FITC 2011 Toronto Kicks off Today

Designers and Flash developers flock to Toronto for Flash In The Can 2011 Text and photos by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Flash In The Can (FITC) 2011 design and technology festival kicked off today in downtown Toronto. This three day event will feature a variety of technical and creative workshops and events for designers, animators, programmers and content developers and is a venue for creatives to discuss the latest trends and find work.

Adobe Impresarios: Deepa Subramaniam, Richard Galvan and Mark Anders meet with media Prior to the event, we were invited to meet with Deepa Subramaniam (Product manager for Adobe Flex), Richard Galvan (Product manager for Adobe Flash Professional) and Mark Anders (Adobe Fellow) to discuss the latest in content and app development as well as Adobe's newest release CS5.5 and its features.

"Mobile is a big thing for us," explained Subramaniam, whose Adobe Flex product focuses on cross platform development for mobile, web, and desktop applications. Adobe's aim is to help developers and designers create valuable applications that work seamlessly across platforms. Something that is becoming increasingly difficult given the new platforms such as smartphones and tablet devices.

Tablets are the big focus at this year's FITC "There are going to be 51 different tablet in 2011," said Richard Galvan, who marveled at how developers have managed to innovate along with the new devices. What many users don't know is that Adobe offers solutions for developing apps that can run on iOS devices.

Adobe has also openly partnered with Motorola and Google for Android as well as Research In Motion for the BlackBerry Playbook. These devices run Flash natively and have been using this as differentiator to Apple's popular iPad which does not run Adobe Flash.

QNX OS which runs the BlackBerry PlayBook has its roots in UNIX and runs carputers, among other things"The trend right now is design for mobile first and then repurpose for the desktop, not the other way around," Galvan explains. This is an evolution from Adobe's "Design once and deliver to multiple screens," mantra that they popularized a few years back.

Understanding that touch-enabled smartphones and tablet devices have different control interaction paradigms and tolerances from computer screens makes all the difference in creating applications that are user friendly and intuitive.

"Building content that looks good and works well is an expectation," Galvan explained, stating that standards are important in any sort of programming. An early walkthough of the event grounds showed around two dozen exhibits flanking the large central stage where most of the sessions will take place.

Flash In The Can runs until May 4 at the Guvernment.