Scott Janousek

NYC Summer Workshops excursion (Creative JavaScript & HTML5 and Processing with Data Visualization)

Posted in Flash Mobile on 06.20.11 11:29

Last year, right around this time, I was giving my own workshop on Flash Mobile at Flash and the City.

This year, because of numerous factors (which I won’t talk about here), I decided to forgo FATC and travel to New York to participate in some workshops offered by some other folks I know and respect within the interactive community.

This past week(end) I had the chance to travel to NYC to partake in two really great workshops: Seb Lee Delisle’s (aka “seb_ly” on twitter) Creative JavaScript and HTML5 training and Jer Thorps‘s Processing and Data Visualization.

Here are some thoughts poured out about the excursion, in no particular format. I’m going to save up my “story telling” mode for after eyeofestival in a couple of weeks.

Travel
Jet Blue worked out pretty well. No snags except for a return trip delay.

I’ve taken the Train to NYC before. I haven’t worked out all the math, but it might be slightly cheaper to take the train, if you’re willing to do the 4hr RT commute versus the 1 hour plane ride from Boston.

Lodging
I stayed at the Ace Hotel, something recommended by a friend. Not bad. It wasn’t exactly downtown but it was close enough for both venues. The single rooms are more than adequate for a couple nights stay. I’ve had smaller rooms.

Since I only stayed a couple nights I didn’t really have a chance to explore more of the area around the hotel, nor the amenities. Definitely on my list for next time.

Workshops

Creative JavaScript and HTML5 training (Thursday & Friday) – The workshop was great. Most of the emphasis was on getting up to speed with Canvas.

Seb ran through Canvas drawing, particle generation, 3-D, game development with HTML5, and more.

“HTML5″ is not something you can do entirely in a day or two, but Seb did a great job at conveying the important pieces. The instant results were also gratifying.

I have a lot of thoughts about Flash and HTML5, but I’m not going to post them here. Rather, I’ll leave it to a new post.

Here are some the quick experiments I did during class.

For other people’s examples and some the class material, monitor the #creativejs twitter feed.

Our class was between 10 and 15 people, a good size for moving along with exercises and being able to cover a lot of material in a quick timeframe. Lisa also did a great job assisting Seb for logistical things, BTW.

Although we didn’t cover every part of the HTML5 spec, we did concentrate heavily on Canvas, where all the “magic” happens, and you can take your JS into many different creative directions.

I picked up A LOT of tips from Seb during this workshop, particularly with advise on tooling, frameworks, and other things related to HTML5. I’ll post about the stuff I find useful on my blog here.

On Day 1, I got a chance to sit next to Dan Shiffman. He was working on a cool piece of particle art: “RT @shiffman: cool piece of particle artfibonacci supernova particle spiral made in @seb_ly #creativejs workshop.”

For more info about Seb’s workshops, check out this page.

Processing and Data Visualization (Saturday) – I made it down to Jer’s studio in Brooklyn for his Processing workshop. We had a smaller, more intimate group for this workshop.

Since everyone was familiar with Processing, we were able to jump right into the mix with Data Visualization and how to leverage Processing.

There were a lot of good takeaways in terms of how Data & Processing can work well together, and Jer gave some pointers on how to go about looking at data, as well, as ideas on how to get interesting results from it.

First we started out doing basic scatter plotting and then moved into bar, and then grid representations of periodic data.

From there, we moved into working with the “We feel fine” API, and visualizing data from a data feed. I really liked the step by step nature of building up the visualizing tool.

Lastly, we had a chance to experiment with the NYTimes API. We built a basic tool for looking at historical data based on search terms.

Here are some of the experiments we went through. The nature of the workshop made absorbing the material fun.

There were also some hints at what might be “Processing 2.0″. I’m not going to say anything here though. I’m sure Ben Fry will announce what he can, on or after June 26th (i.e. eyeofestival).

For more info about Jer’s workshops, check out his workshop page.