This example was developed using Flex 4 and Merapi .NET in C#. You’ll need the Flash Builder 4 beta to build the Flex code and Visual Studio 2008 to play with the C# code. However, if you’d like to skip that part, you can download the binary for the C# portion from here and just run it from the command line.

Additional resources:

HTML view of the Flex code
HTML view of the C# code
The Google Code repo

Thanks to Bob and everyone involved with BFlex for having me speak and putting on a great event.

In early 2009 Roundarch and Tesla Motors partnered together to work on concepts for the Tesla Model S in-dash experience. The prototype used a framework that Adam co-created called Merapi. This framework enabled the dash user interface (an Adobe Flex/AIR application) to integrate with hardware in the car.

Adam helped implement the ideas Tesla and Roundarch conceptualized. This code was deployed into the working prototype car, which was showcased at many conferences featuring the early Model S. Adam worked with Dave Meeker, Zach DeBord and other colleagues at Roundarch on this project.

Related:

• Roundarch and Tesla Highlight Next-Generation Driving Experience at Adobe MAX 2009
• The Tesla Model S – Touch-Screen User Experience is Powered by Roundarch’s Merapi Project

Roundarch, a leader in digital design and implementation focused on building enterprise class Web sites, Web applications and next-generation “screen-based” experiences, and Tesla, the only automaker producing and selling highway-capable EVs, will focus on the development efforts behind the Model S prototype. The all-electric family sedan, expected to debut as a 2012 model-year vehicle, features a unique infotainment system — a 17-inch, fully customizable touchscreen display that can serve as a digital canvas for drivers and passengers.

Dave Meeker, Roundarch director of emerging technology, and Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen will lead a theoretical discussion Tuesday at the Los Angeles Convention Center on how the world’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer is using rapid prototyping to shape the user interface. Engineers from both companies will provide insight on how the conventional bricks–and-mortar dashboard will be transformed into a touch-based digital experience.

“We believe the next generation of cars will be connected directly to the Internet, and Roundarch, Tesla and Adobe are leading the charge,” said Meeker. “Adobe’s mix of tools from Adobe Suite, Adobe Flex and Adobe Air increased our efficiency in designing and developing the Model S prototype, so this is a very appropriate forum, and we look forward to a lively discussion.”

“The Model S will embody Tesla’s uncompromising attitude toward customers and a big part of that will be the in-car experience and the personal infotainment system,” said von Holzhausen. “We’re already very deep into development of the Model S, and we’re confident it will be the best example of a truly Web-enabled car.”

Tesla and Roundarch Sessions at Adobe MAX

Tesla is the only automaker producing and selling a highway-capable electric vehicle. The all-electric Roadster sports car – faster than a Porsche but greener than a Toyota Prius — will be on display at booth 435.

The companies will host the following sessions:

* “Reinventing the Driving Experience: The Tesla Model S”: von Holzhausen, Meeker and Roundarch creative director Zach DeBord discuss elements of the design process behind the Model S.

Time: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 1:30 p.m.

Location: Room: 406A

* “Behind the Technology in the Tesla Model S”: Engineers at Tesla and Roundarch will discuss how they developed the software and hardware technology that powers the user experience in the Model S infotainment system. Presenters include Meeker and Roundarch architect /evangelist Adam Flater, along with Brian Finn, Tesla senior manager of interactive electronics, and Evan Small, Tesla senior interface developer.

Time: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 3:00 p.m.

Location: Room: 406A

About Roundarch

Roundarch designs and implements digital experiences for the world’s largest organizations. Roundarch delivers web sites, rich web applications, mobile apps, social media applications, digital marketing campaigns and more for clients such as Avis, A&E, Hershey’s and the US Air Force. Roundarch’s unique blend of breakthrough user experience design and enterprise-class technology implementation is perfectly suited for the most complex problems in the digital space. Roundarch has offices in Boston, Chicago and New York. For more information visit www.roundarch.com and http://impost.roundarch.com/.

About Tesla Motors

Tesla sells cars online and has delivered more than 700 electric vehicles to customers in North America and Europe. The company’s goal is to produce increasingly affordable cars to mainstream buyers – relentlessly driving down te cost of EV technology. Tesla achieved overall corporate profitability in July, thanks to strong demand for the Roadster, the highly acclaimed sports car that’s faster than Porsche 911 or Audi R8 yet is twice as energy efficient as a Toyota Prius. With an EPA-estimated range of nearly 250 miles per charge, it costs less than $5 to refuel. Roadsters qualify for numerous incentives, including a $7,500 US federal tax credit, sales tax waivers and credits in several states, and incentives throughout Europe.

From: The Auto Channel

Related:

• The Tesla Model S – Touch-Screen User Experience is Powered by Roundarch’s Merapi Project
• Project Showcase: Tesla Motors Model S Prototype

We’ve released the first public beta on Google Code as well as opened a Google Group. There is also a repo for Merapi examples.

Here are the important links:

http://merapi.googlecode.com/
http://merapi-examples.googlecode.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/merapi-project

To find out more, keep an eye on our blogs. We’ll be releasing more tutorials and answering questions as they appear.

On March 9th I began a new position in the role of Technical Architect and Evangelist at Roundarch. As I stated in my previous post, this was a difficult decision to make.

Now that I’ve had a couple months of settling in, I’m happy to say I’m enjoying my new role and the team at Roundarch very much.

Roundarch is not just an RIA or technology shop. We are specialized in Information Architecture, Graphic Design, User Experience, Technology and SEO. Our work is in serving clients, and our process provides unique advantages to the fortune 100/500 enterprises we engage with.

Now that I’ve had some time to get to know many of the 175 people that make up Roundarch, I’ve learned to appreciate Roundarch‘s holistic approach towards solving problems. Although we do have experts that work within a discipline, we do not develop solutions in a vacuum. There is a belief at Roundarch that all disciplines (IA, UX, Design, Business, and Technology) should inform each other. This adds up to a group professionals who’s combined background includes graduate and post graduate level training in; HCI, Computer Science, Design/Art, Business Administration, etc… all working together as a team to create solutions for our clients. That process is exciting to be a part of.

There were many incentives that influenced my decision to join Roundarch. A few highlighted reasons are:

1. Leadership that believes in the success and direction of the company.
2. Working with my friend Dave Meeker on Merapi
3. Working with my new friend and mentor Gary Schwartzbard in the Roundarch RIA practice.

1. The Leadership

Roundarch‘s history comes from years of working under the Deloitte and WPP flags. Our owners saw a distinct value in the people that became the founding members of Roundarch and purchased the practice from Deloitte. It is a testimony to the leadership that many of the founding employees are currently managers, directors, and VPs even today. This is a leadership the has a clear vision of serving it’s clients and valuing it’s employes.

2. Dave and Merapi

Another part of my on-boarding to Roundarch was working with my friend Dave Meeker to develop Roundarch‘s capability’s to offer unique services leveraging Merapi. Most recently we’ve done this by assisting Tesla Motors in the release of their new Model S electric car. You can read more about our involvement with Tesla on the Roundarch blog and in this press release.

Shortly after the release hit the web, there was a bit of a surprise in the Merapi community about our positioning around Merapi. Pieces of the text were (validly) interpreted by some to read that Roundarch now owned / had purchased Merapi. This is not the message that Dave or I intended to publish. Roundarch has and will invest time and money in promoting and developing the Merapi technology, however, we view the open source effort as a key part in the success of Merapi.

Last week my friend Andrew Powell raised some concerns over the future of Merapi, and the position of the open source project. For those of you in the RIA community, you’ve probably seen Andrew give talks about Merapi over the last year. He’s been instrumental in helping develop the concepts of Merapi and has helped promote the technology in a great way. Moving forward, Andrew will sit with me as co-chair of the open source project and help to ensure that a community focused version of Merapi’s Flex/Java connectivity thrives.

This week Andy, Dave and I spoke about what might be the clearest, mutually beneficial way to position Merapi for the community and companies like Roundarch that want to invest in developing commercial solutions with it. Here’s what we came up with…

The open source / community effort will be known as:

The Roundarch commercial effort will be known as:

The open source effort will target developing a solid core for Flex/AIR and Java. Andy and I will be handling how to approve members of the community who would like to contribute on the project. We’ll likely be asking for individuals or corporate entities to contribute first by submitting patches and then elevate their status to full commitor rights. This effort will begin this summer.

3. Gary and the RIA practice

At Roundarch we don’t follow the typical manager / employee hierarchy. Instead, each employee has their own career counselor. I consider it a privilege to have Gary as a counselor and mentor. It’s been my pleasure to get to know and work with him on a few projects already. Even in the current economy, we’re in need of additional resources for this team and others. Contact me at adamflater [at] gmail [dot] com if you’re interested in finding out more about Roundarch.

So.. that’s a rather lengthy source-code-less post for me.

thanks for reading the update.. more to come on RIA development soon
-adam

It is a exciting time in the world of Web technology and User Experience design.

With every passing week at Roundarch, It becomes more clear to me that consumers are embracing these changes and that companies that provide products and services to those consumers are listening. We’ve reached a point where the Internet has begun to shift from that tool we use while sitting at our desks to our primary conduit of communication, regardless of the type of screen we happen to be sitting in front of or what type of device we decide to use.

The advances we’ve recently seen range from the widespread acceptance of social media, micro-blogging, and geographically-centered information to a wide range of consumer electronics that push and pull information to and from online sources. These devices include set-top television boxes, wireless photo frames and other consumer electronic right down to the cars that we drive.

As a company that has focused on the development of Web technologies for the last 10 years, Roundarch has been able to keep pace with these changes. Our strategy, user experience and technology teams are constantly working with clients to help them adapt to these changes, providing connected experiences that enrich lives, optimize business processes, and create experiences that are relevant, interesting and meaningful to their users.

We do this by experimentation, shaking out the things that don’t have the impact we desire, and focusing on the things that we believe are truly innovative and that will help further our efforts of invention. Naturally, in the process of experimentation, there is both failure and success. Failures lead to us being challenged to succeed. Small bits of success help to generate more ideas, eventually merging together to create truly great innovation.

Applying Roundarch Innovation to the Tesla Model S

On tonight’s “Late Show with David Letterman”, the world will get a nice look at the the Tesla Model S.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few weeks, you are probably already aware that Tesla Motors has announced the development of their new, all-electric, zero-emission, sport sedan that will enter into production starting in late 2011.

Tesla Model S

“It will likely be the first fully drivable car to appear on Late Show with David Letterman,” according to a statement by Elon Musk, Tesla Motors chairman, product architect and CEO. “I’ll be on the show along with the car, and I am looking forward to a lively conversation with Dave, a fellow sports-car aficionado and Tesla fan.”

Merapi, a technology produced by Roundarch, connects the Model S prototype’s sophisticated on-board computer system with peripheral hardware, resulting in a car that is primarily controlled by an intuitive, responsive, 17” touch-screen control panel that is embedded in this revolutionary vehicle’s cockpit dashboard.

One of the features of the Tesla Model S that has been getting a lot of buzz in online conversations and in the media is the giant, haptic-enabled, touch-screen that constitutes the Tesla Model S dashboard and vehicle controls. (See Photos: Tech Crunch – Wired) / (See Video: YouTube)

Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that the Tesla Model S is a prototype. There are going to be a ton of changes to the user experience of the vehicle as the company works towards the goal of mass production. What you see today is by no means what will be delivered to consumers when the car hits the street. That final product will be much cooler than what has been able to be put together in the prototype vehicle.

One thing is clear though, Elon Musk and the whole team at Tesla is serious about innovation and, like Roundarch, aren’t afraid to experiment with ideas. This is especially true when thinking about the user experience of the in-dash systems, and it has been thrilling for Roundarch to be involved in the development of the Model S prototype.

Thanks to Merapi, the Tesla Model S show car offers users the ability to interact with vehicle hardware systems by engaging with the car’s cockpit control center, including a touch screen consisting of HD radio integration, quick GPS navigation, streaming audio and other Internet and cloud-based data and information.

I’d like to thank the folks at Tesla Motors for giving us the opportunity to be involved, and for recognizing Roundarch’s Merapi Project as an important part of the Model S prototype technology. I’d also like to thank Roundarch for believing in the potential of Merapi, and giving Adam Flater (Roundarch’s Technology Evangelist and Lead Architect on the Merapi Project) and I the opportunity to push forward with the development of Merapi, turning it from an idea into a full framework that enables the connection between the Web, desktop and other hardware & software platforms and technologies.

For those of you reading this that don’t understand what Roundarch’s Merapi technology is or does, I encourage you to check out our Merapi Project Web site at http://www.merapiproject.net.

In short, Roundarch’s Merapi is a revolutionary solution for bridging traditional desktop and Web technologies, closing the gap between what has traditionally been a separation of the two.

Merapi’s key advantages include:

• Access to hardware devices: Browser-based technologies (Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, AJAX) previously did not have native access to hardware other than microphone and Web cam.
• Access to existing APIs: Merapi makes existing open source and commercial software accessible from the browser or from run-time engines such as Adobe AIR without the need for a server.
• Improved core performance of an application.
• Accelerated software development times for complex Web/desktop integrated applications.

We’ve been working hard on a few things related to Merapi, all of which we will be going into more detail on in the coming month:

• Merapi – Open Source Release: After a year of development, testing and refinement, we will be releasing an open source version of Merapi that will enable developers to connect the Adobe AIR platform to applications written in the Java programming language.
• The Merapi Platform – We’ve settled on a product roadmap that will take Merapi from a platform-specific solution to a platform in itself. Look out for some of the amazing things we will be showing off at upcoming conferences. While we will always embrace the Adobe platform and Java, the market has helped push our thinking of what Merapi is, and we will be supporting Microsoft .NET, Silverlight, AJAX and other Web & desktop technologies.

For more information about Merapi, check out:

• This recent interview with Adobe Evangelist James Ward
• This write-up on infoQ’s Enterprise Technology Blog
• The Merapi Project Web site (Which we will be revamping in the very near future)
• Or do a try Google Search.

You can also contact me – Dave Meeker, Director of Emerging Technology, Roundarch

Originally posted at: http://blog.roundarchisobar.com/2009/04/29/the-tesla-model-s-touch-screen-user-experience-is-powered-by-roundarchs-merapi-project/

Related:

• Roundarch and Tesla Highlight Next-Generation Driving Experience at Adobe MAX 2009
• Project Showcase: Tesla Motors Model S Prototype

It’s really great to see the Flex community cranking out cool examples with a technology that you’ve created. This is most definitely the case with the recent “Cocomo ready” Air Wiibot. These guys mashed up Cocmo, Flex, and Merapi to control a Lego Mindstorm robot with a Wiimote. So what’s Cocmo for? They’ve used Cocomo for live video conferencing as well as the ability to control the robot remotely. So, if my friend Jordan happened to have Nathan (our Lego Mindstorm robot) at her house, I could fire up this app at my house and control Nathan remotely using a Wiimote… really cool stuff. Here’s the YouTube video:

MAX Recap

For those of you that missed MAX there was a lot of Merapi action, here’s a quick recap.

First off, Tour De Flex.

Tour De Flex is an application created by Adobe used to explore components in the Flex community. Adobe used Merapi to connect the Eclipse plugin portion of the application to the Tour De Flex AIR application. You can get Tour De Flex at: http://flex.org/tour and read more about the Merapi integration on Holly Schinsky’s blog here: Flex/AIR to Java Communication Using Merapi.

Moving right along… There were a few new demos and a couple of Merapi announcements at the sessions we gave at 360 | MAX. One of the first demos I showed was Outlook integration. Here’s the YouTube video:

The next new demo was Excel integration. If you pay attention to the video on this one you will notice one of the announcements we made at MAX, Merapi is now in the browser! In this demo you will see a Flex browser application interact with Excel:

Thanks again to Universal Mind and Adobe for supporting me at MAX.

Coming up…

FlexCamp Chicago 1/23, FlexCamp OC 1/31, and 360 Flex | Indy 5/18-20 (probably)

I’ll be presenting at each of these conferences (assuming Tom and John let me in again.. they have yet to announce speakers)

There will be some especially interesting announcements at FlexCamp Chicago. Make sure you turn out if possible, otherwise, watch the blogosphere for the recap.

Thanks to everyone who has been using Merapi and giving us feedback on the framework. The creativity, ingenuity, support, and patience from the community has been excellent.

Enjoy the new release!

First of all, at MAX you can follow me on Twitter or BrightKite my handle is “adamflater” on both. By the way, the BrightKite guys were cool enough to setup a placemark for MAX. The placemark is “max2008“. That’s a valid placemark for checking in and posting your notes and photos while at MAX.

Aside from my scheduled events you’ll also find me at the Universal Mind booth throughout the conference. We’ll be demoing all of the apps we’ve been hard at work on in the past year, including our GIS / Data Visualization product: SpatialKey, and the MAX Award Finalist NASDAQ Market Replay. Market Replay is an application that I had the pleasure of working on with the NASDAQ team. Please vote:

The partner booths will be located at: Moscone West, Level 1.

My Schedule:

Speaker Dinner
When: Sunday, November 16th

I’ll be participating in several sessions at MAX and also attending the annual speaker dinner. I hope to see all the familiar faces as well as meet many of the other great folks in the Adobe community I have yet to become acquainted with.

Adobe AIR++
When: Monday, November 17th, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Where: Moscone West 2000

This is a session I’ll just be attending. Andrew Trice has been doing some cool stuff with Merapi and I definitely want to check it out. I’ll only be able to attend part of the session due to the Merapi session directly following this one. Andrew, we’ll save you the last demo spot at 360 | MAX.

Merapi at 360 | MAX
When: Monday, November 17th, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Level 2

John and Tom, the men behind 360 | Conferences, have always been extremely gracious about letting me speak at their events. This year they are hosting an unconference at MAX. The unconference will feature advanced Flex and AIR topics.

At the last 360 Flex conference in San Jose my friend Jordan and I presented on Merapi. We showed an AIR application controlling a Lego Mindstorm Robot in real time. At both of our 360 | MAX sessions we’re going to have a lot of people from the community present the Merapi applications they’ve been working on. You can count on seeing some pretty cool stuff from: Dave Meeker, Andrew Powell, Andrew Trice, Holly Schinsky, Joe Johnston, and me. We’ll be demoing AIR apps that integrate with GPS, RFID, Eclipse, Oracle, Outlook, Growl, MacBook sensors, and of course Legos.

You won’t want to miss these Merapi events and that’s why we have three of them.

MAX Birds-of-a-Feather (BOFs)
When: Monday, November 17th, 8:30 pm -10:20 pm
Where: Moscone West, Level 2

I’ll be participating in two BOFs on Monday night: AIR Gone Wild and the Intuit Quickbase Platform.

AIR Gone Wild is a BOF hosted by Greg Wilson from Adobe. We’ll be showing more of our Merapi goodness at this BOF. If there’s a question you don’t have the chance to ask in a session this BOF is a great place to come and ask it.

Intuit has a new platform geared towards Flex. It’s called Quickbase and it’s an interesting take on cloud computing. I had the opportunity to work with the platform on one project and I highly recommend checking these guys out.

Merapi at 360 | MAX
When: Tuesday, November 18th, 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Level 2

In our second Merapi session at 360 | MAX we’ll cover anything we didn’t have time for in the previous day as well as demo all the cool stuff from the previous sessions. Conferences tend to be a place where a lot of people crank on cool ideas they have. So, you never know, a new app might pop up between Monday and Tuesday they we’ll demo during this session.

InsideRIA Outlook, 2009: What Every Developer Needs to Be Thinking About
When: Wednesday, November 19th, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Room 2009

Rich Tretola, community manager of InsideRIA.com is hosting this session. This will be a panel format where each of the presenters brings their ideas on the future of RIAs. I’m pretty excited for this one, panel discussion are some of the most valuable aspects of any great conference.

Introduction to Flex Builder 3
When: Wednesday, November 19th, 2:00pm – 3:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Room 2005

This will be a great session for those of you just getting starting or thinking about jumping into Flex development. I’ll be covering all the basics of the Flex IDE as well as an overview of what Flex is as a whole. In my source code demos I’ll be integrating a Flex app with BrightKite, the site I mentioned earlier in the post, to show you how easy it is to consume data in Flex. I’m looking forward to great questions at this session. It’s always interesting to find out what people need to know about Flex.

All right, well I think that’s enough. Looking forward to seeing everyone at MAX!

-adam

As promised in my session at EclipseWorld [No longer up] today, I’m posting a recap of the session. My session was titled “Building Flex/AIR UIs for Java Using Merapi”. The session gave an overview of Flex, Flex Builder, and Merapi. I also provided some sample application demos using the Merapi framework. You’ll find a link to download the slides from the session at the end of this post. My session was slated as a 100 level talk so I covered a lot of basic, high level concepts regarding Flex and Flex Builder. I’m interested to hear feedback on the talk as I’m typically presenting at Flex centric events and EclipseWorld focuses more on Java development. My hope is that the session was valuable to those seeking an introductory look at Flex and AIR.

Thanks to everyone that attended and for all of the greatquestions throughout the session.

Download links:

Slides

Merapi Examples:

Mac Book Pro Accelerometer
Lego Mindstorm Robotics
Live GPS Visualization*
Sending Growl Notifications*
RFID Enable AIR Applications*

* – Part of Andrew Powell’s Blog infoaccelerator.net

To keep in the open tradition of 360 | Flex I’m posting my survey feedback once again. The Merapi session at 360 Flex | San Jose was really fun and was happy to share the stage with my friend Jordan Synder.

There was one very constructive comment about our examples. The examples that I showed were pretty basic and Jordan’s example was somewhat complex. Showing some deeper examples with medium complexity is a great suggestion for improving this talk and a great take away for me in preparing for my next Merapi session.

Thanks to everyone that came to the session and provided feedback.

Without further delay…

How to make your AIR app blow up with Merapi

Merapi is a framework that enables a bridge between Flex on AIR and Java at the desktop layer. If you need to access a Java api in Flex or a Flex API in Java, this is the right tool for you. This session will cover the basics of using Merapi to build a Java enabled AIR application. Please bring your questions and comments about the framework as well as any applications you want to show off. This will be an interactive session, you’ll be able to code along with the session and try out some Merapi samples.

Respondants: 33

What the user Expected? 90.91 %
Slides Useful: 84.85 %
Average Rating: 4.3030
Session Informative? 100.00 %

Was the speaker authoritive?

Answered questions very well and had in-depth knowledge of the subject material

Both speakers spoke well.

Oh man, they knew like everything about this stuff. EVERYTHING.

Seemed very knowledgable, and was confident in what they were presenting.

Adam was very knowledgable about the topic, seeing as he wrote the framework. He was confident in his presentation, and had very interesting content.

he is involved with the beta framework and created working apps

Both Adam and Jordan did a great job with their presentation. Jordan’s usage of Bluetooth via AIR to control the LEGO MindStorm was way cool.

adam and jordan are badass

Both speakers were extremely knowledgable. Jordan; however was somewhat soft spoken and monotone, as if she was not really interested in presenting.

Adam and Jordan really know their framework, and they didn’t have trouble fielding question from the audience. Unfortunately, Merapi is still in its infancey, so a lot of their answers were, “That’s something we’re planning on doing.”

I did not previously know anything about Merapi

Yes

I love how you have the authors of the various projects presenting on their stuff.

he was one of the leads on the project and seemed to have a good grasp of what he wanted to present and the way to do it

He knew what he was doing, explained it well

Both speakers seemed very authoritive with the toolsets.

Was a fun preso. Jordan’s robot rocks!

Loved Ms. Snyder’s application!

Was the Session Informative?

I had never heard of Merapi before

Good demos

It was interesting to see what Merapi was capable of and how it worked.

I learned a whole whole lot of things.

Good examples of what can be done with the project, and a good quick intro on how to get started.

I have a sense of what merapi is and is not

The session was example-heavy, which really helps when showing off a framework.

The session was example-heavy, which really helps when showing off a framework.

very much so

Basic introduction to Merapi, though it is in private beta.

he started with just 4 slides and then jumped into code

yes, but I basically knew all that Adam said, but the lady was all new, that was great

Were the Slides Useful?

There were a few slides to give background info then many examples which really helped

Primarily code.

They were pretty good, but it was really all about teh codez.

There weren’t any slides, just sample code. Which is much better than slides.

There were only a few of them before he jumped in to code examples, which was great. The examples were simple enough to easily understand everything that was happening, but still interesting enough that they kept the audience’s attention.

Not that they weren’t useful, just pretty much non-existant. Not a bad thing, hands on demos rock.

There weren’t many slides, but lots of talk about what the code did, so that was great.

simple and sweet

Yes code snippets were concise and easy to understand

There weren’t many slides because the session was driven by examples, but for what they were, the slides did provide the necessary information: what Merapi is, where to get it, and contact info for the speakers

There weren’t many slides because the session was driven by examples, but for what they were, the slides did provide the necessary information: what Merapi is, where to get it, and contact info for the speakers

good overall

Yes

but it didn’t matter. the code was the best way to describe merapi

cant remember the slides – i do remember the robot

Additional Comments:

The focus on hardware integration was interesting although unexpected. A demo of complex data manipulation using Java would have been a nice addition. There was some delay switching presenters’ computers.

Adam is such a badass that now I’m following him on Twitter. Also, I really liked the guest appearance by Jordan. She has a neat robot and I want to be like her (knowledgeable about robots; not female).

I had never heard of merapi. I walked in thinking it yet another cairngorm clone but walked away with an appreciation of it’s real domain. nice presentation. concise. And thank you for finishing when you were done rather than pull out a load of filler.

Good speakers. Great demos. Bring them back.

Very good. Would like to see solutions to deplyoyment and runtime intigration with java and air

There were no Air Apps that blew up.

Great demo from both presenters on using Merapi to bridge AIR/Java

Adam had several examples that were somewhat low-level, getting no more complicated then pushing random numbers generated in Java to Flex, and Jordan’s examples were much heavier. I would like to have seen something in the middle: perhaps how to leverage Merapi to do something on the OS that you cannot do in AIR. The LEGO Mindstorm demo was fantastic. It really drove the power of the framework home.

Adam had several examples that were somewhat low-level, getting no more complicated then pushing random numbers generated in Java to Flex, and Jordan’s examples were much heavier. I would like to have seen something in the middle: perhaps how to leverage Merapi to do something on the OS that you cannot do in AIR. The LEGO Mindstorm demo was fantastic. It really drove the power of the framework home.

speakers were very knowledgable

The Lego Mindstorm NXT demo was very clever.

Great example of hardware / air integration.

AIR controlled cars woot!

Dude, the Mindstorm stuff was HOT, HOT, HOT!

it would have been nice if the developers of merapi had more of the projects future planned and deployment issues decided upon but overall it was a good introduction to what merapi is and where it fits in a developer’s toolkit

exciting stuff

Great examples!

as a java developer this is a solid tool to work with AIR