efug.org: the Edmonton Flash User Group
efug is the official Flash User Group for Edmonton, Alberta. We are committed to fostering community and professional excellence among Flash professionals in Edmonton and area. We deal with a variety of topics relevant to working with Flash, including development, design, animation, marketing, multimedia and business practices.
We hold monthly gatherings on the third or fourth Monday of each month to enjoy presentations from the local & international community, happy-hour drink prices, five-buck appetizers, free billiards, networking, socializing, and giving away swag.
We hope to serve as a promotional and educational force in the community, evangilising Flash and related technologies to businesses in Edmonton and worldwide.
You can subscribe to the monthly newsletter in the left-hand pane, and join efug on Adobe Groups here using your Adobe ID. We are on facebook too.
If you have any questions or comments regarding efug, you can contact us by filling in the form to the left. Anyone is welcome — n00bs to seasoned veterans. Hope to see you there!
December 11, 2008
December efug: FitC
'Flash in the Console'
Running Flash content on top-end gaming consoles via Scaleform GFx.
Scaleform GFx is a third-party standalone SWF player that enables developers to author UI elements for cutting-edge PC & console games in Adobe Flash. Many AAA game titles use Scaleform technology to author 2D UI elements (menus, huds, target reticules, etc.) in Flash (using a subset of AS2), and map their swfs as interactive textures onto 3D objects in the game environment.
gskinner.com was approached by Scaleform to develop a component set and workflow enhancement tools for GFx customers, and will be sharing their progress, process and findings to the local community on December 15th, @ 7:00, in the Billiard Club on Whyte Ave.
We will be joined by Troy Dunniway and Mathew Doyle from Scaleform's Washington headquarters to give us a look under the hood of Scaleform technology. gskinner.com will be showcasing an overview of the Scaleform component set, workflow enhancement tools and demonstrations.
As usual, we'll be sporting the happy-hour drink prices, the five-buck apps, the swag draw giveaways and the free billiards after the sess. Anyone is welcome, this is going to be a fantastic session you don't want to miss.
Bring your friends and colleagues - hope to see you there!
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I also wanted to extend thanks to Owen & Oscar for posting follow-up content for their presentations last month on our Adobe Groups page. Be sure to log into Adobe Groups with your Adobe ID and join the efug group for the latest info in the local and international Flash scene. Additionally, I've added info about our various sponsors and what offerings they have to efug members.
Posted at 03:03 PM
November 18, 2008
Novemberfug - for lack of a more clever name.
This Monday, November 24th @ 7:00pm, join us at The Billard Club (10505 82 Avenue NW) for our monthly nerd-out. As always, we'll be sporting the happy-hour drinks, the five-buck appies, the door-prizes galore, and the post-session free billiards. efug is a super-casual group of designers / developers that welcomes first-timers, veterans, uber-nerds and the super-cool.
We've two stellar presos lined up:
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Flashify Drupal
Owen Brierley - Director of Production, Gystworks || Executive Director, Guru Digital Arts College
Drupal is a wickedly cool open-source content management system. Owen will walk through setting up a connection to Drupal and ingest the CMS based content into a Flash environment. It's tasty and fortified with geeky goodness.
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(Insert intermission, socializing, networking, bingeing...)
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Ten Essential Things We've Learned at gskinner.com
Maurice Leier - Junior Developer, gskinner.com
Oscar Hungsberg - Junior Developer, gskinner.com
Junior developers Oscar and Maurice give a quick introduction to the ten most essential Flash skills they've learned so far, covering AS3 best practices for beginners, and even the basics of Flex Builder 3.
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Check out efug on Adobe Groups!
http://groups.adobe.com
Still hot out of the oven, Adobe Groups is live and running! Set up your profile and join the efug group at:
http://groups.adobe.com/groups/b37b274b9a/summary
Adobe has gone to great lengths to make an online presence for our community, so feel free to participate and contribute to our group space by using the discussion board, posting resources and job listings, populating the reference library etc. I plan on making this group page the main source for efug & Adobe User Group info over the next few weeks.
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Mark the 24th in your calendar and get involved in Adobe Groups! Hope to see you there!
Posted at 03:47 PM
October 15, 2008
The Return of Octoberfug
On Monday, October 20th, 2008, @ 7:00pm, join us for two stellar presentations from our local community!
Randy is going to kick off the evening by doing a dry-run of his 360|MAX session he will be presenting in San Francisco in mid November.
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Randy Troppmann: www.randytroppmann.com
Using Yahoo! Maps AS3 API in Flex, and making money with Mapvertising
Early in 2008 Yahoo! released an AS3 version of their maps API. Randy will demonstrate how to quickly get up and running with the Yahoo! Maps in Flex. Randy will also demonstrate how you can add geographically relevant advertising (Mapvertising) to your mashup and start making money!
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After a short intermission for networking and socializing, Erik is going to take center stage:
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Erik Johnson: www.disruption.ca
Building Games in Flash for Free
Did you know the Flex SDK contains everything you need to build flash apps? Did you know that Adobe gives it away for free? You can even use it to build applications without writing any XML or MXML. Erik will talk about how to get started with mxmlc, and show a simple flash game built with the Flex SDK.
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I managed to get us free pool after the sessions if anyone is interested and also will be bringing a microphone to combat the ambient noise we've been battling at the Billiard Club. As per usual, we will be enjoying happy-hour drink prices, five-buck appetizers and swag giveaways to lucky attendees.
It is going to be an awesome evening, hope to see you there!
Posted at 04:20 PM
September 08, 2008
September efug
We have a stellar lineup for September's efug, commencing on Monday, September 15th, 2008 @ 7:00pm.
As per usual:
The Billiard Club
10505 82 Avenue NW
Second Floor of the Historic Post Office Building
Come get the skinny on 2 killer projects that have recently launched out of our local community:
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Christopher Caldwell: Caldwell Creative
Case Study: Cricothyrotomy
A look at the development process of an online surgical simulation.
This case study will take a brief look at the process, learning methodology, development, co-ordination, and resources required to create an e-learning application developed for the University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. This application contains multimodal instruction, illustrative support, audit trails, surgical activities and simulated procedural competencies required to augment existing medical training. This simulation is designed to provide third year medical students a safe way to become proficient at procedures that are not commonly encountered in a traditional teaching environment.
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Ryan Matsikas / Nick Johnston: gskinner.com
DIRECTV SUPERCAST SHOWCASE (Adobe / Blitz / DIRECTV / gskinner.com)
Are you a die-hard NFL football fan? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to watch live NFL games on your Macbook, or 30" cinema display? As a DIRECTV customer, you can gain access to real-time video (in both fullscreen and mini mode), near real-time highlights, and game stats in a clean UI.
From building custom animations using a combination of programmatic code (GTween/TweenLite) to using Flash & Flex assets deploying to both AIR and the web, the overall goal for this presentation is to discuss techniques used to embed assets and give a brief under-the-hood look at the app which uses the Pure MVC framework.
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As always we'll be enjoying five-buck appies, happy-hour drink prices and swag giveaways to lucky attendees.
Hope to see you there, invite your friends and colleagues!
Additionally, I'd like to extend an invitation to an industry event that is occurring in Edmonton (free of charge) on September 23rd, once at 9:00 am and then again at 10:20 am at:
Centre for Excellence in Print Media
NorQuest College
10135 109 Street, Edmonton, AB
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Paul Trani: Adobe Systems
Assets in Motion: Cross Media for Print Professionals
In the future, successful printers will need to adopt new business and growth strategies in order to prosper. Ways to connect more meaningfully with new and existing customers. In this session, Adobe will discuss the latest trends in communication and show how the tools available in the Adobe Creative Suite will enable you to put your assets in motion -- extending your print communications to the web, video and beyond
Paul Trani is a passionate and knowledgeable 15 year veteran of the interactive design and development scene as well as a respected speaker nation-wide on all things Adobe. Paul has spent many years as an Adobe Certified Instructor, courseware developer, and trainer. He is also an Adobe Community Expert who contributes weekly through numerous forums, blogs, and Adobe online and live seminars, reaching thousands annually. Using his degree in Illustration, a background in Motion Graphics Design and ability to write high level code, Paul has created first-class cross-media projects for diverse clientele such as Bacardi, Neutrogena, Adobe, Best Buy, Hallmark Channel, Qwest, Western Union, Lucent Technologies, IBM, and Sprint.
When Paul is not inspiring the community through online or live events, he can be found at Starz Entertainment where he is the Senior Designer leading a talented design department to create award-winning experiences across multiple media. Paul’s blog can be found at http://www.designupdate.com
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If you are planning on attending Paul's session, register here to get your free lunch:
Assets in Motion
Posted at 10:43 AM
July 09, 2008
July efug: Grant Skinner et al
After a short break, we're up for some summertime fuggin'.
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
The Billiard Club on Whyte (map and address in the left-hand sidebar)
7:00pm
Chief Architect & CEO of gskinner.com, Grant Skinner is going to shed some light on his design process and tools.
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Designing With Flash?
While much better known for laying down code than for laying out websites, I still love dabbling in interface design when I have an excuse. Lately, I've found myself doing almost all of my conceptual design in the Flash IDE, instead of Photoshop. This has very obvious workflow advantages, but I would also make the contentious argument that Flash is now a *better* tool for designing certain types of sites. I've even used Flash to design HTML sites, which I then rebuild in part with Photoshop - this is a complete reversal of my workflow from two years ago.
In this informal session, I will talk about the new features in Flash that have made it such a useful design tool, my design process, and some of the things I think make it a better tool for certain projects than Photoshop.
Designers may find this talk useful for their own process. Developers might find it useful to convince the designers in their lives to work in Flash - wouldn't that make the designer developer workflow so much more peaceful?
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After Grant's session, we will be having an informal open-podium portion of the evening. This is an opportunity for you to share with the local community a cool project you've been working on, a sweet Flash feature/tip you'd like to share or simply show a stellar use of Flash you've experienced recently. Contributions are limited to 5 minutes max, and will earn you a ballot of some of our larger prizes of the evening.
Don't forget that the Billiard club offers us happy-hour drink prices and five-dollar appetizers all night long — hope to see you there!
Posted at 10:24 AM
