It's just about time for us to hit the road again!

Steve and/or Matt will be attending the following conferences this spring:

Sungard Summit: Anaheim. CA. Our work has involved a lot of back-and-forth between our system and Sungard's Banner product. so it's time to bite the bullet and attend their conference. Rumor has it Steve will be co-presenting with one of our clients there...

cf.Objective() 2008: St. Paul. MN. Just going to absorb knowledge and enjoy being surrounded by smart people. This conference ROCKED last year; I expect to be wowed again this year.

WebManiacs 2008: Washington. D.C. Steve will be presenting on "Integrating with Salesforce.com" (CF. Flex and AIR) and "Using the Yahoo! UI Library" in two separate sessions on Tuesday. Steve will be found facedown on his bed shortly thereafter. but available for conversation later that evening.

We will not be attending CFUNITED this year - we needed a break from that one - but will likely be back next year. Still TBD is Adobe MAX and the User Group Manager summit.

If you're considering doing work with the Apex toolkit for Flex integration with Salesforce.com. you might want to sit in on a webinar next Wednesday at 1PM Eastern time. My talk on the same topic at CFUNITED isn't until 4PM that same day. so if you can't make it or have a scheduling conflict go hear it from Salesforce instead of me!

Text from their email:

Attend this live Webinar and learn how to build rich on-demand applications with the free Flex Toolkit for Apex. Join technical experts from Adobe and salesforce.com as they demonstrate the power of Flex and explain how to use the toolkit to create expressive. high-performance applications on the Salesforce platform.

• Discover how Flex makes it easy to build apps that give users a "Rich Interface Application" experience
• Learn how to use Flex and the Salesforce platform to build dynamic. interactive user interfaces and S-Controls
• Find out how to tap into free Apex Developer Network (ADN) resources to get started right away

Bonus Offer: Attend the Webinar and receive a 15 percent discount when you purchase Adobe Flex Builder 2 from the Adobe Online Store.

I can't offer the discount. unfortunately :-)

Presentation complete!

All materials are available at http://www.countermarch.com/salesforce

Got a little crazy at the very end of the preso - recompiled my Salesforce Query Tester Flex application as an Apollo app. Seemed like the kind of utility I wanted on the desktop while I do my development. Works great!

I expect that we'll do more work with Salesforce in the near future. The Apollo hook is an especially attractive one now - who really wants to have to log in to a bunch of different web apps to get things done? I could see a salesperson running a small Apollo app to run up-to-the minute lead reports or banging out quick emails to a "favorite" list of Contacts. Forget the browser...this is moving way beyond that now!

And just for the record...converting the Flex app to an Apollo one really was as simple as changing mx:Application to mx:ApolloApplication. To create the package I used this:

You will need the Apollo runtime from Adobe Labs to run the AIR file. And a Salesforce login too :-)