Game On!

September 23, 2008—San Francisco,CA—The 2008Flashforward Conference and Film Festival opened and closed with speakers usingmusic to illustrate, illuminate, and inspire this community of Flash designersand developers.The annualconference, the longest-running and largest gathering of the Flash community,opened with an inspiring outsider, Miha Pogacnik, illustrating career arcs usingthe process of learning and performing a musical piece. Pogacnik set the tonefor the conference—inspiring, opening boundaries, and interacting with industryleaders, who set the boundaries, and then breaking and expanding thoseboundaries. The three-day event closed with an industry Tech Slam culminating ina live performance by Matt Maxwell. Maxwell performed “ActionScript LongPreloader Song” a musical number with an iPhone as backup to an encore-demandingcrowd, closing the conference with a community-insider’s humor. (Both songsperformed by Maxwell can be viewed on YouTube.)

Pogacnik’s presentation andperformance used music to trace the human journey. While playing a violinPogacnik deconstructed the music helping the audience to understand theperformance journey. The result—how to ask where am I in the journey, where isit taking me, and where do I wish to go? The key lesson? Individuals need toanalyze their work, path, and journey as part of an ongoing process. Accordingto Pogacnik, doing so allows individuals to learn about themselves, track theirprogress, and plan their path preventing burnout and opening their minds to newideas.
Creative highlightsfrom the conference included Erik Natzke’s presentation of his commercial andpersonal work. Natzke considered one of the top Flash design and developers bythe Flash community was dubbed a “Flash Artist” by the audience. An additionalhighlight, unknown to most attendees, included the background content running onthe main stage. All of the big screen applications used to run the main stage,and viewed daily by the audience, including the Applause-O-Meter createdspecifically for Flashforward, were Flash-drivenapplications.
This year’s conference included alarger-than-normal number of first-time Flashforward attendees, reflecting thefresh new designers and developers joining the industry to fill the large numberof open positions. An increase in both global conference attendees and globalsubmissions for the Flashforward Film Festival also reflected the growth of theindustry and of the new global nature of the community.

Planning for Flashforward2009 isin progress. Announcements for location and themes for the next event areexpected in early 2009.