cfguy

Last night was MiniMAX 5 here in beautiful and extremely weird Las Vegas, NV., and I thought I'd do a quick recap for those of you who wanted to come but couldn't make it. So here it is. :)

• Greg Hamer opened the non-conference with an introduction of the upcoming speakers, and then presented on using ColdFusion to develop Rich Internet Apps, the options available, and covered some of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.
• "Never Bet on The Philadelphia Eagles." Adam Bell showed how to quickly produce 3D Flash animations using Illustrator, while wearing only his man-panties, which was perhaps the most terrifying thing I've seen in my life. Seriously, it was an enlightening presentation, even if over my head, and I learned that sometimes the best way to produce Flash animations is by using something other than Flash.
• Stephanie Sullivan followed with an almost-presentation about "creating lean, creative sites with CSS" using Dreamweaver, which did not materialize because of some technical issues (hint: "I'm a Mac!", LOL). Stephane nonetheless earned her keep by setting the tone for the rest of the event by warming up the crowd. Which is probably pretty easy when you're an extremely attractive, athletic brunette surrounded by 50 geeks. To say that she had the audience's attention would be an understatement! Stephanie, you still owe us a presentation, so cough it up!
• Scott Fegette from Adobe also had some technical difficulties (of which I don't think it's necessary for me to mention the nature) giving his preso on animating a green screen still using After Effects, but he recovered while Adam worked the crowd to stall (adding a boa and a red teddy to his ensemble). His presentation was worth the wait, and it was mind blowing to watch him create a beautiful, compelling, HDTV-ready animation in the space of about 10 minutes. Again, outside my realm of expertise, but still extremely cool!
• Tom Green stepped up to the plate next, with his assistant (whose name I forgot, sorry, I suck) Tiago  demonstrating how to wrap a video around a textured object using Flash and After Effects. This was very neat stuff, and it amazed me that anyone could produce these kind of special effects using any cheap-o PC from Wal-Mart or Dell with a very small investment in some special software. It seems like just a few years ago (maybe more, think 'Video Toaster') it cost thousands, if not 10s of thousands of dollars, to achieve a much, much less convincing but somewhat similar effect.
• Todd Sanders wrapped up the show by cranking out a web 2.0-styled web layout using Photoshop in just a few minutes. I wish I had it recorded so I could play it back in slow-mo a few dozen times. Another amazing demo of some skills I wish I had. :)

All and all it was a very good night, definitely worth the money.