Back in February, after searching the Boston area for an Adobe Flex user group and not finding any, I figured it was time to start one. Ed Sullivan at Adobe Newton connected me with several others looking to do the same and I put out the call to unite and form a user group. The result is the Boston Flex User Group (www.bostonfug.org). I find myself very fortunate to be working with several of the big names in the Flash/Flex/RIA industry and interacting with a many new and very impressive people. By the way, RIA stands for Rich Internet Applications which are highly interactive/responsive “webpages” that run in advanced distributed languages such as Flex, Silverlight, GoogleGears. It seems like Java should be in that list, but I rarely hear it mentioned in RIA discussions. I suspect that Java is left out since its functionality is more generalized and the other languages are heavily focused on powering distributed client user interfaces. Anyhow, Java should technically be included in the RIA list.

RIA’s are still fairly new and Flex falls at an interesting intersection of design and programming. The Flash heritage brings a lot of people with professional design backgrounds and the Flex architecture and development environment draws in the programming crowd. Consequently, the meetings have introduced me to a lot of smart and interesting people working on cool stuff that looks & plays great. I am also learning a lot about Flex and general RIA techniques. It’s been a great experience.

As a service to those readers out there interested in Flex, but who cannot attend a meeting, I will be blogging the speakers’ presentations at the BostonFUG meetings. I’ll include any additional resources I am aware of such as slides or websites. These presentation blog entries will read like a stream of consciousness short story from your college literature class. Hopefully combining them with a copy of the speakers slides or their online demo will be meaningful.

Standard disclaimers apply: I may misrepresent the speaker’s intent through a variety of errors ranging from misunderstanding, mistyping, or subjectively tainting the meaning with my own twisted point of view. Please use the comments feature to correct, clarify or challenge me. Hopefully commenting will remain available on the Untravel blog. You need a login account to comment. Click on the Login Icon in the upper right of the page & then choose “New Account” to get your own freshly minted login id.

I’ll be making other blog entries, mostly orbiting the technical roots of Untravel, but only the future will tell what those will be.