I’m currently on Flash on the Beach in Brighton. I were here last year and it strucked me then how well organized this conference was, and I must say it lives up to its reputation this year as well. This year I’m together with Hågen Landsem, which actually was my teacher at school, and of course all the other guys from Norway (and the rest of the world for that matter).

One thing we’ve noticed is that FOTB08 is a little bit more technical than last year; the Flex/Air session is dominating more now. This is a trend that runs the hole Flash community. This was something Hågen and I talked about yesterday, and It was interesting to hear some speakers expressed their concern about this evolution as well. One of the speakers that addressed this was Aral Balkan, he had a very nice session that was both entertaining, inspiring and an eye opener for many I think. He talked about the simplicity of AS1 compared to AS2, and especially AS3 and how this might be negative for the Flash community. That it might leave some of the creative people out of the Flash community, and those are, by my opinion, the most important users of the Flash platform. It is the creative part that has brought Flash to what it is today.

Anyway, we had a short chat when he was done and he really seems like a nice guy. I think it is very important that guys like Aral Balkan speak up about this.