Flashforward2008 San Francisco is proud to publicly announce this year’s speaker list. This year’s dynamic, invigorating, and accomplished speakers include:

Miha Pogacnik- Passion, Creativity, and Business
An original asset to the Flashforward Conference, Miha Pogacnik, a concert violinist, brings to the stage his world-renowned inspirational, organizational and transformational strategies. The Cultural Ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia, Miha has an incredibly unique response to today’s quest of the business world for innovation and leadership.

David Carson - The Rules of Graphic Design
Acclaimed as the “most famous graphic designer on the face of the planet”, Carson is penned the top selling graphic design book of all times, selling over 200,000 copies, printed in 5 different languages. David’s work continues to be subjective and largely driven by intuition and passion.

Scott McCloud - Comics: A Medium in Transition
Interested in a successful career in Graphic Design since the ripe age of 15, McCloud has inarguably fulfilled his dream. An inventor, an author, a comic and a consultant, McCloud was also the principal author of the ‘Creator’s Bill of Rights.’ His involvement in the digital and graphic world is both longstanding and successful.

Jared Ficklin - Seeing Sound, Sound Visualization with Physics & Code
A Principal Technology for Frog Design, Ficklin brings to the conference his deep running passion for digital technologies, particularly Rapid Digital Prototyping of Device User Interfaces; and his combined love for musical performance and Sound Visualization.

Lynda Weinman - Education in the Internet Age
Co-founder of both Lynda.com and the Flashforward Conference & Film Festival, Lynda has been an adopter of the software and computer technologies since the early 1980’s. She wrote the first of her numerous successful books in 1995. Now taking a step back from Conference Producer, Lynda will attend her 17th Flashforward Conference as a Speaker, for the first time.

Ivan Todorov – Using Interactive Mediums to Express Brand Personality
Founding partner and Director for BLITZ, Todorov builds the agency’s strategic assets, frameworks, code libraries, documentation, as well as its best practices and development process.

Seb Lee-Delisle - Papervision3D, simplified
Combining his eye for design and animation with his understanding of maths and physics, Lee-Deslisle has been able to give his 15 year career as both a Multimedia Programmer and Technical Director an extra edge.

Chuck Freedman
A leading Flash Platform Engineer, and Director of Developer Platform at Ribbit, Chuck has certainly made a name for himself amongst the Flash community. His development approach combines his education and multimedia with a fresh expertise in content management server-side scripting and database and interactive design.

Hoss Gifford
“Make nice things for nice people” is Gifford’s mantra, and he sticks to his guns. A creative technologist for the last 18 years, Gifford’s trophy cabinet is beginning to get a big snug. Gifford is a veteran speaker at international design and technology conferences, who is always asked back for the same reasons.

Robert Hodgin
Founding partner of the Barbarian Group, Hodgin loves to talk about his love for Processing and audio-visual experimentation.

Luke Bayes
With a career history too long to list (think the wing span of a 7 ft man), Bayes has been speaking at industry events equally as long. Focusing intently on design patterns, code reuse, and agile processes in the context of ActionScript development.

Erik Natzke Natzke Design
Consistently blurring the lines between design and technology, Natzke is an Interactive Designer with a keen awareness for hwo and where to push the limits of the medium without idsolating the audience.

Paul Ortchanian
Committed to the research of creative coding and deconstruction of complex, sometimes over-engineered scripts into simple and understandable execution. Creativity and the research of interaction design find a fabulous balance in Paul’s work.

Todd Rosenberg - Educational Doodling
Creator of the oddtodd animations, Todd provides ‘humorous’ flash animated segments for the ABC World News, America’s Test Kitchen and National Geographic.

Grant Skinner - Why I (Still) Love Flash
Skinner is CEO and Chief Architect of gskinner.com, a Flash development and consulting company. He works with leading new media agencies and progressive corporate clients to create cutting-edge applications, games and media pieces.

Stacey Mulcahy - Project Management from a Developer’s Perspective
Stacey is a Flex and Flash developer who once had a torrid love affair with Macromedia Director. When she’s not building rich Internet applications that even designers like, she can be found showing others how to do the same thing as a Flash instructor. She rants more than raves on her Flash-centric blog www.bitchwhocodes.com.

From Adobe, we’ll have Tinic Uro, Mike Downey, and Ricahrd Galvan and we’re excited to have speakers from Disney.com and IDEO as well. In addition to these speakers, a few more spots remain so stay tuned for another announcement in the near future.

To read more and see photos/images visit http://www.flashforwardconference.com/speakers.

See you in SF!
Maya and the Flashforward Team

Premier and the Flashforward Conference are almost synonymous in a sense, and so it only seems fitting that the notorious Flashforward party would be hosted at the equally blue ribbon venue: enter Ruby Skye. Ruby Skye is a long-standing pillar of San Francisco’s nightlife scene- and for good reason; a world-class facility, Ruby Skye was recently nominated by Dancestar as one of the top five nightclubs.

Modern sophistication meets traditional luxury in this 15,000 square foot, 1890s original building. The Old Nouveau architecture, modern decorations and four distinctly different areas of the club create a unique party atmosphere unparalleled by any other club in the city. When we go out, we go out big.

So we want you to get excited. Be prepared to slip into something a little more fun, and a little less comfortable, after another exciting day at the Flashforward Conference and get ready to literally dance the night away. Because we know a party isn’t a party without some crazy sounds, so Flashforward is thrilled to announce that we are pairing this incredible venue with a dynamic music line up for the night. Lyrics Born will play the main stage, accompanied by the full band and will be joined for the evening by DJ Solomon two of the hottest and most unique acts in North America.

A party isn’t a party without a great crowd though; so we want you to be itching to let lose and enjoy a night of great people, killer sounds and wildly fantastic time. So come out and celebrate the winners of the Film Festival and finish off your Flashforward2008 San Francisco experience with a bang because you know what they say amongst the Flash community: Work hard, play harder.

See you in SF!
Maya and the Flashforward Team

Ruby Skye: http://www.rubyskye.com/ruby/flash/
Lyrics Born: http://www.lyricsborn.com - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur0UTQrWwDo&feature=related
DJ Soloman: http://www.djsoloman.com/

“When you think outside the box, the box goes away.” – Anonymous

Q: Where better to host the official welcome party for Flashforward2008 San Francisco, than the divinely creative Yerba Buena Center for the Arts?
A: Umm, nowhere.

Leave it to Flashforward to take a children’s interactive museum, bowling alley, skating rink and carousel and turn it into one of the best nights you’ll have all year! The Flashforward Conference and Film Festival is pleased to announce that this year’s Welcome Party on Wednesday, August 20th will take place at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (www.ybca.org)

YBCA houses a day’s – or night’s – worth of fun activities; between the 100 person bowling alley serving drinks and snacks via dummy waiter; the indoor skating rink, blasting beats into the dark of the night; and the old-school carousel that affords everyone the chance to be ‘forever young’ without a Bob Dylan wig and a can of diet coke.

The feature attraction of Yerba Buena, The ‘Zeum, fits almost too perfectly with the Flashforward Conference. The ‘Zeum, an interactive arts and technology museum can’t be done justice by words. The Zeum allows people of all ages and levels to be inspired by their own imaginations to create, explore and produce digital media. Encompassing every opportunity from music composition to design digital artwork and clay animation, there couldn’t be a more perfect home for the Welcome Party at Flashforward2008.

When Beau Ambur acquired the Flashforward Conference and Film Festival, he had a vision for what he wanted to do. “The vision is to inspire everybody to do what they are really capable of doing with Flash™ technology and what Flash is able to do as a whole.” Beyond bringing the 9-year-old conference home to its roots in San Francisco, Beau has a few ideas about how to make this conference one to remember.

Beau envisions not an alteration, but an expansion, of the current Flashforward Conference platform. In past years, the conference has focused on education and development; and while Beau has no plans to eliminate this, he hopes to extend education to include inspiration. “I want to create a platform for those interested in Flash to learn and develop themselves and do more and more with the technology. While I think that education is still very important… I’m looking at the bigger picture, and the impact of the future of the Internet and interactive technology as a whole.” Essentially, the aim of this ‘new platform’ is to encapsulate and embrace how very pervasive the Internet has become and how it has affected everything.

To achieve these aims, Beau has applied a “3-P” ideology; Passion; Professionalism; and Partnership. 2008 will focus specifically on Passion. “Passion is pushing the limits. Passion is obsession. For many it is the creativity to express themselves in a unique way.” This year, the conference aims to ignite something; to inspire attendees to tap into their passion; to create, generate and envision ‘outside the box’.

Beau realizes that passion can only carry one so far. “The longer view is where professionalism and partnership really come into play. It’s been a passionate community since its beginning in 2000.” Beau hopes that his new conference platform will encourage attendees to walk away seeking an equilibrium between “bringing professionalism into the industry while being fun and creative. All the while, recognizing the collaboration, partnership, aspect – how well you work with others – not just get along, but develop broader alignments. That’s the energy the community can use to turn the industry into something that is broader and spans across different entities.”

Flashforward alumni and fans needn’t be worried about the new conference platform. Beau isn’t ignoring the success of the previous roadmap. There will still be familiar names, familiar topics, and the conference will remain centered on Flash technology. “We are very much aiming to have the same community spirit and energy around being able to connect with people that has been there throughout the years.” Beau stated. The goal is not to take away from previous conferences, but simply to bring new value, interest, energy and direction to it. For returning and new members alike, the goal is to “really create one experience as a whole. As Flashforward it will still have a lot of the same feel and elements; and we’re aiming to reinvigorate the experience in new ways.”

For returning members, expect something fantastic and fresh. For new members of the community, get ready for an experience unlike anything else. All Flashforward2008 attendees should prepare to leave San Francisco with a new sense of your own passion and vision.

See you in SF!
Maya & The Flashforward team

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“You may delay, but time will not.” -Benjamin Franklin

Ah, the dreaded alarm clock image! Just a reminder that the deadline for Film Festival nominations is Monday, June 16. Judging will begin immediately after nominations close, so we cannot accept any late submissions.

We’ve lined up a stellar cast of judges and they can’t wait to start checking out the nominations that have been flowing in!

Don’t delay. Nominate your favorite Flash work today!