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The FITC Toronto event in Canada concluded last week after a packed 3 days of presentations, panel discussions and some serious partying! Back in the beginning of April, FlashDen gave away two tickets to FITC to two lucky winners, FlashDen members pablokreative and morellothegreat. pablokreative kindly answered a few follow-up questions we sent to find out more about the event, so in his own words, here’s Pablo’s first-hand review of the FITC event.

Did you enjoy the conference?

I had an awesome time at FITC. The whole conference was buzzing with flash developers as well as many people from the design industry. It was a huge networking opportunity with everyone willing to talk to you. The conference really got me excited about flash. I came out of Lee Brimelow’s, Bytearrays For Beginners presentation, wanting to go home and program. The conference almost seems like a blur. The whole conference is so fast paced and full-on it’s hard to find time to breathe! It was pretty much 9 a.m. - 1 a.m. the next day. Everyday. I told myself to take in as much as I can and then catch up with sleep the following week!

How well organized was the event?

The conference was very well organized. Not only were all the speakers awesome but they all attended the evening parties. It gave you an opportunity to go out and chat to some of the flash rock stars out there. At the Influx party on Sunday night I sat down and played poker against, Mario Klingemann (Quasimondo), Jim Corbett (Flash Player Developer) and Shawn Pucknell, the organiser of FITC. I managed to take $60 away from the table. It is refreshing to see how friendly the Flash community is all over the world and how willing everyone is to take the time to talk to you.

Was there anything you didn’t like about the conference?

I think the only thing that kind of sucked about the conference is that you often found yourself trying to decide which speaker to see. That said, we were told that all the videos of the speakers were going to be posted online which will be great for everyone who wanted to go but missed out. It’s definitely not the same as being there but I’m glad that I will be able to see some of the stuff I missed out on.

I think the most disappointing presentation was probably the Adobe Keynote. It felt like they didn’t show or announce anything new that we don’t already know about. I guess with the Internet now we get to see everything as soon as it’s announced and things fly past us very quickly.

What did you learn?

Some things that I learned at the conference were: The flash community is awesome and I really want to go to more conferences like this. Every speaker at FITC is using AS3, so everyone should get off their butts and learn it already! Networking is the key to getting your name out there and last but not least, Toronto is a BIG city.

What appeared to be the most popular Flash-related topic of conversation?

It’s hard to say what the most popular topic of conversation was. Everyday you would come away excited and talking about what we saw. Some things that really seemed to stand out were: Joshua Davis on “Space” - turned out to be very funny and fasted paced. “Cool Japanese Flash” was pretty nuts to see what they are doing, MK12’s presentation on the Quantum of Solace title sequence seemed to be a very hot topic (although not Flash), and probably the most inspirational to me was The Cool Sh*t Hour which showed off work from all the Flash rock stars.

What was your favorite presentation?

My favorite presentation probably was Lee Brimelow’s, Bytearrays For Beginners. It was all about low level programming using bytes and how it can optimize your Flash applications. Not only can you optimize with byte arrays but it also gives you the ability to import any file into Flash. All you need to do is know a bit about byte arrays and also look at the file types description of how the bytes are structured. With one of his examples he showed us how to import PSD’s into flash. In another example he showed us how to encrypt messages into bitmaps and audio files. It really opened up the possibilities of Flash in my mind.

Did you meet anyone from FlashDen at FITC?

While at FITC I did not meet any other FlashDen authors and I think that these conferences would be a great meeting spot for it. It would be awesome to meet and see other FlashDen authors here and be able to bounce ideas off each other.

Many thanks again to pablokreative for answering our questions, and congratulations also to morellothegreat for winning the other ticket in our FITC competition. Oh, and if you were wondering who won the FITC Flash Awards, here they are!

Best In Show
GE Augmented Reality

Best Experimental Flash
GE Augmented Reality

Best Flash Visual Design
GE Smartgrid

3D Flash
NVIDIA Speak Visual

Audio in Flash
Happy in Greenville

Flash Advertisement
Wario Land Shake It!

Flash Animation
White Gold

Flash Game
James Bond: Quantum of Solace Multiplayer Game

Flash Motion Graphics
40|30, The Gherkin, 30 St. Mary Axe

Flash Narrative
Secret Location - Portfolio Site

Flash Self-Promotion
Thank You Begins With a T

Flash Usability
Michener Interactive Patient Record

Technical Excellence in Flash
Noteflight