Maybe I went to the “wrong” sessions, but the sessions I liked best were not about code samples or know-how or technical stuff. I was kind of surprised to find sessions like these because I expected to see a lot of code and other ingenious constructions.So here is an overview from the sessions I was able to attend

Adobe Keynote

Fitc was kick-started by the Adobe Keynote. A quick update from how things are going and what the plans are for the near future. Maybe some quick numbers here: 90% of online video content is in Flash. 50% of all flash players has been updated to FP10 and Adobe Air (happy birthday Air by the way) has been installed 100 million times already. Adobe also said that Twitter was a big help for reaching this number, because of the various Twitter Air applications. They’re also planning on bringing Air to mobile devices.

Also, they will be focusing on devices, which means they want to bring the same apps and experience to all sorts of devices like cellphones and the Nintendo Wii.

Furthermore there was a short demo of the Open Screen Project which looked quite nice and a call to developers to take a look at the File Reference class for FP10.

Aral Balkan – The future is so bright, I’ve got to wear shades

Really really cool session from Aral with a very nice intro (YouTube Video).
Aral was talking about how hardware and services are becoming commodities (Mac’s are not though) and that the time that used to be spent on dealing with this stuff now could be spent on creating really cool stuff and things you like to create and work on.

He also told us how spoiled we were with Nth-generation tools like Air, QT (air is not the only one) and Unity and with new killer IDE features like the Adobe MarketPlace and the Appstores. We can just code, compile and sell our stuff now.

Then he went on to talk about “utility computing” which means that we can now rent what we need and that the service will grow with our app as we need it. Services like cloud computing and Google’s GAEBAR make it easy for us now.

To make sure your application won’t turn into a commodity, you should always build a fantastic user experience around it, and make sure that you focus on the user. That’s how the Ipod and Starbucks did it. By doing this, the programmer becomes an author (according to Aral) because you can now create your own identity and style. His best advice was probably: “Try to do only what you like and understand, does it give me joy to use and build this, and when building, don’t be good, be exceptional. Life’s too short!

Ralp Hauwert – Professionaly Pushing Pixels / Carlos Ulloa – We make. You enjoy

Both presentations were about 3D stuff, though Ralp Hauwert was mostly talking about Alchemy en PixelBender with which he achieved some great results like a tunnel of pixels and even a complete Quake Map in Flash Player 10 with high fps while Carlos was showing a project with papervision and some problem-solutions with this project. Both were quite interesting, but because 3D in Flash is not my cup of tea, I was more looking at the great things they were showing on the screen then really understanding what they were doing.

Florian Schmitt – Everything is beautifull and nothing was hurt

The last session I was able to attend was the session from Florian Schmitt. He was showing us projects which his company (Hi-Res) did the last couple of years. They did some really amazing things like the new Jagermeister website and a campaign for Lost (the series) to fill the gap between two seasons which took one year and went so big that it even involved producing some custom chocolate. But like Aral earlier, he also wanted to take some time to give some advice: Look around you, look up and look down, make some fun and show the stuff you create to your mom and dad, in stead of trying to win awards. Being passionate about your work is great, but you always should realize that there are more important things in live!