HIDIHO!

giving something back to the Flash community

a workshop

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workshop

I’ll have the pleasure ( and the privilege ) to lead a workshop on january the 12th 2012 in Paris. here’s some thoughts about the whole thing.

first off, some background info.

the organizer, Nicolas Gans ( @nicolasgans ) is a very skilled Flasher & Flash trainer, he’s been doing this for years and followed all the Flash platform evolutions for almost a decade. in a word, he knows his stuff.

the training center he works for ( regart.net ) have been organizing one of the most notorious french festivals about Flash and the web technologies. I had a chance to attend the last edition and was very sad to learn it would be the last. what should be remembered is that they have the skills and the will to organize events which requires an incredible amount of energy, time and commitment and they do it for free, for the sake of getting people together. was it only for this, they deserve our full respect.

why giving a workshop?

Nicolas came to me with the idea of a series of monthly “sessions” for “advanced” users on “specific topics”. he wants to create a one day event to gather people around a topic, give them the opportunity to learn, talk and exchange about that given topic. I was very excited (and very flattered too), not only because he thought I would do the job but mostly because he was willing to DO something to get people together aka preserve what is left of the community.

which leads me to a more general concern: the Flash community.

needless speak about the gradual dislocation of the Flash community, every flasher experiences it and worries more or less about his/her future. many skilled people flee or explore other “technologies” (WEBGL & JS mostly).
for me, last year was a year of study, I started learning Processing, Android and OPENGL ES, leaving Flash alone for a while (apart for the paid work). It was really interesting ; it’s always good to learn. besides, Adobe did an impressive job to demotivate anybody willing to use their platform, spreading confusion, splitting the community even more, cutting branches, killing the Alchemy hackings a.s.o.

so what’s the point of giving a workshop on a dying platform?

more than 10 years ago, when I started coding graphic stuff, there was a spirit around Flash. there were already noobies, rock stars and people in between. the difference is that all of them were sharing most of what they were doing. strangely enough – and that’s more of a philosophical view – giving something away won’t make you poorer, it’s even the contrary. that’s why I belieive in Open Source projects, that’s why I try to support them ( with money or by using them and spreading the word ).

whatever occupyFlash may say, Flash is plebeian ; it is for proles. unlike other languages and thanks to that spirit, anyone could learn, from art directors, animators to technically well endowed people, anyone could make a mouse trailer and impress their friends and family.

this spirit of exchange led to a better internet by helping people create more clever and better optimized animations. unfortunately, the spirit is dying, not the platform and this workshop (as well as this blog) is a modest attempt to keep it alive.

what is so special about that workshop then?

with Nicolas Gans, we didn’t want it to be a regular workshop, there will be a backbone[FR] of course, things to learn, it will be focused on geometry in 3D, I’ll share the sources here soon. the picture at the top is a snapshot of most of the samples we’ll study bigger version here.
the model I use is a courtesy of Raphaël Kuntz

mostly we would like to focus on the exchanges, feedbacks and everything that happens around the topic, in the room, with the people ; that’s the most important ( + sharing a nice restaurant in between and some beers afterwards ^^ ).

thanks to twitter and a newsletter, we found quality attendees.
here’s a list of some of them:

actually Philippe Elsass will lead the next workshop on february the 9th about Haxe NME.

we’ll also have the pleasure to welcome 2 guest stars ( and I stress the word ), that will travel half Europe to attend. bless them both, especially the one that doesn’t speak french : all my respect.

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