Once again, I had a fabulous time at FiTC! With something like 84 presenters and usually 4 tracks going on simultaneously, there was so much to see. Congratulations to Shawn Pucknell and his team for making this a wonderful, inspiring event.

My Notes from the festival (I'm a designer so I went mostly to the creative talks):

Day 1

Margot Quan Knight gave an interesting talk on Sustaining Creativity. Margot creates surreal photographic works incorporating body parts. “My photographs use fantasy to trim away the fat of reality, to expose possibilities. I examine the body as a locus for debate on social issues and as a site for the manifestation of emotions. I create props, take photographs, and use digital manipulation to give physical form to loneliness, exuberance, and wonder.”

I picked up a few pointers from Dave Shea's presentation The Designer's CSS Toolkit (CSS in relation to HTML). Dave Shea is the creator and cultivator of the highly influential CSS Zen Garden. Presentation can be viewed here >>

Came away with a few things from the Adobe Keynote talk…
www.jaguarusa.com click on build your Jaguar

Mobile & Devices Developer Center
www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices

finance.google.com

And the Flex framework is now free! More info labs.macromedia.com/technologies/flexframework2

Adobe is working on creating a new product codenamed "Apollo" that integrates the Macromedia Flash Player with the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader. This software will provide Flash and HTML functionality and will run independent from the web browser.

Eric Natzke showed some awesome work as usual! You can check it out here interested.natzke.com

However, I was rather disappointed in Eric for his “hoe” demonstration. This app magnetized his “hoes” to the cursor where upon he shook them off and flung them against the wall. Sorry to say, I and few other women I spoke to were taken back by his inappropriate language.

Then there was Joshua Davis who showcased his BMW project Awesome work! After seeing bad boy Joshua Davis speak numerous times you come to expect his expletives but referring to the audience as “bitches” was a bit much.

Day 2

I managed to catch part of Kristin Henry's rather interesting talk on Beyond Usability: Building Meaningful Learning Applications. Was great meeting the Flash Goddess in person!
www.galaxygoo.org

Went to see Geoff Lillemon talk but I became rather bored of him talking about eating mushrooms and drinking and puking in Paris …so I quit out after about 10 minutes and went to see the Design Panel The Future of Design: Do You See What I See? Can't say I got too much out off that either.

Now Jennifer Shiman's talk was interesting Stalking the Elusive Viral Content (with Bunnies) You must check out her bunny parody of Broke Back Mountain It's hilarious!

How and What of Geoff McFetridge by Geoff McFetridge was good. I liked the way he made use of the 3 screens, the 2 side screens showed him drawing and the middle one showed his main presentation.

Day 3

I always glean a few bits of info from Kevin Airgid's presentations. This year his topic was How to Manage Creative Projects and Make More Money.

Check out his book, Web Designer's Success Guide.

He also recommended this book, Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness: How to Make Sales Forever
by Jeffrey Gitomer

For email marketing he recommends 1-2-ALL
Word press for blogging and
Snif for your client directory.

Will McGinness, Creative Director for Goodby Silverstein and Partners showed some of their work in his talk Interactive Advertising. I just loved the Got Milk? campaign, check it out www.planetinneed.com/ and www.cowabduction.com .

I dropped by the panel Freelance: Straight Dope on Working Independently but they didn't seem to be saying anything new so I skipped out to see Rich Media Entertainment presented by www.bigspaceship.com Awesome, intricate work, especially the Underworld Evolution game

Went to The Adobe Roundup: Wrangling Your Workflow - Q & A
Notes from the panel discussions are blogged here www.klooj.net/never

Stefan Sagmeister gave a most inspiring and humorous talk on Design and Happiness. Check out the Bubble Project.

It's always so overwhelming to have so many great minds and talented people in one location! One of my favourite things is meeting people in person, who I have been in contact with online, and seeing old friends and of course bumping into present friends.
I didn't make it out to any of the evening events (the kids wouldn't have liked me gone all day and all night) but everyone said they were great fun parties!

Oh, and FiTC is coming to Hollywood.

In closing, the questions I always seem to revisit since the very first FlashinTheCan are:

Why do you think there are so few women speaking at festivals / conferences and what can we do to encourage more women to become involved?

Please send me your suggestions.

review by:
Ann-Marie Cheung
Freelance Creative
www.FGNewMedia.com
founder
www.FlashGoddess.com