Randy Troppmann

It was Ted Patrick‘s fault. He dared to come to Edmonton in January and I was so impressed with his presentation at EFUG that I registered for the first 360Flex conference which was being held at EBay HQ in SJ. Never been there before. Didn’t know anyone there. Friend and fellow Edmontonian Grant Skinner was going (and presenting) and that gave me confidence that at least I would know someone there (as it turned out, he was quite busy with the Adobe peeps and I didn’t see him much).

Leading up to the conference the buzz on the 360Flex website was to sign up on Twitter. I signed up under the name of “brando”. Remember, this is February 2007. NO ONE knew what Twitter was. Seemed like a useless service to me but it gave me a bunch of new Flex-knowing friends and maybe it would help me connect with some people when I got there. Through twitter I met PolyGeek and told him I was going to hunt him down and say hi.

On the flight to San Jose I met another Edmontonian who was going to the conference: Victor Rubba. Great guy. Now I have another friend to hang out with at the conference.

The morning of the first day I walked from my hotel to EBay and in the main entrance and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Thousands of miles from home, feeling like I was not in Kansas anymore, a guy was standing there with an Edmonton Oilers jersey on. (turns out he was from Calgary, which is ironic to the extreme). I met Tom and John for the first time and they offered me Chocolate cake that Tom’s wife made (nice!). They asked me what my Twitter sig was. They said in unison “Ah, Brando”. While waiting for the keynote I was chatting with some guy who looked really familiar to me. I asked him where he was from and he said San Diego. I shrugged and walked away. Sorry, Josh Tynjala, I was out of touch.

After the first session I was getting Danny Patterson to sign his book on Design Patterns for me when I looked up and saw two smiling faces in front of me. Zach Graves and Aaron King were developers on the Y! Maps team. Because RunningMap.com makes good use of Yahoo! Maps, I was pretty active in the maps online group. I had told them I was coming to the event. They found me first. Now I knew I had someone to hang with. GREAT GUYS. Aaron even gave me his staff issued Y! backpack (at Max 2008 Allen Rabinovich asked me where I got it because they are exclusive to Y! employees).

The food was amazing considering what I paid for the event ($150). I phoned my wife while sitting on the green grass by the ponds of coy and she was extremely jealous. Back home it was -15C˚ with snow up your waist. While chatting with Grant and some other guys I did a double take. “Phillip Kerman?” His was the first Actionscript book I have ever read. Chris Cantrell. Can’t miss Mike Chambers. Victor introduced me to Peter McKiernan who showed up on day two with the same shirt as me. LOL. I did in fact find Dan “PolyGeek” Florio and introduce myself. I didn’t chat with him long because I had to run and pee. Er. RunPee.com.

The presentations were amazing. Ely Greenfield’s was my favourite. Deepa Subramaniam. Mike Chambers. They were all great. I went to a presentation on ANT and the speaker, Joe Berkovitz, asked the audience if they were not using version control. I raised my hand then looked behind me. I was the only one with my hand up. Heh. Still don’t. Just kidding. Maybe not.

Ok, this post has gone on too long already and I think you got the point. Sign up for 360|Flex, San Jose, you will meet a ton of people and have your head filled up until it explodes. It’s the best Flex conference out there so sign up!