The crew over at FDT asked me for an interview, and I’m excited I was able to oblige. They are a sponsor for our upcoming Flash Camp in St. Louis where I’ll be speaking during the last session of the day.

During my session I’ll be giving away a free FDT Pure license. That’s a $129 value, and all you have to do is listen to me tell some stories, play with some code…so get yourself registered and I’ll see you there!

To read the full interview, head on over to the FDT blog: http://fdt.powerflasher.com/blog/?p=2662

I’m thrilled and a little humbled to have been chosen to present this September 19-22 in DC at my favorite conference, 360|Flex. And I must have really made a good impression with my submissions because I’ve been awarded 2 sessions!

I absolutely love what I do as a freelancer and Flash Platform designer/developer, so I chose topics about which I’m extremely passionate.

How to Scale Your Freelance Business and Maximize Your Profit.

Admit it, you are running a business even if it’s just you. What’s next? Nobody likes to say no to work, but at some point you have to find a way to deliver on your abundance of commitments that doesn’t involve deploying at 4am after 56 hrs of no sleep. What can you do but work hard and longer? This session will discuss options and how to best ascertain the route you should take.

Topics we’ll (likely) touch on
Identifying profitability in your market and skill set
Qualifying opportunities
Subcontracting - interviewing and contracting
Working with and managing a virtual team
Looking outside your world for strategy and inspiration

The Invaluable Freelance Flasher

Value is a word I probably use too much, but there’s just so much more to being a freelancer than writing code and charging an hourly rate. It is our ability to recognize and appreciate those qualities in ourselves that will empower us to become invaluable to our clients. In this session we will discuss practical principles learned in the real world of freelancing that can help us excel to the next level.

Topics we’ll (likely) touch on:
What a freelancer provides
It’s NOT about the code
How to estimate
How to communicate an estimate
How to integrate and work with a team
How to invoice and get paid
How to manage time
How to talk to clients and client’s clients
Realizing your value to clients

If these topics sound interesting to you, I hope you’ll join me in DC. Register here. We are going to have an absolute blast, and all come away richer for it.

From every 360|Flex conference I’ve attended, I can point to 2 or 3 conversations and several relationships that have fundamentally impacted my life and business for the better. You can expect to meet some of the brightest developers in the world, hear from the top talent in our field, and hang out with what I feel is one of the best communities on any platform.

Notes and Links from my quick presentation last night at the St. Louis Flex and Fuse the Arch User Group meeting.

STUFF YOU CAN USE TODAY

RobotLegs Framework

• Joel Hooks, @jhooks
• Automated Dependency Injection is the new “thing” in Actionscript development
• AS3 and Flex. Emphasis on MVCS with Mediator and Command Patterns.
• http://www.robotlegs.org
• RobotLegs & Gaia preso a week later at the Vegas FUG 
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p16739385/
• In The Wild
  • http://www.dogooderchallenge.com/HandbagDesignContest/BagBuilder/
  • http://www.clubtreasureworld.com/
  • http://hbopunchzone.com/
  • http://www.robotlegs.org/community/

PushButton Engine

• Nate Beck, @jnbeck
• AS3 Game Engine created by Game Veterans
• Adobe Support
• Open Source
• Active Community (1018 registered)
• http://pushbuttonengine.com/

OSMF

• David Hassoun
• OSMF (Open Source Media Framework)
• http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/osmf/Open+Source+Media+Framework
• http://david.realeyes.com/?p=137

Flex Typography

• Matt Guest, @mguest
• Flash Text Engine and the Text Layout Framework
• Vastly improved OpenType
• Real Kerning
• Improved anti-aliasing and pixel snapping
• Baseline snapping
• Digit case and width
• Ligatures

Greenthreading

• Huyen Tue Dao, @queencodemonkey
• While you cannot access other threads in FP, you can emulate threads in code.
• http://queencodemonkey.com/2010/03/08/360flex-presentation-slides-and-code/
• http://code.google.com/p/greenthreads/

TDD with FlexUnit 4

• Elad Elrom, @eladelrom
• http://elromdesign.com/blog/2010/03/10/test-driven-development-tdd-with-flexunit-4-complete-tutorial/

UX PRINCIPLES

• Andrew Powell, @umandy
• http://www.slideshare.net/ivanhoe/andrew-powell-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-ux
• Features are dead. Focus on solutions and features will follow.

STUFF YOU COULD USE TODAY, BUT WILL BE BETTER TOMORROW.

REFLEX

• An AS3 component framework relying more on composition than inheritance
• Jacob (@jac_) and Tyler Wright (@xtyler) and Ben Stucki (@benstucki)
• http://jacwright.com
• http://www.xtyler.com/
• http://github.com/reflex/
• http://groups.google.com/group/reflex-platform
• Demo: http://www.xtyler.com/code/310#more-310
• Demos and Slides: http://jacwright.com/blog/394/reflex-demos/

iPhone and Mobile Dev

Paul Robertson’s (@probertson) Session: http://probertson.com/articles/2010/03/16/slides-and-examples-developing-iphone-apps-flash-platform/

Renaun Erickson’s (@renaun) Session on optimization for mobile: http://renaun.com/blog/2010/03/10/304/