I just got back from delivering my Flash 8 Bootcamp in Toronto, and speaking at the Spark conference in Amsterdam (awesome conference – more on that soon). I think the workshop went really well. I had about 30 Flashers with a real diversity of backgrounds attend. Everyone seemed to have fun and learn a lot, and I don’t believe I lost anyone over the two days (except maybe when I got into bitwise operations and color math – I’m planning on allocating a bit more time to that in LA).

It was a lot of fun to teach, and I want to say thank you to everyone who attended. I’d also like to thank everyone at FitC who organized the workshop (Shawn, Liz, Rick). I’m really looking forwards to the Los Angeles run. If you are interested in attending, check out the workshop outline here, or visit the sign up page here.

UPDATE: The bootcamp will be running in London, UK on February 11-12. Please read the announcement for more information.

Here’s some of the feedback I’ve received so far:

The depth of this workshop was a pleasant surprise. I usually learn better from books than lectures, but the knowledge I crammed into my head in two days was more than a book could offer, and I credit this to Grant’s skills as a presenter. Given the fact that he has a connection to the makers of Flash, he is knowledgeable of tricks the common developer would spend hours or days fiddling with until a solution was found. Learning development pitfalls is just as valuable as learning a platform’s strengths, and Grant offers both in great detail, which will save me time in the future.

Robert Boles

Multimedia Developer, DigiKnow

http://www.digiknow.com

http://wherethis.takes.us (personal site)

I wanted to see practical examples of all the new Flash 8 coding features, and not so much on the IDE, which is easy enough to learn on one’s own. I didn’t have weeks to figure out all that you’ve done, and didn’t want to wait until the spring when all the books start coming out, most of which are rehashes of beginner-intermediate material anyways. I wanted to get caught up, and up to date NOW. And I wanted it to be advanced, at my level, without needing to go into “what is a class”. And that’s exactly what I got. I was very impressed by not only the thoroughness but the level of technical detail and revelation of all the little undocumented tricks and workarounds that one usually only learns about by parsing through six months’ worth of blogs and flashcoders threads.

Joseph Balderson

Flash Developer and Professor, Humber School of Media Studies

http://www.joeflash.ca

Grant seems to know more then just Flash. Learning about bitwise operators was a cool side benefit of this course. Eventhough F8 is a “designer” release we learned about how to do everything via code which to me makes it a powerful developer release. Grants knowledge of the bugs in Flash was very helpful as well.

Chris Samuel

Vice President Technology

Cejun Solutions Inc

http://www.feelgoodwellness.com

Grant has provided all of us with something to aspire to. He uses flash in creative ways, which had never occurred to me. This seminar was inspirational and practical. I definitely got a handle on the new features and potential of Flash 8. Thanks Grant.

Mike Levy

IT Manager

Office of Research, University of Guelph