As most of you have already realized, there have been numerous changes in the Flex world in the past few months.  After we have sat back to take them all in, we noticed that most of them will have a very positive impact for Flex developers.  Along with these changes, we will be making the following changes to our User Group in 2012 :

• The User Group will be changing its name to the Michigan ActionScript User Group.
• We will be broadening our focus of the group a bit.  While we have always covered Flex, AS3 and AIR technologies, we will also start talking more about Flash, Best Development Practices (Unit Testing, etc), Open Source projects and techniques, and other Flash related technologies.  
• We will begin meeting on Wednesday evenings, rather than Thursdays.  Tuesdays and Thursdays have become a popular evening for user groups and we don't like having to compete for people to show up.  We will still be meeting on the campus of MSU, starting at 7pm.
• We will be getting our new website online soon.  If you want to help us curate content for the new site, please let me know.

Have you ever wanted to have a physical "panic" button on your AIR app that you could hit?  How about building an application that could collect GPS coordinates?  Or one that responds to light?

During our May meeting on Thursday, May 19th, we will be introducing the concept of building Flex and AIR applications for custom electronics.  We will be going through basic electronic concepts, hooking up an Ardunio Microcontroller to a computer, and interacting with it from a Flex application.  We will be working with LEDs, push buttons, gas sensors, etc. to make a an application that you can not only control with a mouse, but can also interact with phyically.

During the summer, we will be meeting in room 1345 Engineering, which is the north-west-most room in the Engineering building complex.  The meeting will start at 7pm, with free parking located a block south in the Communication Arts and Sciences parking ramp (Ramp 5).

On March 24th, we will be talking about building mobile applications using the Flex Hero SDK.  This next version of the Flex SDK helps developers quickly make powerful applications for both Android and iOS based platforms.  We will also be talking about some best practices in building mobile applications.  We will create a full mobile application using Flash Building during our meeting.

We won't be creating a very complex applcation, so if you are new to the Flex framework, it should not be hard to pick up.

We will not be broadcasting this meeting live, but it will be recorded.

The meeting will be help in or near room 161 in the Communication Arts and Sciences building on the campus of MSU, starting at 7pm.  Watch for the signs when you enter the door for directions to the room.

During our Janurary 13th meeting, we will be discussing the basics of game design in Flex.  We will talk about best practices and provide some examples as to how to make a simple card game.

We will be meeting in or near room 161 in the Communication Arts and Sciences Building, on the campus of Michigan State University.  We will be starting at 7pm.

This meeting will be live-streamed, and should be recorded for those who are not able to make it to the meeting live.  http://experts.adobeconnect.com/theflexgroup/

It's that season again!  Lots of products have recently hit the market like Photoshop CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Dreamweaver CS5, Flex 4, Flash Builder, and many more, so lets celebrate!  On April 15th at 7pm, in room 161 Communication Arts and Sciences Building, we will be showing some of the newest products, doing basic walk-through and holding Q&A about the status of some of the projects at Adobe (like the Flash CS5 iPhone compiler).

Popcorn, cupcakes and prizes will be provided!  This is a great meeting to hit to learn about all sorts of new stuff!

This meeting will not be streamed or recorded.