Lots of great sessions listed there. Looking forward to this one. I attended last year’s MAX in Chicago, since it was basically in the neighborhood. I’m going to do what I can to make it out to San Francisco for this one. I haven’t been to the West Coast at all for a couple years, so this will be a lot of fun. Some great sessions from the Adobe XD team,  Mario Klingemann, Michael Labriola, Scott Fegette, Robert Reinhardt, Mark Niemann-Ross and Kevin Goldsmith all caught my eye on initial glance, but I’m sure once it comes time to set my schedule, I will have a hard time choosing which sessions to attend. I like the fact that they seem to turning a little more focus back to the designer, and I’m sure that tools like Thermo are really contributing to that shift. It’s great to have the stuff that makes the guts work well (Actionscript 3, MXML, etc.), but if the applications and sites we produce don’t look or feel great, they will just end up as unusable software. What’s worse than that?

Are you attending MAX? What sessions are you looking forward to?

In 2002, Jeremy Allaire wrote a whitepaper that arguably spawned the RIA revolution. In that whitepaper a couple quotes stick out that are related to a lot of the conversations I have with potential clients even today. Here’s one:

Rich clients are made much more valuable when combined with logic and data
delivered from application servers and XML web services. (more…)

Just thought I would share this with the people that read this blog. Interested in working with a great group of people? Look no further.

Overview and Responsibilities:

The Iona Group, Inc., a creative communications company in Morton, Illinois, seeks a talented individual to join our interactive development team. The person we are interested in talking to should have the following: You are a multi-talented developer with a strong drive to stay up-to-date on today’s latest technologies. You care about standards and user experience. You thrive in deadline-driven environments and are capable of monitoring your own progress. You can interact with clients not only to understand their needs and respond, but also train and teach. You write and speak succinctly. You can design and communicate with designers, and you can sling code. You are versatile and not tied to one development language or paradigm. You can adapt your knowledge and expertise to fit a client’s unique needs. You want to learn, about the latest and greatest in technology but also about working with clients.

Desired Skills:

PHP 5 / MySQL (OOP development or CakePHP a plus)
ASP.NET a plus
Standards-based XHTML/CSS
Javascript + AJAX (familiarity with jQuery and Prototype libraries a plus)
Adobe Flash AS2, AS3
Adobe Flex a big plus
CMS Design + Implementation (Drupal 5/6 a plus, Ektron CMS400.net a plus)
Information Design + Architecture
Usability and Interactive Design
Asset Preparation (from Photoshop, Illustrator, etc)
Desktop Flash platform deployment (MDM Zinc, AIR) a plus
Writing - Creating documentation and training materials for projects

About Us:

We are a small close-knit team of designers, developers, and videographers who create engaging websites, interactive museum and tradeshow installations, videos, and interactive applications/RIAs for clients throughout the Midwest. We work for clients like Columbia College, the Museum of Science and Industry, Shedd Aquarium, Pioneer Hi-bred, and Caterpillar. We’re located 10 miles from Peoria in the heart of Illinois — nearly equidistant from Chicago and St. Louis. Our production staff works predominantly on Mac — though we’re a hybrid shop and you can work on whatever you prefer. We care a lot about creating amazing pieces for our clients, providing an amazing work environment for our coworkers, and giving back to our community, both locally and globally.

If this sounds interesting to you, contact me. This is a full time, on site position, so you must relocate to the area.

Ok, so I have been shooting any masterpieces. It’s just the wildlife I happen to share my house with, two wild animals named Sophia and Liam. I borrowed a Sony HDR-SR1 from a friend and coworker and have been having a blast with it. I have a camera. It is an 8 year old Sony Digital 8 I bought to use with my Graphite iMac DV SE. Had some fun with that too… Just got tired of the tapes, remembering which were used, losing them, wearing them out, accidentally shooting over top of them, etc. What a pain! Shooting to a hard drive is a lot more freeing. No rewind to review, cue, etc.  Digitization is a snap , too… And with my TimeCapsule (Which is awesome), I have no worries for hard drive storage space, yet. I may need to pick me up one of these! Brett, sell me this one!

I’m sure I’ll get back to posting some stuff about some of the bigger projects we have going on soon, but for now, they are still in the planning stages and can’t really be divulged. One is a video postcard app powered with a Flex frontend using Flash Media Server, the other is a 3 screen synced 1080p interactive installation, and we are also discussing a couple presentation system content management RIAs as well, for a couple different clients. Could be some great stuff coming up. On top of that, we are just days/weeks away from relaunching our companies website. What a busy summer.

Thought we’d have some time for play, but no rest for the wicked.

Mitch Anderson and Brian McMurray were both students of mine at Bradley University, and later, they became coworkers of mine at The Iona Group. Both were obviously talented when they came onboard, with their talents only growing by leaps and bounds while they produced stellar work for us at Iona.

Alas, things were not meant to last. Mitch is leaving for L.A. with sights set on the mograph, vfx pantheon. He’ll do well. His aesthetic is top notch and he is driven. Brian is leaving Iona to work at MIT in the Mobile Experience Laboratory. He’ll be tying together Drupal, Flash and SMS to produce some wicked cool stuff. (Note the use of wicked there, Brian. Get used to it.) He is always willing to try something wild and new, so he’ll fit in well in the air of experimentation that I’m sure is so appealing to him at his new venture.

I couldn’t be happier for these guys. Of course it’s tough to see two friends go. It’s tough to see two collaborators leave. But, I know it’s for the best of both of these great guys’ careers to try and shoot for the stars this early in. Really, I’m even maybe a little jealous of the opportunities, these wide open futures, but I wouldn’t dream of letting on. Hopefully one of ‘em will hire me when I’m old and doddering.

Seriously, though, I wish them both the best.

I hope to have a longer post complete with notes in a day or two from my day at the Chicago Seed Conference (they are in a Fields Notes Brand notepad, given away at the conference right now.)… but for now, you can check out the site or the presenters sites: Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, James Coudal. A long time fan of the Coudal and Segura, I wasn’t so sure of Jason Fried prior to coming to the event, and I am still not sure my views have changed… he may be a bit too “agile” for my tastes, but I may have turned on that, too… More on that coming soon. Nonetheless, a great day and very worth it.

At The Iona Group we were recently approached by the International Mission Board to assist them in creating a Presentation Viewer application to help distribute their message in a flexible fashion. We worked with them produce a Flex developed RIA delivered online in webpage, through a downloadable EXE (compiled with Zinc), and via AIR. The results are simply amazing. The app itself is pretty light. The assets they have are just great and the client was a delight to work with. Not often do you have a project go that smoothly. The main developer here on the project, Mark, really executed the client’s vision expertly. Furthermore, the client’s other vendor, SiteVision, was great to work with as well as they created the server side architecture to deliver the app.

The tool is capable of doing Ken Burn effects, dissolves, fades and lots of wipes, etc…  It palys video, timed audio slide shows, cue point triggered transitions. It can display Jpgs, SWFs (including Flash Paper), FLVs and h.264 content. It is able to do fullscreen presentations and the dimensions of the app are also configurable via parameters in the management tool (which we did not create).

I encourage you to go check out the site… a cool tool and a great message.

We have a video wall project we are conceiving right now that involves 32 40″ plus sized HD Displays… we are trying to build a sound reactive real time system that samples from webcams and integrates with some motion graphics effects. This is a conundrum for us. Usually we use Flash for pretty much everything, but this may be out of Flash’s capabilities. We conceived with Flash this would require a Flash media/data server, and 32 Mac minis. In this scenario, we are looking at nearly 60-70K in hardware costs alone, never mind the design and development efforts.

If we were to move to VVVV or Processing or something else… what is realistically the hardware configuration needed to take real time video, add motion graphics and type, have it be reactive to a sound track and allow interplay from one screen to another (some images or videos may need to move from one screen to another)… All at 720P resolution.

Do we need 32 computers? Do we need a server? What kind of cameras should be used?

Moving to a node based authoring system from ActionScript 3 is daunting, but we don’t want to over extend our selves on Flash, obviously.

Any advice out there from Flash devs doing large scale shows? Alternative authoring tools are certainly up for grabs at this point…

Just got a note from Adobe on this…. In addition to Thermo lowering the bar for Flex development, it looks as though Adobe has a tool coming out to compete with Swish, etc… Very cool!

Adobe Bordeaux is the codename for a new product for graphic designers, art directors, creative directors, and others who don’t need all the capabilities of Flash Professional and want to create flash content easily without knowing ActionScript or programming.

Bordeaux enables graphic designers to efficiently create site openers, rich media banners, microsites, portfolios, and other small-scale Flash projects. Art Directors and Creative Directors can use Bordeaux to add interactivitym motion, and video to Photoshop comps or InDesign layouts to create interactive moodboards and concepts, making it possible to communicate ideas more efectively to clients and design teams.

• Easily create buttons, menus, slideshows, video controllers and other interactive components
• Customise the look and behavior of interactive components included with Bordeaux
• Visually convert artwork to interactive elements without coding
• Trigger actions and events from markers you add to your video and audio
• Create multi-page microsites as easily as dragging and dropping
• Make objects and text move, spin, resize, reveal, slide, bounce, fade, and more without using keyframes or code
• Easily control how motion responds to mouse events
• Import, trim, and encode video files into FLV
• Add audio and trim and adjust levels
• Import native Photoshop files as layers
• Import InDesign files with pages and objects preserved as individual elements
• Output efficient SWF or Adobe AIR files

This sounds great to me. I have had a post or two on the topic of Flash’s learning curve being a bit high for the newbie. As an educator, I really like this. As a developer who has to get Flash .fla files with prepped art from designers who aren’t too AS savvy, I really like this… absolutely perfect. Hope it’s not too expensive.

A shameless plug for the University I teach at… Are you an experienced teacher who loves to do creative things with multimedia? We want you to join our team of professional educators within the Bradley University Multimedia Program.

The Bradley University Multimedia Program is currently seeking technologically sophisticated candidates with a strong research agenda for a full-time tenure track Assistant Professor in Multimedia. For more specific information, or to apply, please go here.

Our program is fun, blanced and a great place to do some fantastic research…. if you are interested in making a difference and getting to pursue your passions, you really should check out the position. I thoroughly enjoy teaching there. We’re in the process of relaunching the program’s site, too… check it out here.