gotoAndSki 2012

Just back from another gotoAndSki conference in Switzerland and what a blast it was! Just as last year I went to Switzerland with @thomasnesse and @smest for almost a whole week, just to be sure not to miss out on good snow. The first day was simply EPIC!!!

50 cm powder snow, cloudy but with thin skies so there was plenty of contrast and no sunburns. We went offpiste until our legs got cramps and then some. When the conference started a few days later, my legs still hurt so on the sunniest day I spent some hours teaching @inspirit how to snowboard and refreshing the memory of @devboy_org. I was pretty proud to hear that Eugene did a black slope all by himself, only the day after! (while cursing @funkysoul and the others for picking that route).

Eugene delivered a great talk about his AR library - in2ar - that now is completely rewritten and free of patents. It was especially impressive to see this running on mobile phones using AIR and Native Extensions! Other favorite talks were @quasimondo’s return to public speaking. His session “The naked pixel” is guaranteed to fill any conference room! Dominic’s session was also quite nice and worked as a primer on Ruby as well.

It was great fun to meet attendees from last year and to meet some new faces like Franto - one of many that I’ve followed in the Flash community for many years and only met now. I also talked to his buddy @sHTiF that has written a great 2D engine for Stage 3D (and a Starling alternative) that is called Genome2D. I have to finish up a couple other projects first, but then I’ll definitely test how this engine plays with my MineGunner project! Seeing Adobe’s @tomkrcha demo the Genome2D engine on an iPad 2 with 7000 sprites running at 60fps really convinced me that Flash on devices is here to stay!

I had a great week in Stechelberg so a big thank you to @fcolaco & @almeidavid_ for organizing yet another great event! Given how bad the snow has been here in Norway this year, it was simply fantastic to get to Switzerland for this week. Just check out this picture - beneath that 2.5 meter high sign there is a road somewhere…