Andrew Shorten @ Adobe

For those based in or around London, I wanted to provide a quick update on the Adobe Flash Platform user groups that are available and encourage you to find out more about each of the groups and the events they are running…

One of the longest established groups, the London Flash Platform User Group (LFPUG) isn’t an official Adobe user group (so you won’t find it on groups.adobe.com), but it does offer a unique mix of presentations in an informal setting and attracts a good crowd every month. Meetings take place regularly on the last Thursday of the month near Farringdon – the next meeting is on July 30th, with presentations on UML for AS3 and the Mate Framework.

Next up is the Flex London User Group (FLUG) – with a large membership registered on MeetUp and a history of organizing several successful Flex Camp events, the FLUG is currently undergoing a change in leadership and the newly-formed team is starting to put ideas together for more regular meetings. Without any meetings currently scheduled, I’d recommend that you sign up to the MeetUp site so as to receive information on upcoming events as they are confirmed. If you’re interested in helping out with presentations or can contribute in other ways, then please do let me know I can put you in touch with the user group managers.

Finally, there is a new Adobe RIA User Group, which has been setup by Skills Matter to provide information on Flex, AIR and LiveCycle to more of an enterprise developer audience. I’ll be presenting an ‘Introduction to Flex 4′ at the inaugural meeting on August 19th, with my colleague Ben Forsaith presenting an ‘Introduction to BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services 3′ at the follow-up meeting in September. For more information about these meetings and to register visit the event website.

User groups are a great place to meet like-minded developers, watch technical presentations and get information on the latest tools, technologies and frameworks – if you’re developing with Flash in some way I’d strongly recommend you join one. If you’re not based in London, but would like to attend or start your own user group, then you can find more information at the Adobe Groups website.

If my earlier post regarding the Morgan Stanley Matrix application was of interest then I’d recommend that you sign-up for a free webcast entitled “Transcending the client experience” which is being hosted by Finextra and Adobe next Monday.

The 75 minute long session will look at how developers at financial firms integrate real-time data, with the delivery of audio, video, reports and rich interactive charts into trading applications.

The Global Director at Morgan Stanley responsible for the Matrix application will be presenting and taking part in the panel discussion (alongside representatives from Lab49, Adobe, Societe Generale and Credit Suisse) so it will be a good opportunity to learn more about the Matrix project and the experience they gained from implementing a large-scale RIA with Adobe’s Flash Platform.

More details about the event, which takes place on Monday 27th July at 2pm (UK), are available here (note: you need to register for this session).

I’m not sure when this data was published on Adobe.com, but as part of the revamped “Flash Platform for enterprise applications” page, there is a link to a set of statistics that relate specifically to the availability of Flash Player within enterprise organizations.

We’ve published statistics about the general availability of Flash Player for some time (based on results from a survey undertaken by Millward Brown), which as of June 2009 shows that 98.8% of internet-connected computers can display Flash Player 9 content, whilst 86.7% can already display Flash Player 10 content.

The enterprise-specific results have been compiled by Forrester Research, based on data from over 50,000 of its corporate clients. The headline results are as follows:

• 96.8% of corporate users can view Flash Player 9 content (this is the version of Flash Player required to access applications built using Flex 3 SDK)
• Within 3 months of release (the survey data comes from December 2008), Flash Player 10 was already available to 36% of customers within enterprise organisations

The quick adoption of Flash Player 10 within the enterprise is encouraging for those considering the deployment of Flex 4-based applications once the final SDK is released – I’d recommend that you keep an eye out for updates to this survey data to see how adoption of the latest player continues over time.

For those considering deployment of Flash Player within an enterprise environment, check out the resources here for IT and administrative professionals.