We’ve been looking for a new permanent meeting space for our monthly meetings since I left our previous host, New Perspective, a couple of months ago. Hack Pittsburgh was nice enough to let us use their space this month, but now we have a new space for our meetings. Starting with our August meeting we will now be using the awesome space at Agency 1903 located at the corner of Gist St. and Blvd of the Allies.

We’re back for the PittMFUG July meeting! And not just back to meetings but also back to our usual format. Don’t miss the new location – we’re meeting in the hackPittsburgh space this month. And now on the meeting details! We have two presentations planned for next week:

The Ins and Outs of ExternalInterface Joe Kromer
Joe will cover the basics of passing data between Flash and JavaScript. He’ll show some examples and pass along some useful tips for working ExternalInterface into your projects. This is a beginner to intermediate topic for developers.

What a Drag! Val Head
There’s more to a good drag and drop interaction than just startDrag() and stopDrag(). We’ll take a look at an example interaction and go through ways we can make it better both from the user experience side and the code side of things. This is a beginner to intermediate presentation for designers and developers.

PittMFUG July Meeting
Thursday July 15th, 6:30pm
HackPittsburgh Shop
1936 5th Avenue, Pittsburgh PA
The door is at the back of the building off of the alley way

We return to our usually third Thursday meeting time this month. Keeping with the trend of software releases, our May meeting will be all about the recently released Creative Suite 5. We’ll show you which of the new features we think are the coolest and most useful. It’s also time for our 6 month software giveaway! One lucky meeting attendee will win their choice of Adobe software product valued up to $2100*. And yes, this prize can be used for CS5 products! (*excluding Master Collection)

Please RSVP via email or on facebook, so we know how much food to pick up.

PittMFUG May Meeting
Thursday May 20th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

FYI: If the front door is locked when you arrive, call or text the number posted on the door to get in.

We will be holding a special Flash Builder event for our April meeting!

Thanks to Adobe, we’ll have food and extra prizes at this meeting, including a Flash Builder license.

Come check out the new Flash Builder and it’s brand new name. We’ll show you what’s new with this release and how it works with Flash Professional. We even have t-shirts for the first 15 people who make it to the meeting.

It’s going to be a fun night AND it’s going to be on a Tuesday, not our usual Thursday.

PittMFUG April Meeting
Tuesday April 13th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
2949 Smallman St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15217

The PittMFUG meeting March Meeting is this Thursday. We have a big meeting planned: three presentations plus a copy of Balsamiq Markup and four books to giveaway.

Building Your Own Map – Trenton Ahrens
Every web developer has leveraged google, yahoo, or mapquest to build location maps for their client. Sometimes so much functionality is not needed which gives us the opportunity to build something more visually appealing, however, building your own map can be challenging and cumbersome to maintain. You will be stepped through the process of making the map module for Devry University Admissions Portal which draws its map with some math, a binary file, and whos locations are marked by latitude and longitude. This is an intermediate/advanced developer topic.

Shared Stories in Workflow – Josh, John, Jacob
Ever wonder how other people go from design to code? Josh, John and Jacob will share three different workflow approaches. Maybe you’ll pick up some cool new ideas seeing how other people approach a project. This is a presentation for all levels.

Wireframing with Balsamiq Markups -Val Head
Val will demo Balsamiq Markups and show how you can use it to create wireframes for your project. We’ll be giving away a full copy of Balsamiq for free during the meeting as well. This is a beginner topic for designers.

Please RSVP via email or on facebook .

PittMFUG March Meeting
Thursday March 18th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

FYI: We’ll be holding the meeting upstairs.If you arrive after 6:30pm the front doors will be locked and you’ll have to call or text the number posted on the door to get in.

Working Smarter, Not Harder – Josh Sager
Get a bigger bang for your buck. Learn Flash IDE and ActionScript tips to save time on your next project. Less copy and paste, fewer projects with 10,000 frames and more centralized content speeding up client changes and routine maintenance. This is a beginner to intermediate developer topic.

Betwixt Or Between? – Val Head
When it comes to timeline tweens, we have so many options. This presentation will focus on the two options we have for tweening motion on the timline: Motion Tween and Classic Tween. We’ll look at how to use the new Motion Tween introduced with CS4 and how it compares to the Classic Tween we’ve all grown to love. This is a beginner design topic.

Please RSVP via email or on facebook .

PittMFUG February Meeting
Thursday February 18th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

Thanks to everyone who came out for our January meeting last night! Mark and Wayne both gave great presentations on various aspects of video workflow and covered a ton of information.

Here are all the links and slides as promised.  (The list isn’t complete yet, but we’ll be updating them as we get all the files)

Wayne’s FMS  Presentation: slides and example files (sorry, the videos had to be removed to keep the file size to something reasonable.)

Mark’s Video Pre-Production slides

Josh & Val’s Intro slides with all the links we talked about.

Our January meeting will be on Thursday, January 21st, 2009 at 6:30pm. We’ll be meeting in our usual place at New Perspective.  This month’s meeting has a theme of video. We have speakers lined up to cover topics from capturing and compressing  video to using FMS (Flash Media Server) for your video content.   Full details will be posted next week!

As promised, here’s everything you need to know:

Video Production Workflow – Mark Dobrowolski
Mark will talk about basic workflow presentation based on Pre-Production, Production, and Post-production for specifically web-only media. This will include tips for planning evergreen video; Advice for your videographer and animator from the web perspective; TV vs. Monitor viewing and Compression Round up. This is a beginner level presentation for both designers and developers interested in video.

Introduction to Flash Media Server (FMS) – Wayne Lincoln
Wayne will cover some of the basics you’ll need to get started with using FMS for your video content. He’ll cover how to get started with FMS or what benefits it has to offer. This is a beginner topic .

Please RSVP via email or on facebook .

PittMFUG January Meeting
Thursday January 21st
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

Hey, it’s December! The December PittMFUG meeting will be on Thursday December 17th, 6:30pm at New Perspective. We’ll be talking animation and Open Source Flash Development, so there’s a little something for everyone.

Here’s all the details:

Character Animation in Flash – Nathan Mazur
Local cartoonist / animator Nathan Mazur will demonstrate how he sets up a character for animation in Flash, some standard practices for exporting the animation to video, as well as the plugins he uses to streamline his workflow. He will also share some examples of his work that have helped him develop his current techniques through trial and error. This is a design topic for all levels.

Open Source Flash Development: Breaking the Barriers of the Flash IDE – Mick Rose
Open source Flash has been a revolution for Flash and has made a major impact on how people build Flash content. The open source tools available expand on Flash’s existing tool set, enabling you to perform such tasks as easily create full RIA experiences, AS2 to AS3 integration, & debugging tools. However, many of these useful tools are powerful yet lack documentation.

This presentation explains in step-by-step detail how to use some very useful open source solutions. This is an intermediate to advanced developer topic.

Please RSVP via email or on facebook .

PittMFUG November Meeting
Thursday December 17th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

FYI: We’ll be holding the meeting upstairs.If you arrive after 6:30pm the front doors will be locked and you’ll have to call or text the number posted on the door to get in.