I've been working with the user group manager of SeaFlex to improve the meeting content and reliability. We've been coming up with ways to revitalize the meetings through better participation from the group members, improving the website, and getting more involvement from the community. We've had a lot of success in getting donations from publishing companies to donate books to use for prizes and to review. We're working on lining up some incredible speakers for 2008 meetings.

There's the Flex 3/AIR pre-release user group tour which will be starting it's tour of over 50 cities worldwide, here in Seattle. We'll have some incredible prizes and hear some speakers talk about all the exciting new features in the upcoming releases of Flex and AIR. There will also be a surprise topic that will likely create a lot of buzz in the community.

I encourage any readers to comment this blog with topics they would like to see in the lineup of meetings for 2008. We'll be making sure each and every meeting is worth attending. We admit that we haven't been doing a stellar job of keeping meetings worthwhile in the past. We also have been inconsistent in holding meetings and canceling at the last minute. We hope this all changes.

To make all these great changes, we'll need support from the community, especially here in Seattle. We need feedback on what you'd like to see and if you have a skill you'd like to share with others, let us know when you could present to the group. Usually, a presentation could last for 45 minutes or so. That may seem scary but once you're up there, the time flies by, especially during Q&A.

One of my primary goals for 2008 is to strengthen the SeaFlex members. This means educating, networking, and empowering the members in the field of Flex development. Help me make sure that happens!

Adobe has had a tough time coming up with the final logo for the AIR platform. Now they've settled on a logo design that looks great! You can read the details about it here. Notice on the blog that there might end up being some contests for coming up with great desktop backgrounds!

I want to encourage all of you out there to download the vector versions from that blog and make some killer backgrounds. Spread the word!

Here's some videos from MAX Barcelona of Ely Greenfield presenting some of the concepts the Flex team is considering for Flex 4. This stuff should make designers very pleased. I never cease to be impressed with how well the Flex team "get's it". The concept is to separate the model, view and controller (this may sound familiar) so that you can create a component with core concepts such as the data it holds, the pieces it has and the behaviors it will exhibit. Then, if the look needs to be changed you set styles on the pieces, and the rest of the code stays in tact and continues to be bug free. None of the items in the videos are guaranteed to be in Flex 4, but it's clear that it's the direction they want to move in.

Ely has always impressed me and I must say that besides being an incredible coder and designer, he is also a great presenter.

If you're like me, you like to customize and tweak Windows XP to be all your own. I especially love icons. Since my Flex project folder is used so much, I made an icon to set as the folder icon.

To set a folder to the custom icon in XP, right-click on the folder and select Properties. Then choose the Customize tab. Click the Change Icon... button at the bottom and browse to select the Flex folder icon.

Enjoy!