Last week I attended gotoAndSki('Switzerland') in a quaint little town of Stechelberg.

I've been too busy since my return to Sweden and I just didn't get to posting about it yet until tonite.

I flew to Geneva and met up with Fernando and David, (my Airboard partners in crime). We hung out at the airport for a moment and waited for Peter's flight from Norway.

Myself, Jeroon and Hugo carpooled with David as we drove in the evening towards Stechelberg.

We arrived to the resort and went straight to the hotel pub/dining area where we met with the rest of the gang.

The conference was held at hotel Stechelberg, which sits "surrounded" between some majestic hills a few minutes walk from an aerial cableway station transporting visitors even further up towards the upper resorts area of Mürren-Schilthorn, at 3,500m (11,483ft).

The hotel staff were very service-minded and genuinely friendly - I will definitely consider visiting this resort again and will no doubt stay at their hotel.

The resort area of Mürren-Schilthorn, is linked to James Bond as its restaurant 'Piz Gloria', is one of the world's highest revolving restaurant (the venue spins 360 degrees).
Apparently, "In 1967, the aerial cableway had reached the top of the Schilthorn and work had started on building the revolving restaurant when the infant Schilthornbahn Company ran out of funds. It was not easy to find people willing to invest their money in the crazy idea of building a revolving restaurant at 3000 m altitude.
During winter 1967/8 the British film company planning the next 007 spectacular "On Her Majesty’s Secret Service", sent out a location scout. The film, based on a novel by Ian Fleming, called for a mountain-top location accessible only by private cable-car".[1]

The view from up there was amazing and really unforgettable. In fact, there was beautiful scenery where-ever you look.

About the gotoAndSki sessions and speakers

For the past 5-6 years, I've been privileged to attend most of the major Flash related conferences around the world.
I find great inspiration when attending Adobe Max, "FOTB - Flash On The Beach", "Flash In The City" et al. These days, I don't attend these conferences to learn about coding or things technical. To me, it's about the ability to hang out with
like-minded people with similar interest; ambitions and curiosity for what can be done with technology to enable users to achieve certain "emotional responses" when they interact with our applications and solutions. Nowadays, these "Flash" conferences are synonymous with creativity - it's not about the Adobe Flash tool per se; it's about a plethora of interactive technologies and approaches, to enable us designers and developers to trigger or evoke that certain emotional response.

I attended the first gotoAndSki, in Norway last year. In which I said "if there's an award for the most original Adobe Flash conference ever, then it should be given to gotoAndSki".

As can be seen in the topics and speakers below, gotoAndSki('Switzerland') continues the tradition to keep the focus on great topics "for developers/designers, by developers/designers".
These speakers are no "rock stars" or professional speakers; they are tinkerers, designers and developers like you and I, and their topics and talks are not rehearsed and repeated across multiple events - they come fresh, straight from the source.

Day 1:

Mihai Corlan (@mcorlan)

Building mobile apps with Adobe AIR, Flash Builder & Flex Hero

Mihai is an evangelist from Adobe, Bulgaria. Contrary to many evangelists from across the pond, his approach is less "marketing" and straight to the point.
Due to his past as an engineer in the Flex team, listening to him speaking, feels as if you're listening to a fellow developer.
He took us through the Flash/Air/Flex APIs for building mobile apps.
Although I'm familiar with the topic, I always learn something new from his talks.

Peter Måseide (@petermaseide)

Making Flash Games: Case studies, tips & tricks

Peter's talk was great. He talked about his experience as a games developer/designer - first the theoretical part, then the hands-on part by stepping through some code; It was easy to follow. He was also kind enough to release the "Fun Grid", “a lightweight Open Source Flash AS3 game API for 2D/parallax scrolling games”.

Mihai Corlan (@mcorlan)

Building mobile apps with Adobe AIR, Flash Builder & Flex Hero

In his second talk, Mihai discussed Flash/AIR mobile app performance. What I took home from his talk, is that when developing for mobile devices with AIR, it's especially important to test your work on real devices. I also learned a few pointers on CashAsBitmapMatrix.

Day 2:

Dennis Ippel  (@masdennis)

Messing with ActionScript and the Kinect

As a Kinect owner and avid fan of this technology, I was really looking forward to this talk. Dennis, didn't disappoint.
He demystified the technology thoroughly and showed some great interactive examples.
He has certainly sparked my interest in researching this technology further.

Michel Wacker (@starnut)

Hot wireless data fudge

Michel's talk was great and inspiring and has given me some in depth ideas what to do with peer2peer APIs. The latter, is a topic thoroughly evangelized by Adobe's Tom Krcha (an excellent dude whom I consider a good friend). Checkout Tom's blog - it's jam packed with real world examples from his hands-on experience working with these APIs.
Looking forward to Michel's framework about to be released soon!

Tiago Dias (@funkysoul)

Developing for TV with AIR

I was really looking forward to Tiago's talk and he really delivered! I've dabbled in Widget development with Yahoo's APIs for my SAMSUNG TV set, done some Boxee apps and always wanted to experience the long-awaited "open screen project" for real.
Now I have a taste for what to come and I'm looking forward to get my hands on one of those development set top boxes!
Great session, where Tiago really shared his hard-earned experiences while developing some real word TV application with AIR.

Day 3:

Trine Falbe (@trinefalbe)

Taking a step back: Cognitive Psychology in Interaction Design

As an avid fan of Interaction design, UX and HCI (gained especially from my years doing my Masters in Interactive Multimedia), great inspiration came surprisingly from a "non-technical" talk this year.
Trine managed, thanks to her excellent pedagogy skills, experience as well as passion for her subject area, to really deliver a session jam-packed with cognitivite psychology goodies and observations that every
front-end developer/designer could easily apply to their day-to-day work. I haven't had the chance to check out the gotoAndSki's blog site yet, but if the video is available, I plan to show her session to every one of my digital designers at our firm - her topic is that important!

Ricardo Castelhano (@riccastelhano)

Flash+Arduino: a connection with feelings

Unfortunately, I only saw 3-5 minutes of this session as I had to leave for the airport, but from what I saw Ricardo seemed well-versed in this area.

Sandro Ducceshi (@_sandro)

Advanced Flash Accessibility

Arghh, yet again a talk I really wanted to attend but missed. As Fernando said, "You're always rushing when attending these events". But duty calls :(.
Good thing, most of these sessions were recorded, so I can watch them later.

Great work Fernando and David! And David thanks so much for giving me a ride to the train station!

Well that's all for now, see you in Norway in June!

[1] http://www.007museum.com