This was, for me, the best Flash on the Beach ever. And since Flash on the Beach is the best conference, that makes this the best conference ever. Highlights include

• Joa Ebert blew everyone’s mind with his decompiler/compiler/optimiser/uml generator/image compressor toolkit, followed by "just another thing" – compiling C# source to a swf, followed by "and another thing" – compiling Java source to a swf. I like to think I’m pretty clever. Joa is a genius. He received a well deserved standing ovation.
• Mario Klingemann, Hugh Elliot and Joshua Davis made the last day an extravaganza of knowledge and delight. They each hosted very informative, though provoking sessions that presented information and ideas expertly interwoven with stories of their own lives. It was a riveting experience. It would be too cruel to pick a single favourite out of the three.
• I enjoyed my own session and it went very well. With a full house and heaps of positive feedback it seems to have been useful to a lot of people. To all those who told me how great it was, thank you. The slides are online here.

• Meeting up with old friends, and acquiring new ones. The Flash world is full of lovely people and FOTB is the place to catch up with the best of them. I made some great new friends this year. It’s sad to wait so long before we meet again.
• John Davey, the real star of the show, exhausted and happy at the end of the event. For most of us, it’s a brilliant few days. For John it’s the culmination of months of planning. Every year he puts his heart into FOTB and every year we love him for it. Thank you John.

This year was my second Flash on the Beach as a speaker, and my fourth overall – yes, I’ve been to every one. And whether or not John asks me to speak again next year, I’ll be there. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

A few people have asked for the slides, so here they are.

Previous years, at this and other conferences, I’ve spoken about game development, or about Flint. This year will be different. In the past 16 months I’ve done very little game development. I have, however, done a lot of development and consultancy on rich internet applications and Flex. In that time I’ve used most of the major (and some minor) application frameworks, and I’ve done experiments and tests with some of the others. So at FOTB this year I’ll be talking about application frameworks. I’ll compare Cairngorm, PureMVC, Mate and Swiz, and perhaps one or two others. I’ll discuss their similarities and differences, what I like and dislike about each, and what matters when choosing which to use in a project.

Last year my session had a full-house and I’m hoping this years session will be as popular and useful. See you in Brighton.

The slides from my session are now online here.

Meanwhile, roll on September and Flash on the Beach Brighton.

Being a speaker myself added an extra excitement to this year’s conference. My presentation seemed to go very well – a number of people had to be turned away because the hall was full (I hope you all enjoyed whichever speaker you visited instead), and the audience were very enthusiastic about Flint. I lost count of how many people came up to me during the rest of the conference to say how much they enjoyed my talk. Thank you all.

Being a speaker also meant I got to socialise with the other speakers – I don’t know many of these stars of the Flash world so it was great to have a beer and chat with them.

So, thank you everyone for making this my most enjoyable Flash on the Beach yet, and thank you to John et al for organising such a great event. I hope you’ll have me back as a speaker next year, and if you need speakers for Miami, I’d love to come .

Photo by Robin Kollau

The slides from my session are available here.