The RunRevLive that lives forever
How a simple DVD set can conquer time and space

by Heather Nagey

The landmark event is over, but my inbox continues to fill with letters from Revolutionaries, both from the show and those who couldn't make it. They say things like, "Wish you were there!" and "It was so great but I know I could have seen more!" and "What did I miss?" and "When's the next one?"

Well, to handle all these queries, we've got good news. In this case, what happens in Vegas is NOT staying in Vegas… it's coming right to your desktop!

If there were sessions you missed, If you couldn't make it to the conference, or you want a permanent reference guide to everything you learned there, the RunRevLive.08 DVD is now in our store!

This DVDs contain videos of the sessions, of course Including some great footage of Web co-developer Robert Cailliau giving us the inside scoop on the unlikely journey taken to today's Internet. But perhaps even more importantly, it has all the stacks, samples, slides and materials given by the presenters. We're expecting to start shipping the DVD set in 6-8 weeks.

No, it won't be quite the same as if you were there - we haven't yet found a way to make video that lets you question the presenters, sample the food and socialize with the audience! But it will be a great and permanent resource. If you were at the conference you will have realized that it is not possible to be in two places at once. Here is your opportunity to see what you missed in the sessions that were running simultaneously.

We are just wrapping up a survey for conference attendees, where we asked them to give us feedback on how we did and how we can improve.

Perhaps the most repeated feedback we've had is "when is the next one going to be?" We're proud to say that 100% of the survey respondent replied "Yes" when asked "would you attend another Revolution Conference?! That makes us feel great, but it should tell you just how useful and inspiring the sessions were.

We asked several questions about the pre-conference learning sessions, and whether they lived up to their promise to teach programming in a day. Four out of five attendees said "Yes" with one comment typifying the response, "Even though I've been using Revolution now for about 5 years, I still learned some thing by attending the workshop."

What made the pre-day so exciting for attendees? They started with an absolute blank slate and by the end of the day they had a fully functional, media-rich, Internet-enabled, multi-user-database system they had built themselves!

Throughout the conference, members of Revolution's media production crew were filming away. Screen capture software was running on all the presenter's computers, for high-quality playback on your computer. The stacks and learning materials have all been collected. It's simply a superb learning resource for anyone getting started with Revolution, or just anxious to brush up on their skills.

Production on the DVD is still finalizing, and I cannot wait to see what people are raving about. For example, Scott Rossi's presentations explaining how to create awesome multimedia with Rev were among the best attended and highly rated.

Lynn Fredricks of Mirye Software Publishing live-blogged the event, writing, "[Scotts] preferred graphics format for working with Revolution is the PNG format as it supports multiple levels of transparency, and the benefits of importing vs referencing graphics files. He followed this with a discussion of comparison of object effects vs card effects, and combining these with audio playback. He also demonstrated how to layer players to achieve multiple, simultaneous audio playback with Revolution. Scott then demonstrated scripted music notation with Shakobox."

Organising your Code, by Ken Ray, also rated highly. Again, from Mr. Fredricks blog (thanks Lynn!):

"I sat in Ken Ray's session, where he reviewed a variety of products such as The Scripter's Scrapbook for organizing your code for easy reuse. This product supports 17 different languages, including Revolution, and has a feature that lets you search various vendor mailing lists for terms.

"Ken followed this up with a discussion on how arrays work in Revolution. He discussed how he has his own notation for differentiating between arrays based on their scope. Later, Ken compared how arrays work in Revolution compared with other languages.

"Then, he covered how custom properties work. Revolution internally uses a "c" to denote custom properties. He cautioned that "is among the keys" for poling for custom keys or properties doesn't apply to customKeys. He then demonstrated how you can store anything in a custom property, including additional stacks. Finally, he discussed how you can trap a getProp message and have your stack modify it."

So, how to wrap up this article? I don't think I can do better than let the attendees speak for themselves:

"One of the best conferences I ever attended..."

"I left with an overall feeling of being supported by a company that is strong, innovative, and growing. And is surrounded with exceptionally talented people."

"Looking forward to next year! I would like to know the dates/times for next year so I can plan my schedule and make my travel plans."

You can order the DVD now and take advantage of a promotion we are running until the end of May only, to get $50 off the list price.