Kevin Shuttle already beat me to the proverbial punch with his review, but I'd to share some of my thoughts on a recent Boston based conference called RIA Unleashed. This developer focused event was recently held at Bentley College, Waltham, last Friday, November 13th. This was my second attendance to date to this conference. Much like it's predecessor last year (then called "Flex Camp Boston"), the newly revamped RIA Unleashed conference was also a great success. I want to say there were perhaps 200+ attendees (Brian Rinaldi (aka "remotesynthesis"), the conference organizer, has the extract tally). Of course, it's no surprise, given some of the great speakers found at this event covering such topics as Flex, AIR, Coldfusion, and other topics (even a bit of Flash CS5 publishing to iPhone capability).

The event started early on Friday, but I missed a good deal of the keynote due to some miscommunication earlier in the morning. I did get to listen to Ryan Stewart (Adobe Platform Evangelist) and Adam Lehman (Adobe Platform Evangelist) about using Flash Catalyst with a Cold Fusion powered application to help streamline, and make project workflow easier.

Later, after the keynote, Ryan made a very cool announcement about AIR 2.0 being available to attendees via USB key as a "special treat" for East Coast community members.

From there, like Kevin, I sat in on Jeff Tapper's : "How Not to Code Flex Applications" session. Jeff covered just over a handful of best practices to be aware of when both designing and developing Flex Applications. Although most of these were fairly straightforward, the session was well presented, and it never hurts to hear a fellow speaker validate some of your own thoughts on development practices. After Jeff's session,

I caught Jesse Warden's session entitled : "Custom Components in Flex 3 and 4". I know Jesse from the Flash community, and keep occasionally tabs with him on twitter (@jesterxl). It was nice to finally see him present. I personally loved his session and his passion as he went through his material. His presentation style is unique and entertaining. I have to be brutally honest, however. Jesse has a lot of energy, and some of it interfered with the material he was trying to get across, sometimes during his presentation. Overall, personally, I took away a lot of useful tips from his talk, however.

My next session was Ryan Stewart talking about Flash CS5 and publishing Applications to iPhone. Although I had caught much of this presentation at Adobe MAX earlier this year, it was good to get an updated perspective on how things were evolving, and get a take on how much Adobe is investing in the workflow and toolset. Ryan did an amazing job at presenting the material (it wasn't even his, it was Mike Chamber's material), did a really quick demo of the development process (using ActionScript 3), and then showed attendees how easy it was to publish out to iPhone and test on a target device (i.e. the iPhone). After Ryan's session I decided to stick around and chat with some developers rather than attend the next sessions (nothing particularly interested me in the time slot).

The final session I attended at RIA Unleashed was one by Andy Powell, entitled "UX for the Development Minded". Although this session was geared towards developers, no code was presented. Rather, it was meant to enlighten developers on the importance of XD and take an inner look at some of things that make a good user experience. Andy did a great job at engaging the crowd and carrying his viewpoints. Although I had seen similar sessions before, it was good to see someone talking about design practices, as opposed to all the developer sessions focused on low-level tech aspects of Flash, Flex, Coldfusion, AIR and other Adobe products & services. Incidentally, I noticed Andy is sharing is deck over on Brian Rinaldi's blog.

After RIA Unleashed there was a brief after hours party in Waltham at the Watch City Brewery. Always good to see that those in the Flash community are willing to converse, share ideas, and have a drink or two outside of the conference atmosphere. I'd like to personally thank Brian Rinaldi for organizing the event, the speakers, and for all the sponsors and other collaborators who made it a great local event for those in both from New England, as well as those who traveled from abroad (that's hardcore!). For those that missed RIA Unleashed this time around, there are some presentation decks, twitter list of attendees, as well as other information over on Brian Rinalid's blog. Hope to see everyone at the next installment of RIA Unleashed (where ever it might be).

Read more from Scott Janousek.