. Talk to your clients about this! They may be aware of conferences, conventions or publications sponsoring awards that you haven’t heard of. Granted, some are certainly more valuable than others, but as you attempt to grow expertise in your targeted vertical markets, a few niche awards only increases your credibility in that area. in addition to making you look good, your client will get recognition and praise as well… Win win!

So there you have it. No street pounding, cold calling or nepotism involved, though you could go there if you wanted. I’m attempting to use this time to remain upbeat, increase productivity and enhance internal work processes. These sorts of ideas, coupled with smart cost management and a competitive spirit can allow your small company to flourish, even when things can seem their darkest! What are you doing to expand your offerings, improve your sales or spin a negative into a positive? I’d love to hear it!

We have been heads down at work. We have 3 interactive exhibits set to go live this month. One at a corporate headquarters that uses Red5 for multiuser sync, motion detection and high definition video and moton graphics on 3 52″ LCDs. One that broadcasts live data streams detailing savings gained from a grey water reclimation system and overlays the infographics on high-definition video on a huge 1080p 120Hz display. The other project is a pair of kiosks set to be installed in Bermuda (no, I don’t get to go there to install ).Once we have some photos/videos of the installs, I’ll try and post them.

Beyond that, we are exiting a first round of usability testing on a great new elearning development application we are building at doctumlearning.com. We used Silverback for our testing. It’s a really really cool tool for Macs that records a screencast and a video feed from the iSight to create a record of the test. Hard to argue with video evidence, after all. The app is coming along strong, feature complete and ready to build some training. We’ve put together a great interface and the Flash based content it outputs is pretty dang nice.

Related to that, I will be attending DevLearn ‘08 next week. You can catch up with my twittering and possibly blogging from there. Tim O’Reilly is giving the keynote. Dan Roam is going to be there speaking, as is Dr. John Medina. Should be really really cool. We’ll be demoing at demofest, showing of the work we did with the International Society of Arboriculture that uses the Doctum platform. Psyched!

There is a one day Adobe elearning summit going on there, too, I’m definitely hitting that one. Are you planning on attending? Let me know! I’m interested in meeting up with other developers out there, so track me down.

If you twitter, be sure to check out the dl08 hashtag on twitter search and the devlearn08 one as well. This blog post here has a list of fellow twitterers headed to devLearn. Check it out.

Sorry for not posting more recently… I’ve been buried!

I spent the last few days in Colorado, it was beautiful! I was the best man in a wedding there (in Estes Park), you can see some photos from the trip here. CO is a nice place with fantastic scenery and super tasty microbrews. Highly recommended.

While I was there, I got to meet Juan Sanchez, designer at Effective UI, and one of the main contributors to DeGrafa. He mentioned that Scalenine’s skin contest had completed. What a great pile of entries! I can’t wait to see the library grow and serve as the premier resource for Flex Designers on the web. How cool. Even cooler, was the fact that my Coworker, Heather Ford, was one of the winners with her DiscoType Theme! Awesome.

Beyond that, my students are begnining to build some mashups and make some progress learning Flex… Some recent ones they’ve made… GeekVahalla (a tech focused RSS Reader), TweetTally (a Twitter Tag cloud search). Dropped Passes (a sports focused RSS Reader). I hope to continue to post more as they pile up.

Finally, at The Iona Group, we are hard at work on our eLearning development platform, Doctum. We’re gearing up to launch and start talking to people/demoing it at DevLearn08. If you’d like to be made aware when we launch, head on over to DoctumLearning.com to get on our list of contacts. We have a full site launching soon with features, videos etc explanining what makes it different, but for now it’s kind of in a hush hush mode. Needless to say lots of work is going on and the system is shaping up to be pretty amazing, if I do say so myself.

Ah, those pesky placement parameters and CSS attributes that make the perfect publish for a Flash movie an elusive thing. You know the deal. You want an experience site look and feel. Lots of Flash, centered on screen. You don’t want the art to get distorted. You don’t want the art scaling up and filling the window looking childish or crappy. You want the art to stay centered on screen, vertically and horizontally. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds.

We at the Iona Group recently put up a simple splash page/stealth screen/signup form at doctumlearning.com. Go check it out, and if you are interested in eLearning development, sign up, or contact me… Anyway… It’s a simple Flash movie. Smallish dimensions, and we wanted it to stay that way. So how do we put it in a webpage so it can appear to stretch and span the screen? Here you go…

Placed it on stage with a NOSCALE value for the scale parameter. Beyond that… We set the height and width to a percentage rather than an absolute pixel value. Now, set the “salign” paramter to “lt” to anchor the movie to the left and top of the browser window. After the HTML is ready, it’s time to get the CSS ready…

Here it is:

html, body{
   height:100%;
}

We set the html and body to 100%. That’s it. HTML and CSS in place, then it’s time to get the Flash ready. It may vary a little depending on the look you are going for, but here are the basics… Create your art. Animation, etc. Put all of it in one container movieclip. Mine is called “art”… Here is what the Actionscript looks like to keep it centered on the stage.

//import the needed classses
import flash.display.StageAlign;
import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
import flash.events.Event;
 
// double check and set the align paramters. just being overly safe.
stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
 
//turn off the arts visibility
art.visible = false;
 
//add the listeners for the activitation and resize of the stage.
stage.addEventListener(Event.ACTIVATE, activateHandler);
stage.addEventListener(Event.RESIZE, resizeHandler);
 
// on activate, turn on the art's visiblity and set the position in the center of the stage size.
function activateHandler(event:Event):void {
  art.x = stage.stageWidth/2;
  art.y = stage.stageHeight/2;
  art.visible = true;
}
 
// on resize, turn on the art's visiblity and set the position in the center of the stage size.
function resizeHandler(event:Event):void {
   art.x = stage.stageWidth/2;
   art.y = stage.stageHeight/2;
}

That’s it. Hope this helps you. Know any other cool tips on how to position or scale Flash content in the browser? Let me know.