As part of this year's RIA Unleashed conference, I followed the suggestion that has been made by many past attendees and added on hands-on sessions to our schedule. This year RIA Unleashed is a 2-day event, with the first day dedicated to half-day, hands-on training sessions covering a variety of hot topics in the RIA development space including Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4, AIR 2.0, Flash and AIR for mobile (i.e. Android), ColdFusion ORM and much more (for a full list of sessions announced so far and the recently announced schedule for day 1, you can check the site). Each of the sessions is being run by a recognized leader in that specific technology area.

I am really excited about this day and already sign-ups have been exceeding my expectations! So much so, that I wanted to make sure I get the word out that, due to the constraints of running hand-on training, day one of RIA Unleashed has limited seating (I am targeting 100 attendees in total and definitely do not have capacity for more than 150 - compare that to the 350 person capacity crowd we had last year for the conference day). Anyway, my point is, if you are interested in attending the hands-on sessions, I would plan to purchase your ticket soon as I expect them to sell out well in advance of the event!

I am excited to announce that tickets for RIA Unleashed: Boston 2010 are on sale now at an early bird rate of $50. You also have an option for a hands-on training day for $150 or you can combine the two tickets for a further discounted rate of $175. That's $175 for a full day of hands-on training and a full-day, 3-track conference - you cannot beat that! Both days include lunch and the Thursday night attendee party. Keep in mind, this is an early bird rate that is limited to the first 100 registrants. Tickets will not be getting any cheaper, so if you like saving money, act fast! For those of you who haven't attended in the past, RIA Unleashed is a conference focused on the entire Adobe Flash Platform stack including Flex,  Flash, AIR, ColdFusion and more. You can buy tickets at http://riaunleashed2010.eventbrite.com/.

We're already fortunate enough to have many exciting sponsors including Adobe, Digital Primates, eSyncTraining, Mura, Paypal and Universal Mind. All of them are helping to make this the best year yet.

While all the session details and speakers are not yet announced, I wanted to highlight some of what I have announced so far based upon your particular interests (Flex/Flash/AIR and/or ColdFusion). Keep in mind, if your interests cross over, as mine do, you can mix and match sessions and workshops on Flex, ColdFusion, AIR, Flash however you like:

For Flex, Flash and AIR Developers
Here's a summary of what is announced...so far.

1/2 Day, Hands-On Workshops

• Mobile Flash Development on Android - Scott Janousek
• Data-centric Development in Flex and Flash Builder - Michelle Yaiser
• Getting Started with AIR 2 - Elad Elrom
• Enterprise Patterns for ActionScript - Speaker TBD
• LiveCycle Data Services - Kevin Schmidt, Adobe

Speakers (conference day)

• Ryan Stewart
• Jesse Warden
• Jeff Tapper
• David Tucker
• Jesse Freeman (aka theFlashBum)
• Andrew Powell
• Mike Labriola
• Steven Sacks

What're you waiting for? Register today! http://riaunleashed2010.eventbrite.com/

For ColdFusion Developers
More to come soon.

1/2 Day, Hands-On Workshops

• ColdFusion ORM with Hibernate - Mike Kollen, eSyncTraining
• Building a website in Mura CMS in 2 Hours or less - Sean Schroeder, Blue River Interactive
• Customizing Your ColdFusion Builder IDE with Extensions - Simon Free

Speakers (conference day)

• Adam Lehman
• Raymond Camden
• Terrence Ryan
• Marc Esher
• Rey Bango (of the jQuery team)

Buy tickets today - http://riaunleashed2010.eventbrite.com/

Obviously I am biased, but I thought RIA Unleashed : Boston turned out awesome! Every attendee I spoke to was extremely excited and every presentation was packed. We ended up with over 300 attendees and had a great after party where even the beer was flowing thanks to Adobe (thanks Ryan!). Below is a list of presentation links (so far) from some of our speakers. I will try to keep this up to date as any new posts are posted. I will also add any follow-ups I find. Thanks everyone who attended and I am looking forward to RIA Unleashed : Boston 2010!

As of this afternoon and with just about 2 weeks to go, RIA Unleashed : Boston officially sold out all 300 of our seats! Thanks to everyone who signed up. I think it shows that the community is as excited about this event as I am. If you happened to miss out on tickets, I can add you to a wait list in case seats open up. Please email me via the Eventbrite event organizer contact form and I will make sure I contact you as soon as possible.

So, if you haven't already bought your ticket for RIA Unleashed : Boston, I have good news and bad news. The good news is there will be even more prizes to give away including a copy of CS4 Web Premium, Flex Builder Professional and ColdFusion Standard thanks to Adobe. In addition, we will have 3 licenses of FDT Pure thanks to Powerflasher. Finally, ThinkGeek has offered us several items from their extensive array of products to give away. This means you have even more reasons (as if any were needed) to come to RIA Unleashed.

What's the bad news? Well, the bad news is that if you don't act fast, you may not be able to get a ticket. As of writing this post with still 2 1/2 weeks to go, we only have 15 tickets remaining. Given the rate they have been selling, we could be sold out as early as even today! While that's bad news if you are still procrastinating, its great news for me, for the event and everyone who is attending and for the future of RIA Unleashed : Boston. So, register today! I hope to see you there!