It’s time for the second (annual) St. Lous Code Camp on May 5, 2007. There’s no actual camping (unlike some other ___ camps out there), just one day of sessions. Think of it as a mini-conference. See Brian’s announcement for more details. If you’ve been thinking of giving user group talks and never gotten around to it, Code Camp is a great place to start.
I’m in for two sessions this year, assuming enough slots are available for both:
Flying Boxes
It’s surprisingly easy, with Java and Swing, to build animated drag-and-drop “direct manipulation” user interfaces. I covered the overall topic in a talk at the Java User Group, and found that my “flying boxes” demo and code walk-through were by far the most interesting part. I’ll repeat that demo and explanation here, with more careful (and thus helpful) coverage of the issues involved in getting good results. As “filthy rich” GUIs become more popular, the ability to build such interfaces has become important in commercial business applications, not only in demos and games. The code can be downloaded from my web site.
Selling your Software as a Hosted Service
For the last few years my (other) firm has been selling an application as an Application Service Provider, charging a monthly fee for use of software that we develop, host, and support. (This is sometimes called the “Salesforce.com” model, but it predates them by decades.) Of course we have much still to learn, but in this talk I’ll share some experiences, tips, and advice on how (and whether) to use this business model for your own ventures. The last portion of the session will be a roundtable discussion, I’d like to learn from you too.