The event was ably compered by Seb of Plugin Media and Tara from Wired Sussex; I stayed for the first 4 out of 6 presentations before heading over to Mr Flood-Paddock's birthday drinks, and enjoyed most of what I saw. But what struck me more than in any previous year was how irrelevant Flash-the-tool was to the construction of some of the great work we were shown: you couldn't tell that much of it was built in Flash at all, which to mind means that we've finally hit that point where the tool gets out of the way and becomes just a means by which creative ideas are expressed. Apologies if that sounds a bit wanky.
Another surprise: we ran a competition to seek out and expose fantastic mobile Flash work. It was promoted to the local digital community and elsewhere, but in the end we received a single entry from a Brighton Flasher (god bless you, Ribot Minor)... which suggests to me that the majority of Flash developers either can't take their skills onto mobile or don't want to - and that therefore the promise of Flash unlocking a world of content for mobile just won't ring true. Which is a shame.
Elsewhere in the Brighton Digital Festival, we ran SMS voting - courtesy of some fantastic work which Mr Ribot had done to bring the vote to life. The proof of the pudding is in the eating: 803 valid voting messages from 101 different mobile numbers within a 20-minute period is pretty decent, considering that there can't have been more than a hundred or so people there...
Strange about the lack of Flash Lite entries, but not that strange. The player (especially the 1.1 version) has enough of a reduced featureset that it often frustrates newcomers. Especially the younger(?) crowd who have grown up with high bandwidth. Ironically, old timers like me who worked on 320x480 Flash content for a dialup audience may have an easier time embracing some of the constraints. Besides, isn't mobile design is a bit of an exercise in voluntary simplicity :-)
That said, you can do a lot with Flash Lite but you still need to understand handsets and how people use their devices both privately and socially. It's a lot of extra work/knowledge for someone who potentially works on web projects/print/animation all day and the resource material can be scarce. There are lots of technical tutorials and developer lists but not much in the way of an introduction to the mobile industry/mobile design etc. There's been a few good PDF additions on Nokia Forums lately but you have to know it's there!
Sorry I miseed the contest :-)
Posted by: Stephanie Rieger | December 18, 2006 at 06:36 PM