EMEARIA.EU

Flex 3.0 Prerelease Program

Also from Europe Adobe is looking for experienced developers to join an advisory panel dedicated to the next major version of Flex and beyond. If you are interested, fill in the online application.

North Netherlands Pop or Ria - Ecosystem ?

When I just started with Macromedia launching Flex 0.0 enterprise business unit, I was looking for enterprise system integrators who used to work with Flash Dreamweaver, had Java experience and were building enterprise apps. I came across The Factor E, a RIA full service house from the North of the Netherlands.

Creative director is Thijs Helfrich. I knew Thijs from my early schooldays in an average city in North Netherlands. At that time Thijs was lead singer in a ''famous band" Weekend at Waikiki, my best friend Jelke Haisma played the drums. The North of the Netherlands like that of the UK always had the best innovative bands and there was a lively life punk & new wave scene with, The Toilets, The Visitor and It Dockumer Lokaeltsje.

Long story short, I had not seen Thijs for about ten years, but our interests had crossed again with full speed. Thijs was building RIA's for several years with his team (at that time smart Folkert Ringnalda MD & brilliant conceptualist Marc Schipperhein later Technical Director of Ogilvy Netherlands).

One of the RIA applications was for the Healthcare Organization Tactus to create an Alcoholic Online Treatment portal, where addicts and professionals run through a partly remote programme. Later The Factor E developed the corporate site of Global Fortune 500 AKZO with Flex.

Thijs is also par-time professor at the NHL University in multimedia design. Design teaching is like a 'guilds-teaching', a new generation of designers is now trained by experienced RIA creatives in Web 2.0 and Flex. What interests me most is that naturally an ecosystem, like that of the independent music scene is established around UI creation and Web 2.0

That scene you can see at: Niels Bruins blog , Wietse Veenstra's blog, Raymond van Dongelen and if you browse further at several others sites from the North Netherlands Web 2.0, RIA scene.

PPM market needs Enterprise RIA's

The PSA (Professional Service Automation) and PPM ( Project & Portfolio Market) has started really several years ago. It was all about Managing Projects and Product sets easier and get rid of these spreadsheets. Who does now remember any of the hot companies of the end of the nineties like Evolve and Novient? Also Document Management (DM) vendors like Open Text started with a embedding PPM functionality to their standard Livelink software with Novare.

Two years ago I had a workshop with some key members of EMEA's Accenture's GACT (Global Architecture & Core Technologies) team. One of the discussions was they needed a new interface for Sap APO, Sap's Project Management Product, (Sap Advanced Optimizer & Planner).

In the same meeting Accenture mentioned that a better front end for Sap Business Ware House was one of their major requests they got from customers. They just could not work with the Sap GUI. OK we understood that and this resulted finally with the Visual Composer app with embedded Flex.

For the PSA/PPM market there is not a standard solution for a better interface yet. Still project management UI's are in general awful.

In the search for RIA Enterprise Flex apps I stumbled on the people from Webreakstuff. They say they have created part of the front end for their Go Plan in Flex. This would be extremely cool. We have seen now several CRM apps., even a full front end for Siebel, and several calenders being written in Flex. Now lets get something attractive to manage our real projects and portfolio's.

Dexia and Belgacom TV on Flex at Chateau du Lac, Genval 21-nov 06

Coenraets & Whatcott in Belgium

Chateau du Lac, Genval - 21 November 2006

Adobe Connect - Business Exchange is the customer event of 2006 where the best Adobe customer business cases go up on stage. Enterprise RIA related speakers :

Jeff Whatcott, Adobe Systems, Sr. Director Enterprise Solutions
Didier Baczynski, Dexia BIL on Flex
Bart Van Vlierberghe, BelgacomTV on Flex

Solutions Session - Developer Evening
18.00-20.00: Flex developer session Intro by Serge Jespers, President MM User Group, Program hosted by Christophe Coenraets, Adobe Systems Inc., Sr. Flex Evangelist

20H00-21H00 : Drinks & Pizza

Liever Flex dan Ajax - interview with Waldo Smeets (Adobe) & Franck de Bruijn (LogicaCMG) (NL)

Strong views from Waldo and Franck on Ajax. Compete or co-exist?

http://flex.typepad.com/ComputableWaldoSmeets.pdf

RIA without Ajax?

Intervista a Enrique Duvos (I)

Enrique Duvos gave an interview to Dev - Italy on Flex during his tour through Italy last week.

http://flex.typepad.com/Intervista.pdf