So today was day one at the AjaxWorld RIA Conference and Expo, and my first face-to-face meeting with Nolan Wright, Martin Robinson, Matt Quinlan, and other members of the extended Appcelerator family.  Very nice to meet all of you, and it was fun hanging out with everyone around our booth and the conference.

Turnout is a bit down from the NYC event I attended earlier, but the prevailing wisdom is that budgets for this sort of thing have been cut due to the recent economic slowdown.  As Jeff mentioned in one of his latest posts, the wise business is probably well served to see how they can run leaner, but from a code monkey’s perspective, things look okay at the moment.  The job market for technical talent remains reasonably good by all accounts, and even though Appcelerator recently made the move to close it’s Atlanta office, it seems that many options are available for the great developers and staff from the Atlanta outfit.  But one of the ways to run leaner is to forgo these kinds of conferences, which it appears is happening to some degree.

Jason and I attended a presentation on a Comet implementation today made by some folks from Sun, but aside from that we were kept very busy talking to people and explaining what Appcelerator is, how it works, and how it differs from other RIA frameworks in the marketplace today.  Some of the most positive feedback came from User Experience consultants involved in early stage simulation and requirements gathering.

A major feature of Appcelerator is that it allows one to create a fully functional web client that can be prototyped using stub services very early on in the process (and very quickly).  That work becomes the actual interface for the application, and is not a dead document like a requirements doc, Visio diagram, or hyperlinked PowerPoint.  This allows the full user experience to be crafted first, even before a data model (or even server side technology decision) has been made.  The UX folks were very intrigued by this, since they are tired of creating reams of documentation that nobody looks at and are obsolete once the developers start implementing the final product.

Laurie Gray from OneSpring talked to me a little bit about the tools they use for simulating the whole user experience, and they end up with a simulation that is very high fidelity.  However, the work she creates is ultimately thrown away, and there is still a disconnect between what she creates during the requirements gathering process and what actually ends up getting developed.  Hopefully Laurie and other UX folks like her will realize the utility of using a framework like Appcelerator to create a fully functional prototype that isn’t a prototype at all, but the actual finished web client application.  After all, what’s higher fidelity than the actual app you’ll deliver to the client?

All in all a good day.  I have some work to do before I hit the sack and get back at spreading the good word.  Maybe our paths will cross in San Jose tomorrow?