Richard Willis

On Thursday 27th of November - two days ago - a handful of other FlashBrighton members and I were at the DiMAs awards in Hove’s All Saints Church. In a previous blogpost I said, amongst other things, that FlashBrighton was a shoe-in for the “Strongest Community” award at the DiMAs. I really felt that it was a done-deal, not because of any weakness on the part of the opposition, but because of all the great things we’ve achieved.

And I was right, WE WON !!! It’s fantastic but I’m not going to say too much about it because Matt Pearson’s has already a great job of that here. Instead let me say this:

I was REALLY, REALLY pleased to see Matt Pearson pick the ‘Best Blog’ award for his zenbullets blog. I really admire good writing and zenbullets certainly has that. The delivery and content are excellent, and his documentation of the victimisation Sussex Police have only-just ceased to put him through is just captivating. For these reasons I also felt that Matt would be a shoe-in in his category, and was pleased to see that I was right again.

Obviously I had a hand in the FlashBrighton award but what might not be so obvious is that I also had a hand in a second award. Blast Theory were nominated in the “Digital Collaberation” category. Now, I thought that it was Blast Theory as a whole that was nominated but it turned out that it was specifically their ‘Rider Spoke’ project. In the words of Blast Theory, ‘Rider Spoke is a work for cyclists combining theatre with game play and state of the art technology’. Part of the work was a Flash front-end for a console cyclists had attached to the handlebars of their bikes (you can see some images of that in action here). Twas I wot made that Flash front-end.

And ‘Rider Spoke’ won too !!! So as Flash coder and copywriter, I came away from the night feeling like I had an important hand in not-one-but-two awards! I also came away from the night feeling quite drunk.

Finally, I would like to mention that Brightonian Flash agencies LittleLoud & Kerb, freelancer Sarah Bird and my former employer DigitalBrain were also nominated in other categories but sadly failed to pick up awards. FlashBrighton members were nominated in so many categories that it was inevitable that some of us weren’t going to get our just desserts. And anyway, LittleLoud are up for a BAFTA this weekend, so things aren’t really too bad for them. Maybe next year guys?

The shortlist for the ‘Digital Media Awards‘ - or ‘DIMAs’, formerly the ‘Brighton Web Awards’ - has just been announced and FlashBrighton members feature throughout. Matt Pearson for his excellent zenbullets blog in the ‘Best Blog’ catagory, Iestyn Lloyd (of LittleLoud) for ‘Best Use of Animation’ & ‘Outstanding Digital Design’, Alistair Macdonald (of Kerb) for ‘Best Use of Animation’ & ‘Digital Marketing’, Sarah Bird for ‘Farm Freelancer of the Year’, and FlashBrighton itself for ‘Strongest Community’. Judging by the sheer amount of FlashBrightonians listed, we must be a shoe-in for the latter award. Is that tempting fate, should I keep quiet? Nonsense, fate be damned; we’re on the list through merit alone! Or, should I say, we’re on the list because of all the awesome copywriting I’ve done for us this past year!

It’s unseemly to pimp yourself, right; very un-British? The truth is that I don’t care; I think I do a damn good job with the copy and obviously the judges think so too. But… ok, sure, I guess I have to admit that there are other things that make FlashBrighton great too:

1. That we manage to put on a presentation every single week;
2. That our membership are committed and interested enough to actually make a presentation every 7 days a viable option;
3. That as well as literally hundreds of enthusiasts, professionals and students, our membership also includes such luminaries as Niqui Merret, Tom Kennett & Chris Sperry, Iestyn Lloyd, Aral Balkan and of course Seb Lee-Delisle himself;
4. That we get the best speakers to talk: Richard Lord, Nick Weldin, Bob Swain, Kyle Jennings, Peter Passaro, Serge Jespers, Nick Tandavanitj, plus loads & loads more;
5. That, to paraphrase FB member Neil Manuell, we go from ‘the esoteric to the nerdy‘ with enviable ease;
6. That we put on awesome large events like our ‘Film Carnivals O Fun‘ and the ‘Big Day Out‘;
7. That we give away acres and acres of great blag, such as the free boxed copy of ‘FlexBuilder2′ every attendee at the ‘Big Day Out’ picked up;
8. And that we do it ALL for free, just because we want to;

When you look at it like that, maybe it’s no wonder that we made the shortlist. Here’s wishing LittleLoud, Kerb, Matt Pearson, Sarah Bird and FlashBrighton the best of luck on the 27th of November. I’m also backing the other clients I’ve worked with over the past few years too: my friends Matt, Ju & Nick at Blast Theory and my old employer DigitalBrain, who’s ‘DB Primary‘ portal is nominated in the ‘Best in E-Learning’ category.

I’ll be there on the 27th backing all these guys. And yes, I know its hardly the Oscars… but I don’t care, it’s a bit of fun!

Good luck one-and-all!

One of the projects I worked upon over the summer was destined for the South-American market and therefore needed to display in both Spanish and Portuguese. It was a microsite built in Flex and needed the capacity to alternate between these two languages at any given time. From the user’s perspective, a single button click should be sufficient to translate the entire site’s text from one language to another instantly. Looking around the web I couldn’t find any answers so I sat down and worked out a solution myself.

Here’s a sample app using English and my second language Swedish:

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FlashBrighton’s Joe ‘Lego’ Chung & Neil ‘Fleecie’ Manuell have spent much of the past few months developing an AS3 version of BBC 2’s popular ‘Robot Wars’ game. The basic idea is to build a framework that would allow coders to write their own fighting Bot class by implementing a Bot interface and letting said bots slog it out to see who codes the baddest bad-@ass bad-bot. Awesome!

The game is far from finished but we had our first rumble-off Tuesday just gone and I’m pleased to say that I was that bad-@ssed winner! With just 5 TUFF LINES OF CODE I out-muscled the opposition with my unstoppable tactic of… er, retreating to the edge of the arena and letting the others knock the stuffing out of each other.

Get in!

I don’t think it’s a tactic that’ll work twice but that’s ok, I’ll happily take Round 1 and adapt to the changes next time. I’m already frying up an idea or two to try out…

Man, I thought Flash on the Beach was good… and I was right, it was! But BarCamp is better. BarCampBrighton2 took place at Sussex University over the weekend just gone (15th & 16th March, 2008) and I was there. It was my first BarCamp but it definitely won’t be the last. It was ENORMOUS fun.

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Last night, sometime around 10pm, a tired and understandably ‘bit grumpy Niqui Merret pulled her little grey car up outside my house and dropped me off after a gruelling 12+hr road trip home from FITC Amsterdam. I took my bag and my wooden pink elephant inside and went di-rect-ly to bed. ‘Shouldn’t take that long to get from Amsterdam to Brighton but when SeaFrance Ferries get it into their head to have a strike it leaves a lot of people stranded, tired and hungry on the dockside for hours, whilst P&O struggle to help everybody out. I’m glad the union movement is still strong in France, I just don’t want to sit and stare at the suburbs of Calais for 3 hours.

But that aside, what a blast man! I’m not going to go into tedious detail but it was ENORMOUS fun. Shawn, you can have me back in Amsterdam anytime you want. Where do I sign? :)

Now, about that elephant…

It was a bit of a mad scramble at times but we did it. 100 punters turned up from all over the south-east on Saturday to hear some great speakers, some that had come all the way from Colorado, although granted not just for our event. The WHOLE THING was FREE! That included the event itself, t-shirts, stickers, sweets, a beer, a pizza, an after-party… and most astonishingly of all a copy of Flex Builder 2 for each and every attendee, courtesy of Adobe! As well as a single copy of CS3 Web Premium as a raffle prize at the end of the conference. That’s right kids, if you were one of the 20 or so people who registered but didn’t actually turn up then you’ll have missed out on all that. And it should be stressed that we didn’t badger Adobe for the stuff. Sure, we asked them for some sponsorship money - hotel rooms, food, beer, PA systems: they all cost money - but the software? Nah, that was their idea and a very generous one too. Thanks guys!

Thanks also to the speakers who, again, generously gave their time pretty much for free. But thanks mainly go to the punters who turned up to what i hope they found an enjoyable and engaging event. Cos, y’know, at-heart, bottom-line, end-of-the-day:

We did it for YOU!

:)

I attend and occasionally help organise events for the local FlashBrighton users group run by Seb Lee-Delisle. It just so happens that in a couple of weeks we’re running a COMPLETELY FREE event for the Flash community called our ‘Big Day Out‘. Concentrating on Flex, AIR & AS3 its a day long event down by the pier here and will feature the combined speaking talents of some of the best in the business, such as Mike Jones, Adobe’s Andrew Shorten, Real Eyes’ David Hassoun & John Crosby and Brighton’s very own Aral Balkan!

That freeness I just mentioned includes a free lunch of pizza and beer. I’m usually pretty cynical about these sorts of things, assuming - as it largely true - that nothing is free. However as one of the people organising this event I can give you an behind-the-scenes exclusive: this is GENUINELY free, JUST for you benefit with NO CATCHES.

Spaces are limited kids, so get on over and register just as soon as you can!

We’ve all just got back from this fantastic conference. I’ve been spared the task of a comprehensive review by the sterling work of my estimable peer Owen Bennett whose reaction largely echoes my own. hey, it’s late and i’m tired, so thanks Owen!

So I’ll just add that i was moved to tears twice by events at FOTB07 and… yes, leave it at that.