SND impressions and some Flash(y) lessons

Posted on October 15, 2007 by Melissa Worden

Richard Koci Hernandez has put together a video of his trip to the SND Boston. I didn’t get the opportunity to go, so once again, I’m so grateful that the conference and attendees are blogging about lessons learned.

Definitely take a look at Hernandez’s video for tips on nice shots and how to tell a story:

Creative and engaging and leaves me wanting more … perhaps this is a video “splash page“? ;) I jest … it seems to have perfectly fulfilled its point — to give a taste and a fun review for attendees and even those who weren’t there. He promises to publish “more multimedia goodness,” so check back at his site during the week.

For more meat, check out the SND update blog.

Not a whole lot here about online, but I’m impressed by the topics they chose to present. Videos and .pdfs are/will be available for more details.

Of the online/multimedia offerings, I particularly like the post about Adrian Holovaty’s presentation, Making Data Web Savvy.

And there’s a series of posts from the New Media session that taught participants Flash and some ActionScript:

Post I: Greetings from the New Media course shares a newbie’s perspective:

Biggest impression thus far: Stop fearing Flash. We’ve put it off after hearing tales of its complicated nature. Hey, even Quark seemed daunting at one time.

Of course, getting an intro in a classroom environment certainly helps. You’d want a pretty killer tutorial program to learn this stuff on your own. This is the fourth New Media course of the year, and based on our experience and those of friends who have gone through other courses, it’s a worthy investment. Convince your organization to cough up the cash for a session when the tour is near by.

Post II: Flash projects take longer to produce than a novice would expect:

As managers, we need some basic knowledge of what can be done; from there we can assign out projects and set realistic deadlines. So, while we may never be scripting experts, at least we can set folks up to succeed at certain projects.

Post III: They “climb deeper into the wormhole that is Action Script coding in Flash”:

Well, that “this isn’t so hard” feeling from the first half of the New Media session has been replaced with a “What the Deuce?!” vibe.

Post IV: “Your word of the day: Concatenation”

Dive in. Figure out a way to break off time to spend with Flash, either for yourself or your staff. The classroom environment was fantastic; opening up Flash all by yourself could get overwhelming quick.

I also like this piece of advice:

Also, talk turned to how much time a project involving coding should take. Simple:
1/2 your time should be planning, storyboarding, gathering information, etc.
1/2 your time should be actual Flash production - scripting and programing
1/2 your time will be spent debugging your code, especially as you just get started

Huh? That’s more time than is available.

“These projects will always take you more time than you thought they would.”

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Tags: flash, training, design

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