The FLEXPERIENCE !!

ADOBE FLEX BOOT CAMP 2008

I was sick and tired by the regular things happening in my life. I needed a change .. I wished something unexpectedly cool to happen in my life!!

People say, “Be careful what you wish for .. Because sometimes wishes come true!“

I wished for a CHANGE and that’s exactly what I got :)

I walked into my class on Monday morning (3rd NOV) and hemanth dragged me to the last bench. He told me about some camp being organized by a company where they’ll teach us some software in one day and we’ll have to create a web application in 8 hrs. That info was too much for me .. he didn’t make sense, my mind was not working properly in the morning, I was still sleepy. And I asked him again what was it about. That’s when he said ADOBE is organizing a competition and the grand prize is 30K !!!!!!!!! Okay now that’s a lot of money and ADOBE is a super cool company !! The next question on my mind was When and where ??? he said MSRIT and I didn’t even bother to ask for the date .. I said, “Let’s goO !!”

I went online that day and registered for the event on their website http://msritflexbootcamp.eventbrite.com I like the whole concept of the “event brite” website, online registration for live events is a brilliant idea. I had to print the receipt (ticket for the event). we asked a couple of people in our class to join us and immediately Syril, Suhas, Monish were ready for the event !! we had the teams ready, Me and Hemanth, Syril and Suhas, Radhika and Monish !!

On November 7th we all met at Banashankri @ 7.00 .. Monish started cursing me .. WHY ?? Hemanth was late and since hemanth is in my team—monish said it was my team’s fault for the delay. I tried my best to stop him.. But the words just flew out of his mouth .. I bet no one can stop him from doing that!!! It’s a natural gift!!!!! Finally after 15-20 mins, hemanth reached and we left at 7.30 from BSK. We reached majestic and took another bus to Mattikere. Everyone were hungry so we decide to have our breakfast in some hotel. We found a good hotel and filled our tummy with some yummy poories :)!!!!

We still had to walk a little distance from the bus stop .. After a 5minute walk, we made it to MSRIT, The oldness of the college was definitely visible through it conventional pillars. I cud have taken the photo but the watchman was staring at us. What if he confiscates my mobile, I can’t afford to lose another mobile. The last one was the best mobile-set ever ..  Anyways, after getting inside the INFORMATION science block -- we were really surprised to see the breakfast being served there .. DAMN we just had those hard Pooris on the way. And now they were serving some nice food .. I was full and there was no way I could eat anymore. The others said the same thing but as always monish had to complain about this. He joined the line and had some more food lol !! We then went around the building-- checking out the usual, we don’t have this and we don’t have that in our college .. One of the volunteers came to us and told us to have something and they’ll start the registration procedure @ around 9.(I guess her name was Divya). We told her that we finished breakfast and thanked her for asking.

Hmmm we continued our survey, found a Chemical engineering class .. Now THIS we don’t have in our college for sure !!!!! we also found this -->The M.S.Ramaiah idol !!!!!!

We finished our little tour and came back to see a packed crowd registering their names. We found our college counter and got the registered .. they gave us a nice yellow label to stick it on us shirts, ADOBE also gave us a text pad and a pen(lol.) 

APOLOGIES for tearing the label -- I took this photo yesterday, while removing it from the shirt – I tried to remove it quickly and it got split into two halves Oops!!

We didn’t waste anymore time and went inside the auditorium and occupied the center seats. I had a clear view from the center. The blue window screen and linux penguin at the left .. very clear !!

Anyways J we waited and waited for more people to walk in and start the event .. we saw a lot of changes on stage, wires being dragged, mikes being verified, lamps being placed . we still had time .. I thought I should go back and have another coffee but just then our host for the day - Meghana came in and announced that the event is gonna start in a couple of minutes.

Ok the moment of truth, everybody settled down .. huge rush .. within a hour the room was filled with people, I turned around to see the crowd, the room was overflowing not able to handle the strength. Meghana asked all the MSRIT’ians to leave the room and sit in the next auditorium. They got up and left, now the situation settled to some extent. Almost everyone got seats. On a few had to sit on the steps, but they were late so it was their fault. Lol!! they were running out of time, they had to start the event 30 mins back, the event was delayed due to some technical glitch, well that’s what meghana said. Around 500 people were present for the event, that makes 250 teams and out of which only 100 will be selected!!!!

To start with we had a session on WEB2.0 -- “RICH INTERNET APPLICATIONS”—By Anantharaman (IISC), now that’s a perfect start for the event. I completely Loved the way he spoke and to add to that the PowerPoint presentation on the background was rich with colors, perfect blend of photos with text. He gave us some real time internet applications, the instances were very clear and I was familiar with the example that he shared, - “Googlemaps to describe the route and use flickr or Picasa for displaying the  photo of the destination.” How simpler can it get ??? he also presented the adobe version of the STOCKS called STOCKFETCHER.

He wanted to show more interact-ability of the ADOBE FLEX 3 applications, so he introduced us to Ms. Nisha who happens to be a student of Christ college. She wanted to buy a mobile fone and hate to go out and buy. She wanted to get one online. So Mr. Anantharaman suggested the flex store to buy her fone – here’s flex store for you guys — check it out – FLEXSTORE. Go to products section to experience the effects and smoothness. She also gave a demo on the insurance application of flex. This was pretty cool I must say.  I couldn’t get the link to this app. But I have this that I enjoyed the most !! visit this place and select you fav apps !!

He explained further about ADOBE AIR (integrated runtime), the vector graphics in Flex due to which it has an advantage over the Ajax. He ended his session with a quote which I made a note of he said “USE THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE RIGHT APPLICATIONS !!” with that he wrapped up his session and we were all completely impressed with the start and he was ready for the questions. The first question came from the person sitting right next to me. Guess who it was?? Well no prize for the right guesses, Hemanth shot the first question of the day and with that he started his account and I incremented my count by 1. (HEMANTH = 1 question.) since the apps were all online .. one has to download all the required resources.. and by the look of the rich content .. there must be a lot of files to download for the grand look.. he questioned about its bandwidth consumption. And the delay for each interaction?? And due to this, are there any performance de gradations ?? Valid question!! Mr. Anantharaman answered him by splitting his questions into parts and took one at time :) – all the files will be downloaded at the beginning so the user have to just get the data while interacting and these values are just small nuggets of data and hence there wont be much delay in the apps.  BRAVO sir !! UR flex is reasonably impressive !! a couple of other questions were fired from different parts of the rooms, well I was busy messaging on my mobile so I couldn’t catch the questions .. I continued my messaging and the questions went on for a while but just then Meghana interrupted me and them, “ we are really sorry for this but we have no time for anymore questions since we started late we have to reduce the time length of this session to fit our schedule, you are free to ask questions during the lunch hour……… Thank you.” That’s when I checked my watch to realize that it was still 11.00 and had loads of time for lunch and didn’t understand why she said that… just then she thanked Mr. Anantharaman and introduced ANIRUDH SASIKUMAR, Technical Evangelist, ADOBE SYSTEMS. Oh another session before lunch, I didn’t have the event list. 

Introduction to flex by ANIRUDH SASIKUMAR, Technical Evangelist, ADOBE SYSTEMS. Syril and hemanth told me that they have seen the video tutorial of him on YouTube. Now this guy was so fast that we didn’t know what just hit us and passed by, he was definitely making sense but he was on fast forward mode. He was just like a Ferrari F1 car which just travels 380 kmph. I’m not exaggerating or anything but he was seriously too fast for us. He gave an insight into the frameworks, the MXML that is used in flex and the action script. If I have an option to choose a video or a live session of him. I prefer the video tutorial instead of a live session. Atleast I can go back and replay the video multiple times till I get what he’s saying Lol.  And before we knew anything the show was over !!!!! And it was question time again, I heard a voice from my right and without a second thought I increment my count (Hemanth=4, yeah he asked 3 question to him.)

To be contd ..

VERY sleepy,

Prashanth P