I spent the last days of last week at MX:DU – the Macromedia Developers Conference for Australia and Pacific. It was put on and organised by Daemon – who did an awesome job.
We went to a whole load of sessions and learnt some very cool (nerdy) things. Macromedia have been working very hard recently to sort out some cool interfaces to make it easier to make rich web applications using Flash and various other programming languages.
I met a load of people that were very high up the chain in Macromedia and also a lot of very talented developers who set about using the tools to create some awesome products. There were lots of things shown off but one of the best things I saw was the Red Bull Copilot site – check it out.
Somewhat refreshingly there were moments when I really felt I didn’t belong. The amount of nerdy behaviour that exists at developer conferences is way beyond anything I have ever seen. All with laptops in tow, sitting by the wall instead of on chairs so they could tap the power sources and using video cameras to record the sessions, I even had on guy using messenger with a mate during a keynote speech. The breaks were littered with conversations on technical things I couldn’t even get a grasp on, so at points I felt a little out of place. This is a good thing I might add – as I never thought I was a true techy nerd.
The goody bag that we got for going was truly amazing though. Messenger bags stocked full of goodies – penknives, free software, key-rings, more bottle openers than you really need and the really useful mobile phone cleaner thing. This got me for ages – I hadn’t a clue what it was until a nerdy neighbour was chatting with his pal and pointed out how handy it was when attached to your phone.