Here is the list of events we will be appearing at:

• 2/13/12 – New York: New York Flex Meetup (Jeff Tapper)
• 2/15/12 – Boston: Boston Flex User Group (Michael Labriola, Michelle Yaiser)
• 2/21/12 – Denver: Rocky Mountain Adobe Users Group (Jun Heider)
• 2/22/12 – Seattle: Seattle Web App Developers Group (Michael Labriola, Michelle Yaiser)
• 2/29/12 – Chicago: Chicago Flex User Group (Michael Labriola)
• 3/7/12 – Los Angeles: LA Flex & LA Flash User Groups (Jeff Tapper)
• 3/8/12 – San Diego: San Diego Flash User Group  (Jeff Tapper)
• 4/19/12 – Dallas: Dallas Flex User Group (Jonathan Campos)

Here is a list of European events:

• 2/20/2012 – London - http://www.meetup.com/flexlondon/
• 2/21/2012 – Paris - http://flexupdateinparis.eventbrite.com/
• 2/23/2012 – Bordeaux - http://adobebordeaux.eventbrite.com/
• 2/27 – 2/28/2012 – Amsterdam (FITC conference)
• 2/29/2012 – Hamburg - https://www.xing.com/events/future-flex-flash-856836
• 3/2/2012 – Lisbon - http://augportugal.eventbrite.com/

Please stay tuned. More events are being scheduled.

UPDATE: The recording can be found at: http://experts.adobeconnect.com/p47r0gd3131/

Topics for this meeting include the current status of The Spoon Project, the updated vision of the project, and how to get involved. We’ll have an open Q&A session at the end so make sure you’re there and get your questions answered.

- Contribute Flex 4.6 SDK, Flex 3.6 SDK, BlazeDS, FalconJS, new Spark components and functional testing framework
- COntribute Falcon with AS3 support
- Develop new Flash Builder productivity features
– will use mxmlc, not falcon
– will ship with Apache SDK support release of Builder
- Publish Flex whitepaper early 2012

Adobe will do the following…

- Whether FalconJS can be contributed before Falcon AS is complete
- Plan for when we contribute Falcon AS via Apache
- Duration of runtime support commitment for Flex applications
- Availability and duration of new and renewed Adobe Flex SDK support contracts
- Open source contribution of related technologies:
blazeds.net, server-side AS, LCDS, LCCS, TLF, Gravity, FXG, OSMF

Adobe will follow up on…

- new spark components and functional testing framework are desirable
- explicit time period for runtime support required
- clarification required on how long Adobe support contracts will be available for purchase/renewal for Adobe Flex SDK
- FalconJS in current state is valuable to community
- Prefer Builder productivity features (sooner) over Falcon MXML (later)
- Enable community to deliver Falcon MXML support sooner than 2013

Flex Summit: Summary and Actions

Q&A: Who controls the roadmap? No one.

Q&A: What if you have a conference/product/project/user group containing the “Flex” name? There is some legal discussions that need to be addressed as part of the incubator process. If this concerns you do watch the incubator process.

Q&A: Will Adobe still sign RSLs? No, due to legal issues. We will discuss the process to an “Apache Signed RSL”.

Initial Committers List:
Alex Harui
Carol Frampton
Rani Kumar
Jim Murphy
Deepa Subramaniam

[showing the proposal]

Requires, IP clearance and license clearing.

Once submitted to Apache will sit for 72 hours for voting into the incubator.

Incubation Proposal

Q&A: Can a project have “side libraries”? Yes.

Next up, Mike Labriola (with Spoon) talking about contributions that for Flex.

First up. Corey (with SAS) talking about changes they have made to the Flex SDK they would like to contribute.

Greg Wilson up talking about community contributions.

[Quick Break]

“Apache is what you make of it.” – @fielding

Q&A: How to get out of incubation? Podlings need to make a release and get the incubator PMC to vote the Podling out of incubation.

“Most great software is developed by teams of 12 people” – @fielding

Q&A: What code review structure do you provide? Everything is up to the individual project.

Q&A: Can you talk more about version control, trunk, branch, and “release”? A release is a way to say “public release ready for use by even non contributors”.

Q&A: Does Apache contributions effect involvement level? Giving $ to Apache doesn’t effect voting rights or anything else. Just warm fuzzies.

Q&A: Does Apache contributions go to a project? No, to Apache. (for Flex you’d have to either contribute directly or give to developers on the project… Spoon)

Q&A: How does a project do QA? That is up to the project and the developers.

The community is central to everything @fielding

“JAVA” is just as proprietary as Flash’ @fielding

“If no one outside of Adobe employees sign up to contribute, Apache will not accept Flex” – @fielding

- The future is what you make of it
– all Apache work is based on someone needing something at some point and just doing it
– all Apache tecnical decisions are discussed and implemented on public mailing lists
– all you have to do to start is subscribe and participate

- Open Source == Shared Custom Software
– community is more important than code
– but the code is needed to form a community

- Apache releases when the software is ready

Regarding concerns about “the future of flex”

- new projects start in the incubator
– ensures that big contributions are properly licensed
– assists proposed projects (podlings) in forming a community
– mentors podlings on how to follow “the apache way”
– provides official apache votes on incubating releases

- annoying complex and bureaucratic
– discourages contributions that are not long-term
– encourages graduation to TLP (self-governing) status

- records all significant milestones for posterity

Apache Incubator

- individual commitment – community
- parallelization -> open architecture
- Dynamic Awareness -> issues & commit mail
- Shared workspace -> apache subversion / git*
- Agree how to disagree & decide -> Apache-style voting (+1/0/-1)
- A Shared Goal -> Open Standards
- Neutral Forum / License -> Apache Software Foundation

Keys to Effective Collaboration in Open Development

[Philosophy slides... being skipped]

- Small quorum consensus
– votes +1 = yes, 0 = shrug, -1 = no vote/veto
– just need 3 votes to move forward within 3 day window

Conflict Resolution via Voting

- Trusted “core” developers
– write access to the version control repo (shared space)
– work on what they want, when they want
– release pressure expands what they want to include the common goal of a complete distribution
- Development creates issues and conflicts
– choosing among features and alternative fixes
– avoiding server bloat
– setting project direction
- Voting is used to resolve conflicts

Apache Development Process

No offices, few meetings, many mailing lists

Thousands of releases

1-8 TB/day traffic on www

390 members (shareholders)

>2700 committers

4,368 individual CLAs

365 corporate CLAs (corporation licensing agreements)

97 top-level projects (+50 or so incubating)

“Apache is one of the largest software companies”

[Going through what Apache is, how Day worked with Apache, and how Day got started]

- Internet-scale leverage
– let others expand market
- Community Spirit
– self-directed volunteers
– constructive feedback
– devoted customers
- Worldwide exposure
– enhanced reputation
– improved recruiting & retention
- being part of something greater

The purpose of working with Apache isn’t just open source, it’s open development with collaboration.

On Stage, Roy Fielding to talk about Apache.
Credentials: Original founder of Apache.

900 – 930
We are all getting in and firing up the live stream. Things will be starting soon. Today is going to be very much about Apache and people’s involvement. Make sure to tweet and post questions.

830 – 900
Getting into Adobe and setting up for the day.

Setup:

We will be posting updates here throughout the day. Make sure to post any questions at: http://openspoon.uservoice.com/forums/142644-future-of-flex-questions-for-adobe

Live Stream at: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/flexsummit

Yesterday’s Live Blog:
http://www.spoon.as/2011/flex-summit-live-updates/

Format hints.

Slide Content:
- level 1
– level 2
— level 3

Questions from the crowd
Q&A: Questions? Answer.

New Section / New Slide
Section Header

*All content is presented in reverse order.

Tweet questions to @spoonproject

Group consensus that we want Falcon brought into the open source as fast as possible.

Adobe is asking what is more important. Productivity features (such as “Edit and Continue”) or Falcon compiler complete?

Falcon Session

Q&A: Once in Apache, will Adobe continue working on this? “It will be open source and the Apache/Flex governance can choose if it is a priority”
Q&A: When? When falcon gets donated.
Q&A: Will this be donated? Yes.

Seeing example apps running. They look really good.

AS code -> falcon front end / falcon js code gen -> google closure compiler -> faster JS Code

Cons:
- not as “HTMLey” (SEO, accessibility, etc)
- potentially not as fast
- harder to leverage future HTML tooling

Pros:
- support existing Flex apps
- leverage FB tooling

Approach
- HTML, JS, SVG
- Still running Flex SDK logic (talking to a “display list” API)

- “Falcon JS” refers to two experimental utilities:
– AS-> JS
– MXML -> HTML/CSS/JS

Falcon JS Session

Monocle demo now. Monocle is a future tool to get data about your running application.

next flex testing engine

experiments with advanced data grids, trees, datepickers, color pickers, etc

demos on new spark components, flex testing framework, and monocle

Q&A: what happened to “edit & continue”? “tabled to falcon discussion”

Q&A: will monocle be open sourced? “no, it will be continued as a proprietary software”

Q&A: will flash builder be open sourced? “no, it will continue to be developed on”.

- Tooling
– Flash Builder
— will release support for apache flex
— removing unpopular and expensive to maintain features: Design View, DCD, and Catalyst workflows
– compilers (will discuss later)
– flash catalyst discontinued (with catalyst cs5.5 support for flex 4.5)
– monocle continues as a priority

[Breaking for lunch]

Lots of discussion about other companies (Apple, Microsoft, Android/Google) working with Adobe and the runtimes. Long story short, they can’t control other companies but they have years of commitment for Flash Player.
“We have every interest that our runtime technology is supported across as many platforms possible”.

Q&A: What is the plan to get trust back? (paraphrase) We are doing it now. Working on it and by executing our plans we will show our commitment.

(I’m not looking to beat up on anyone, but he is eating crow and apologizing for some bad communication by some individuals within Adobe.) He says he is doing this Summit to fix the confusion, provide clarification, and rebuild trust.

“Adobe is committed to building applications with both Flex and HTML5, not just HTML5.”

“Flash isn’t just focused on gaming and video. Gaming helps push the envelop, but everyone can benefit from the improvements.”

- Runtime innovation focused on gaming and premium video
— working on updated roadmap; whitepaper expected in jan.
— will provide answers on concurrency and windows 8

Q&A: What about AIR for desktop? Yes, AIR for desktop is supported.

- AIR (and Flex) continue to be supported on new devices and OS versions for Android, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablets OS (via RIM)

- Apache Flex should target released runtimes (FP11/AIR3+)

Q&A:

“How many people are still involved on Adobe’s side?”
Flex (Adobe) people on Flex “dozens of people”

“What about Flex versions prior to Flex 4.6?”
They will provide continued support. For incubation they focused on 4.6 but will work to include 3.x branch.

Requesting by the audience for contributions:
- blazeds for .net
- server side ActionScript
- alchemy
- lsds
- lccs
- tlf
- gravity
- fxg

Contributing:
- Flex SDK 4.6
- New Post-4.6 Spark Components
- Testing framework
- falcon compiler
- falcon js
- blaze ds

Adobe is making changes. Adobe will continue to contribute, they just can’t be the sole supporters of Flex anymore and are looking for contributions.

1045
Danny Winokur is up, talking about Flex & Flash Platform Updates.

“For years to come Flex is going to be the best way to make applications for the web and desktop.”

Flex – Apache Incubation Proposal
Being written and will be posted after summit.

1015 – 1040
David is done. We are moving on to introducing the room, person by person.

In the room (forgive misspellings):

From Adobe
Andrew Shorten
Deepa Subramaniam
Danny Winokur – VP
Greg DeMichillie
Scott Castle – Tooling
Thibaut Imbert – Flash player
Greg Wilson – Evangelist
Christophe Coenraets – Evangelist
Michael Chaize – Evangelist
Holly Schinsky – Evangelist
Alex Harui – Flex Dev
Slavik Lozben – Flash Player
Carol Frampton – Flex Dev
Garth Braithwaite – Nerd Radio / UX
Michelle Yaiser – Content and Community Manager
Alan Greenblatt – Enterpise
Roy Fielding – Principal Scientist with Day Work and Apache Expert
Alison Huselid – Product Managing Director

Non-Adobe
Alex H. – HSBC
Thomas – UBC
Mike Labriola – Digital Primates / Spoon
Adam Flater – Roundarch
John Rose –
John Quark – JP Morgan
Alec G. – JP Morgan
Mora Howard – VMWare
- missed -
Greg Owen – Effective UI
Jonathan Campos – Miller and Associates / Spoon
Leif Wells – Measure Progress / Nerd Radio / Spoon
Aaron Peterson – Development Arc
Andy Stry – Paychecks
Joao Fernadez –
Joao S. – Financial Sector
Brian Cotek – Government Sector
- missed -
Fabian Nicollet
Dirk Eisman – HMR
Jesse Warden – WebApp Solution

945 – 1015
David Wadhwani is giving us a high level “heads up” as to Adobe’s plans. Nothing is special here, just setting context before getting into the next 2 days.

Q&A:
Where does enterprise fit into this map?
“Primary focus of the company is around digital content create and digital marketing… there is no business without a relationship with IT”

930 – 945
Introductions and a view of agenda. Everything is built around open discussion.

830 – 930
The summit ’20′ are arriving at Adobe in a room made for about 100. Adobe folks are making up the remainder of the seating. We are all just chatting right now. We will be starting in a few minutes.

Throughout the day we will try to continue updating information from the Flex Summit.

Don’t forget to post questions on uservoice.

As Adobe said in their post, “due to budget, we were unable to invite everyone we would have liked to the summit.” We thought that it would be a good idea for the whole community to be able to have a voice at the table during the summit.

Do you have questions about the Future of Flex? About the Apache Foundation? Ask them at http://openspoon.uservoice.com/. We will do our best to get these questions answered as quickly as possible.

Please take the time to read the questions, vote on the ones you would like to have answered and write new questions if your concern is not already expressed.

We will be linking to summit blog posts and interviews here and on Twitter (@SpoonProject) so stay tuned for more information.

HTML/JS versus Flex arguments are absurd. This is not about one or the other. That is a construct of the media and sensationalism, not the needs of the software we craft for our clients. As developers, it is our responsibility to choose the tools most appropriate for the job. Choosing tools for any other reason is irresponsible.

It is a spectrum. Right now, HTML/JS solutions are not practical for building and maintaining applications of the same size and scale as those that we routinely build. Flex is. The scalability of applications built with HTML/JS will increase over time through the efforts of organizations such as Apple, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and a vibrant open source community. As the capabilities of technology change, you will have a choice. Choose the technology that best suits your needs.

Flex in an Open Development World

Flex is becoming an open development project. As a community driven project we can:

• Use the significant volunteer and sponsored workforce to tackle defect and performance issues.
• Consider barriers that prevent the extension of the framework and the building of external libraries as defects that need to be fixed.
• Encourage the next generation of component developers to build with confidence.
• Provide world class testing of the code base
• Provide fixes in nightly builds within days of an issue’s submission.

Raising the Bar

In 2007 Bruce Eckel, of Thinking in Java fame, mentioned that he saw Flex as a Domain Specific Language(DSL) for building user interfaces in Java. This is an interesting perspective. What if Flex is a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for building user interfaces, and what if it were unbound from a particular mid-tier or virtual machine. Imagine what that would mean to you as a developer.

Modern browsers have a virtual machine built in which can do a tremendous job of executing JavaScript. While they don’t do everything the Flash Player does, they are gaining ground and can perform a growing subset of the functionality. The phones we carry have powerful native runtimes. So then, why should this proven DSL be tied to any specific environment?

Flex can be independent of the Flash Player. Developers should have options when compiling their applications; target Flash, AIR or any technology that suits your purpose. We want to allow you to unlock the power of Flex as a DSL.

Build your UI with Flex. Deploy it wherever you want.

Flex is an extremely effective tool for building applications and has potential in the future as a DSL, untethered to a specific runtime.

Michael Labriola

What Adobe is Providing

As Adobe has announced, it is preparing a proposal to the Apache Software Foundation to incubate the Flex SDK and related projects. They are contributing existing code, code in progress, testing tools and even their next generation compilers along with providing Flex engineers to contribute to the project on a full time basis.

What Spoon is Providing

The Spoon Project’s mission is to foster a community partnership with Adobe and assist with stabilizing the Flex SDK through fixing bugs, providing for complete coverage of unit tests for the framework, and help contribute to the architecture of Flex going forward. With the contribution of the Flex SDK to the Apache Software Foundation, members of the Open Spoon Foundation and the Flex community will be managing the project as equal partners with Adobe. Through the ASF’s well established community anybody that wants to participate will be welcome to do so.

What You Can Provide

You are invited to participate. The members of the Spoon Project hope that you will want to be involved. There is a lot to do; open source software is beneficial for everyone. It is also a lot of work.

There are multiple ways for people to get involved, with many levels of time and responsibility that individuals can commit to. Take a moment to review the roles in the Apache structure here and you see where you might fit in from a development perspective. We will be planning Code Jams and bug fixing events, architectural discussions, and version planning.

There is also plenty to do from a non-development perspective as well. We will be documenting everything, providing educational events for the community, and promoting the merits of Flex as a stable, mature and valuable platform for developing applications.

A Call To Action

Our message today is this: The Flex SDK belongs to the Flex community. We have a great tool to do powerful things. It can be even better. As we collectively take responsibility for the framework, we can evolve it further as platform for years to come. Each and every effort rewards us all.

We would like to thank the many of you who have already emailed volunteer@spoon.as and offered your help. In the coming weeks we will continue to communicate and begin providing detail on how we can all work to develop Flex through Apaches meritocracy-based model.

If you haven’t yet done so, and are interested in helping the entire community, then email volunteer@spoon.as today and let us know how you might like to help. Be sure to include what you are interested in doing so that we can be sure to include you in any relevant communication.

We want to thank Adobe for the engineering effort that have gone into Flex to date, as well as the contribution of the framework to the community. We are excited to take these next steps forward as a community, and are looking forward to what we will accomplish together as a community.

Joel Hooks
President
Spoon Project

The project will be jointly led by developers from the Flex SDK team, members of the Spoon Project, key developers from the community and contributors from enterprise companies using Flex.

Continued development will happen under this new governance model.

The Open Spoon Foundation board and officers are excited by these continued developments and looking forward to the collaboration. Details will be evolving rapidly, check back here for continued updates.

–Updated 11/15/2011 to clarify Apache Software Foundation now that the news is public.

I am happy to announce that on Friday the 12th the Spoon Board closed submissions for Spoon Officers and voted on candidates that submitted their information.

I want to point out that voting wasn’t simple and there were many excellent candidates. Many of whom sadly had to be turned away from one of the three positions we had open. We, the Board Members of Spoon, hope that those that were turned down still join Spoon in one of our other many open positions. I am sure you will be contacted shortly with more possible opportunities.

Without any further ado, the Officers of Spoon.

	President	Treasurer	Secretary
	Joel Hooks	Kevin Korngut	Nicholas Kwiatkowski
	Universal Minds	Miller & Associates	Michigan State

Project Leads within Open Spoon Foundation.

	Technical Lead
	Michael Labriola
	Digital Primates

Make sure to welcome these guys into Spoon!

~ Spoon Board

We will be giving this presentation at 2 times, so join in whenever is best for you.

These meetings will be delivered by Adobe Connect.

Meeting 1:

08/16/2011 12:00 PM CT

http://experts.adobeconnect.com/spoonintro1/

The recording is available here: http://experts.adobeconnect.com/p34ei9xhqkk/

Meeting 2:

08/16/2011 7:00 PM CT

http://experts.adobeconnect.com/spoonintro2/

The recording is available here: http://experts.adobeconnect.com/p4tddzgghzw/

Hope to see your there.

~ Spoon Board

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