(Note: My colleague, David Tucker, has joined me in helping to author this post since we put on our Flash Camps as a collaborative effort between the two of us.)
It's come to our attention that there are a lot of people out in the community who do not know what a Flash Camp event really is all about. If they do know, it's a pre-conceived misconception that they're things like "glorified user group meetings". This couldn't be any further from the truth.
In our minds, a Flash Camp is, in essence, a mini conference. In these days of tighter budgets and the premium placed on our time, we try to make these events as time conscious and price conscious as possible. Why fly across the country to an event when we can bring something that will offer comparable content to your region? We try to keep the presentation quality of these events high so that people will want to attend and they will feel that they're getting a good value for the money.
Typically, a Flash Camp event will be one day, 9:00am to 5:00pm. We try to shoot for a Friday so that people can have a nice end to the week. We've talked about going to multiple days, but we want to make sure we've got this formula down pat first. Lunch is also included in the price of admission. If we're going to ask you to sit through a full day of content, the least we can do is feed you, right?
During the camp, you will hear from a lot of different speakers presenting (in a typical conference presentation format - these aren't 'hands-on' sessions). The speakers are diverse. This means that, yes, as it is a community event, we try to pull a good mix of local speakers and nationally recognized speakers within the Flash Platform community as a whole. This gives attendees a good motivation to attend because you will see both your peers from the local community, plus people who you know from twitter, reading blogs, etc.
Along with a diversity of speakers, we try to maintain a diversity of content as well. In Atlanta, we did an Intro To The Flash Platform session that was really rudimentary, and almost a bit of a marketing pitch. We have had topics as a advanced as "Custom Metadata Processors For Swiz", which is going to be way above an entry-level developer's head. We can't make the content too basic, or too advanced, so we try to shoot for a bit of both with the hope that everyone will take something away from the event.
Cost is always the interesting element. A lot of things go into the calculation of the cost like venue cost, catering, travel for out of town speakers, etc. Our ultimate goal is to get enough sponsorships so that we can keep the event cost to attendees below $100. We feel that that price point is a good place for a one day conference with top-notch content. Some people want it to be free, but the way I see it, you can't please everyone. Paying under $100 to have a full day of presentations from speakers that you would hear at 360Flex and Adobe Max is a bargain.
At the end of the day, Flash Camp events are catalysts for the local user community. Some areas, like San Francisco, have vibrant and highly active Flash / Flex communities. In these areas, the Flash Camp event serves as a way to reconnect with people and inspire the community to more user group meeting and such. In areas like Phoenix, where the community is not as active, the Flash Camp events serve as a way to launch the development community. It's an opportunity to get a large number of people in the room and have the user group managers pitch the user groups and their value to potential members. As these local communities grow and thrive, the Flash and Flex communities as a whole will grow and thrive. They are beneficial to the whole Flash Platform ecosystem.
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