Well, James and Alexis are just back from Brighton where they spent three brilliantly inspiring days at Flash On The Beach.

For those who don’t know it, it’s an annual conference on digital creativity and innovation, with a certain focus on Flash – one of the pieces of software we use to build websites.

All sorts of urgent work needs looking after now but we wanted to take a few minutes to share our highlights of the conference.

The only thing missing is a photo of the naked guy who ran into the building. The local police caught him before we could take a snapshot…

GRANT SKINNER
Grant Skinner showed really cool examples of smart phone controlled games.

Androideroids (rough cut) from Grant Skinner on Vimeo.

AIR for Android Wireless Slot Car Gas Pedal from Grant Skinner on Vimeo.

HOSS GIFFORD
Hoss gave a somewhat philosophical talk entitled ‘Things I have learned’, which he has not yet published unfortunately.
One of his pieces of advice was to keep busy tinkering with ideas during down time or lunch. This particular iPhone app example hasn’t turned out to be a get rich quick solution, but it’s been paying for his lunch everyday.

JULIEN VALLEE
Julien kept us dazzled from start to finish with tons of motion graphics pieces, one of them being the titles video for another of our fav conferences, OFFF.

OFFF Paris 2010 Sponsors titles from Julien Vallée.

STEFAN SAGMEISTER
It was a thrill to hear design super hero Stefan Sagmeister talk to us in person at the Brighton Corn Exchange. Throughout his talk Sagmeister communicated very clearly his lack of barriers (by not even mentioning the idea of them!) when it comes to creative work. Be it typography, video, print or web, it seems his approach is to let the idea bubble up amongst the medium. And then let the idea AND the medium, be the message.

Famous now for his 7 year itch, err I mean sabbatical, he has found it works well for the mind, body & balance sheet. By taking the year off every 7 years he found that ideas generated from that one year off have been the basis for the many projects over the next 7 years…

He also told us a wonderful story of character courage. After seeing her from the moving carriage he approached a unique looking older woman on the NYC subway (something frowned on culturally) & telling her how wonderful he thought she looked wound him up in an hour long discussion & a meeting of minds. He left us with a remark to inspire future random meetings & getting out of one’s comfort zone, ‘Being brave always works out for me’.

You may wish to view his popular TED Talk here (it was virtually the same talk at FOTB) .

FLORIAN SCHMITT
The Hi-res co-creative director gave a really engaging & intelligent talk detailing wonderful projects including ‘Thinking Spaces’ for The Economist, the innovative Love Letters To The Future & J12 Marine animated spot & site design for Chanel.

All sorts of approaches to work & life were discussed. He left us with this rare advice “Have Kids. They help you look at the world differently. They help you look up.”

Hi-Res' work for Chanel's J12 Marine

NANDO COSTA
Brazillian born & US based designer & director Costa took us through his process (both experimental & commercial). He designed & directed the beautifully subtle & moving FOTB titles sequence (try it full screen in HD) & also gave us a behind the scenes look at the immensely layered Modest Mouse music video “Whale Song”.

FOTB 2010 Titles from Süperfad on Vimeo.

Nigel is the chief minimiser in the Weetabix Minis Min Factory.

He suffers a minimising accident as he is creating the Weetabix minis.

The ad ends with a call to action to Find Nigel.

www.findnigel.com is a colourful quirky look inside the Weetabix Minis Factory as you travel around trying to Find Nigel.

The site integrates some really nice video and game play to make a really enjoyable and engaging online world.

The game play within the site is short and sweet with some really fun little mini games, excuse the pun.

The games take you through the factory in as you blast chocolate squares into the minis and back massage your way to Finding Nigel.

In the end you Find Nigel hidden in the Canteen and return him to his normal size.

The game play element is continued as you submit your initials and time to the leaderboard.

Unfortunately my score got a rousing “Your time puts you in position 23628 – sadly not enough for the Minis Hall of Fame. Why not try and better it?”

That said the 23K people who have submitted scores and spent approximately 3-5 minutes on the site, is a reflection of the early success of the campaign.

“After all if it’s not small and chocolaty its not a Weetabix Chocolate Mini”

Find Nigel was created by UK Digital Agency Skive.

To date iPhone App development has been restricted to Apple’s own development tools, alienating arguably the largest developer group; the Flash community.

In a nut shell this will see both development times and the cost of iPhone Apps falling as the development community expands and the authoring process of Apps becomes less restrictive.

Flash’s animation capabilities and also the recent introduction of technologies such as Augmented Reality are sure to be featured in up and coming iPhone Apps.

A limited number of Flash authored Apps, created from a private beta of CS5,  have been created and are live on the App store.

Check out Adobe’s introduction of the new CS5 capabilities on their YouTube Channel.

For any Flash developers out there who want to access to CS5  Sign-up is now available although it is unlikely that CS5 will be out for beta release until 2010.

Find out more about the new Adobe Flash Professional CS5 or Adobe Labs: Applications for iPhone on the Adobe site.

The application is borne of a new Flash Framework; Hype created by Davis and Branden Hall another prolific Flash developer.

Check out the app in motion or get a copy for yourself at sidewaysmobile.com