So a bunch of people have been posting the results of the surveys from their 360|Flex sessions. I’ve wavered on this a tiny bit, I’m just a little embarrassed, both because of the positive feedback (*blushes*), but also because I offended some people in the session. So off the bat I want to say to anyone who was actually offended by anything said in my session: I’m sorry. I gave the session the way I talk in normal life, and in normal life I guess I have a dirty mouth.

Here are the full survey results from my session.
If you weren’t at 360Flex, check out the stuff I presented.

The good stuff
Overall the comments were very positive. There were 45 responses, with an overall average rating of 4.5 (which I’m hoping is out of 5, not 10 :P). 80% of people said that the session was what they expected, 80% said the slides were useful and 80% said the session was informative. So here are some of the positive responses (aww, shucks…).

The speaker had a good outline and followed it well, while also allowing community/group input.

Doug was AWESOME and funny. Loved it!

In typical fashion, Doug had a great presentation with a lot of good information. Doug is an inspiration to the whole community.

Doug brought to light components that we all can make use of in our apps – and some that are just fun. Very helpful.

The bad(ish) stuff
These are the only negative comments I received. The first one is about the discussion near the end feeling unorganized. I understand that sentiment, I felt rushed near the end when I was running out of time a bit. I love having good discussions with the audience, but I probably should have left more time devoted to that, and maybe even planned for that in my outline to make sure I had plenty of time to wrap up in a more organized way. The other three comments here are about my language. The last one’s not really that negative a comment, but the middle two sound like the writers were fairly offended.

The presentation could have been a bit more structured, as it felt like the discussion veered away from original intentions near the end of the presentation.

It caught me off guard how much the speaker cursed.

I don’t know what to say. It’s probably not a good idea to try to see how the sign language interpreters do cursed signs. That would make the deaf person uncomfortable.

This session was great for information and mentality about developing in the flex world. Doug is a little 🙂 unprofessional as a developer it doesn’t bother me that much and I would definitely hear him present again because I respect his knowledge and talents but the language is a little distracting.

The funny comments
And then a lot of the comments were pretty funny. I’ve cherry picked a few choice ones here for your amusement.

I appreciate his frank, unexcessively vulgar language

jiggly moving fun

Always a great time. Never seen so many curse words done in sign, damn funny.

Fucking-A

Okay, I am just chiming in that I really wanted to go to Doug McCune’s seminar but knowing that I lack experience with OOP and want to develop that further I went to that one instead. Can’t we put Doug McCune against sucky, uninteresting topics instead. *lol*

It’s “fucking” Doug McCune

The language issue
So let’s get this out in the open: I say fuck and shit a lot. Sometimes this comes through on my blog, but even more so when I actually speak. Given the session feedback I think a lot of people find my use of language refreshing and funny (what am I? a clown?). I like to think my presentations are informal, we all just get to hang out and talk about cool stuff, so since it’s just like chilling with friends I don’t censor my language. A lot of the comments in the feedback referenced my use of language in a positive way and said how “fun” and “hilarious” the session was. I like to think we had a good time and it wasn’t dry or boring.

That said, there were obviously a few people at least who were offended and uncomfortable. So in the future I may tone it down a bit, I certainly don’t want people walking out of my presentations upset. I’m sincere when I say I apologize if you were offended.

Maybe next time I’ll start by showing a clip of Goodfellas or Casino at the beginning, then whatever I say will be tame in comparison. Or maybe I should wear one of these on my chest:

At my next session I’ll be checking IDs at the door. If you’re under 17 you have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

So thanks to everyone who came to my session! And super double thanks to the 45 of you who gave feedback, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (well, most of it anyway).

P.S. To Andrew: yeah, your comment got to me 🙂 Sorry I posted the survey results with your name still in there, if you got a problem with that send me an email (or better yet send Tom and John and email).

360|Flex wrapped up on Wednesday and I wanted to do a quick writeup of my overall thoughts about the conference. First off, I think this was the best Flex conference ever put on. That’s a bold statement because I haven’t been to some of the other Flex conferences, but I’m fairly confident it’s true. I’ve attended the previous two 360|Flex events and each time the conference just gets better and better.

The speakers are getting damn good
The Flex speaker roster has matured a bit, this conference marked the third 360 event that some of the speakers have done (this was only my second conference as a speaker). I think you can see very visible improvement in both the content and presentation skills of the speakers. There were two sessions I’m kicking myself for missing: Jun Heider’s presentation about memory management, and Michael Labriola’s presentation on what happens during the first few milliseconds of your application startup. Both speakers have posted their slides and material. Hearing the buzz around the conference, it sounded like those two presentations were two of the absolute highlights.

Here’s my theory on why those presentations were so good:

1. The speakers are maturing in terms of Flex expertise and speaking skills. Both Michael and Jun spoke at previous events (previous 360|Flex and also MAX). It takes a while for speakers to find their groove, and I think with a lot of the Flex speaker roster we’re seeing that people are now at the point where they are confident, badass speakers.
2. The content is crazy technical and the audience is ready. Previous Flex conferences have been dumbed down in terms of the advanced sessions. 360|Flex Seattle was more technical than the first one in San Jose, but it still didn’t meet the needs of the advanced Flex users out there. This was a tough line to walk, though, because if you did an uber-technical preso you probably would have had about 10 people in the room and only 5 would have understood what you were saying. Jun and Michael’s sessions were way more technical than anything presented at previous 360 conferences. And the audience was able to get it. That says a lot in terms of how much better everyone is getting. I think both of those sessions would have probably bombed at the first 360|Flex back a year ago (god, was that really only a year ago?).

Reflection on my sessions

(Photo by John Mason)

I had a really good time presenting at this conference. I apologize if I offended any of the sign language translators 🙂 (if you weren’t there let’s just say I had fun getting them to translate certain phrases). My main presentation was on using open source community projects and I’ve posted all the slides and sample code. I thought this session was fun, although I think I crammed a lot of stuff into the 80 minutes and didn’t have as much time as I would have liked for the kind of organic discussion that I find so fun. When I originally told Tom and John the idea for my session they suggested doing an all-day hand-on session on the topic. If I wasn’t so lazy I actually think this would be a really good all-day type of thing. Maybe in the future we can get enough speakers to tag team it, so nobody has to spend the whole day presenting.

The second session that I did, which was unplanned, was a session on building your personal brand. Juan Sanchez and I teamed up for this session and talked about our different approaches on branding and marketing yourself. This session was in place of Jesse Warden’s originally planned session that was on a similar topic (although Jesse planned on covering a lot more content about the business side of things). BTW, if you attended 360, Jesse’s original presentation PDF is on the USB stick, check it out in all of its 215-slide glory. As for me, I had about 8 slides I whipped up 20 minutes before the presentation. This session was a pretty awesome discussion, most of the people in the room contributed and talked about their experiences. Jeff Houser was there and talked about brand building from the perspective of a business-owner (ie not a crazy egocentric nutjob developer like myself). I think the topic of branding is hugely important, and I’d like to see this kind of content presented much more at these kinds of conferences.

I want videos again
This year the presentations at 360 weren’t recorded, and I’m really wishing they were so I could watch Jun’s, Michael’s, and a bunch of other sessions. Last year I didn’t watch the videos of anyone else’s sessions, primarily because the technical level of the content wasn’t quite there. Now I’m pissed because I know there’s some seriously good information in these presentations that I missed (and reading through the slides isn’t nearly the same). I vote for recording this stuff again, even if next time that means we each do it ghetto style and and just stick a crappy camera in the corner of the room.

I love you guys
This is the best developer community. I heard over and over again during the conference about how nice everyone is. There are no asshole prima donna speakers, everyone is approachable and friendly. That goes for the speakers, everyone from Adobe, and all the attendees. Everyone’s just authentically nice. The Flex community is going to grow dramatically over the next few years. Let’s try to keep this awesome small-community vibe that we got going on. This community vibe is why I love presenting at 360|Flex (and the main reason I don’t present at other larger conferences).

Thanks Tom and John! You guys rock.

(photo by Terry May)