[osflash] Disseminating OSFlash (was IDE mon amour, the poll results.)

[João Saleiro]

Heya,

William Strapazzon wrote:
> maybe another example... some time ago if I didn't misunderstand, even 
> with that amazing progect of "João Saleiro"
> after it was presented at college, does not changed his teachers mind.
> they insisted in using ajax for future progects (on Portugal).
>   
That's right.... There were some teachers really amazed with 
CastingOffice, and they seemed interested on the technology behind. But 
it was just that: they kept investigating and disseminating AJAX, and - 
the funny thing - developing tools and classes for AJAX that we already 
have on Flash. :P
The good thing is that they invited us to organize conferences on the 
osflash subject on ISCTE. I have been discussing this with Kim Hansen, 
and there is a good possibility that we'll have conferences on Portugal 
on the beginning of 2007. I just need to dedicate more time to this 
subject, and make sure that ISCTE gives all the conditions we need to 
make sure that everything goes well.

ETIC (a multimedia and design formation center) contacted me Friday to 
give formation on programming. I'll go there Monday and see what they 
have in mind. I have previously proposed them the creation of a course 
on the development of Rich Internet Applications. They seemed very 
interested, and asked me to present them a formal proposal, with the 
complete description of the topics to lecture. So, if everything goes 
well there is a possibility that we'll have on Portugal a one year 
course on the development of RIAs using osflash tools and technologies. 
:D I am counting on you all to help me on this!! :P

BTW, following this suggestion of henrik weber:

 >a blog (e.g. titled 'osflash-universe') uniting the different opinions 
of the os-
 >flash-community would be great.
 >if you need help in designing a layout for it; let me know ;)

I think that this is a good idea. But i also think that it would be VERY 
important to show new potential users what's so great about OSFlash. Let 
people know that there is an excelent ROI on using osflash, so they 
would want to invest their time researching and developing using osflash 
technologies. Also, create a showcase with the best osflash projects, 
detailed description on the technologies and techniques used to develop 
each of them and probably brief depoiments of the developers, so new 
users can trust osflash technologies, reading the success stories.

When i decided to try osflash techs, i was making my project using the 
Flash IDE (with bad practices :P). One day, by coincidence i saw this 
post on Aral's Blog: http://aralbalkan.com/563 . That was the first time 
i read the "osflash" word. At the beginning it was the story that 
convinced me, not the osflash technologies. After that, when first saw 
the osflash main page, i was very disappointed. I didn't know where to 
begin, there were a lot of different projects with different purposes, 
lack of tutorials on some subjects, and other subjects with too much 
different tutorials dispersed on the web. I had a deadline very tight, 
and i was afraid that i was investing time for nothing. I wanted to see 
some good success cases before taking the risk, but at the time there 
weren't success cases around (at least i don't remember seeing one:| ). 
And i was already a believer on the Flash capabilities, so imagine how 
someone who thinks that Flash is only a design tool for making banners, 
feels when entering this new world.

What we currently have is an excellent platform for developers. It does 
not attract new users easily because it's not meant to. If we want to 
have more people believing and using osflash technologies, i think we 
should create a web-site showing the capabilities of osflash. With news, 
and/or a blog, simple and straightforward "getting started" tutorials, a 
showcase with success stories, a more generalist forum/mailing list for 
newbies with noob questions, and contacts for some osflashers willing to 
give consulting, so enterprises can easily reach them. This would be the 
entry point on the osflash world. After that, everything remains the 
same, with the current platform aiming developers and "advanced" users.

If we want to attract more people, we need to put ourselfs on their 
place and understand what they feel about osflash at the beginning. But 
this is just my opinion, of course.... :)

Cheers,

João Saleiro