I am sitting here waiting for my departure a little early from the 360Flex in Indianapolis, disappointed that I have to miss some excellent sessions this afternoon. This was my first 360Flex but I will not be missing any in the future if I have a choice. The content was top-notch and this is by far the single best place to network with other Flex developers, including most of the prominent names you may know well already. Tom Ortega and John Wilker really put on a great show that mixes the best content of a typical conference with a very relaxed and informal feel that is enjoyable.

The conference was held in the historic Union Station in Indianapolis. It began with a keynote presentation held in a large room that seems as though it was the center of Union Station at some point, with high ceilings and large stained glass windows. Adobe's Matt Chotin delivered the keynote. He focused on the new features and workflows in the upcoming releases of Catalyst and Flex Builder 4. Matt built an example application using the new workflow, starting in Catalyst and moving to Flash Builder. It was a similar demo to other presentations at MAX and elsewhere but it was clear that the products are looking much more polished and ready for the upcoming public betas - which of course he wouldn't give a date on (if you would like detailed session notes from the keynote, I have posted them on my site).

Many of the sessions covered a long list of newly released or recently updated open source projects including Degrafa, Merapi, Flight framework, Axiis, Moccasin, StandingWave2, OpenFlux and FlexUnit. There was a lot of buzz among attendees about some of these. I was lucky enough to attend the Axiis presentation and some of what they are doing is very impressive for doing advanced data visualizations and charting (see my session notes here). Some other session highlights included Doug McCune's "Cool [Stuff]" which focused on building things that inspire you to love what you do. In Doug's case, he was inspired by some very complex and fascinating topics including steganography, head-tracking and augmented reality (again, more session notes here). Jeff Tapper did a great overview of "worst practices" to avoid for Flex developers (session notes) and Laura Arguello presented on building large-scale enterprise applications with Mate (session notes).

Overall, the speakers were excellent. As someone who comes from a more server-side background (in this case ColdFusion), it was interesting to see how a Flex conference is different. Since much of what Flex does has a very visual aspect to it, many of the sessions have a "wow factor" that simply cannot be matched by a more server-side focused conference. Whether you are watching Doug McCune play Top Gun using head tracking, Tom Gonzalez show some complex chart or Juan Sanchez display some of the complex drawing abilities of Degrafa, they all had moments where the audience excitement was obvious. Generally this was during some particularly impressive visual demo. Even audio played heavily into some of the impact of the sessions with things like Joe Berkovitz's StandingWave2 or Ben Stucki presenting AudioSpike. In the end, it never ceases to impress me what people in the Flex community are doing.

However, the networking is as much of the draw for technology conference as the content and 360Flex doesn't disappoint on this count either. Each night they had a free social event at the Rock Bottom Brewery in downtown Indianapolis where attendees drank, talked and played pool and Guitar Hero. I met an incredible number of people at this conference (some whose names you likely know and many you probably have not) and reconnected with familiar friends. Often the party would move to the hotel bar or local restaurant and continue until far too late at night.

After the late nights of fun and the full days of learning I am both physically and mentally exhausted. However, I am also thoroughly inspired to go home (and to my job) and put to use many of the things I have learned. I am also reenergized in loving what I do for a living and wanting to continue to make Flex a focus in my career. Thanks 360Flex!

Read more from Brian Rinaldi.