First... I put a ton of photos of the Flash Gaming Summit on my facebook account. PHOTOS!!! GET YOUR PHOTOS HERE!

So on a whim I decided to head out to the Flash Gaming Summit to meet and mingle with people that I have known for many years but have never met. I'm really glad I did but wowza it was kinda shell shocking to meet so many great developers and actually be accepted into the group by most of them.

I've been making flash games, movies, websites and applications for many years now and I finally got to go to my very first conference. I flew out from Chicago at the ass crack of dawn on Sunday and when I got to San Fran I met up with Luis, Mike, and BomToons. Who happened to be sharing a room together.

They tell me that they want to go see a musical together. While we are waiting for our tickets AlmightyHans shows up and we all start hanging out together. We enter a lottery for tickets and we only win 4 so Mike ditches and goes to hang out with his girl.

By the way feel free to make all the gay jokes you want to about this because lord knows I sure did. I have nothing against gay people but being in San Fran with a bunch of guys I don't know who wanted to go to a musical made me a bit uncomfortable... mainly cause we all liked musicals. :P

BomToons and I went out to a party that Armor Games was throwing since both of our games were sponsored by AG. We met with several other people including Greg from Kongregate who I put down without knowing I was sitting next to him. Along with Ben Olding, Tass, a bunch of the crew over at Hero Interactive, Gregory Wier, along with tons of others that I didn't even get to talk to so if you recognize any of them please tag them in the pictures.

After the AG party BomToons and I met back up with Luis, Mike and Hans, and all hung out for the remainder of the night then they were nice enough to leave me to walk 7 blocks after dark by myself in San Francisco after drinking 3 Heinekens, 3 Guinness, and 3/4 of a glass of some kinda fruity tasting beer. I made it past the rapists, murderers and one homeless man who was clearly trying to make love to a parking meter (I wish that was a joke...) to my hotel and crashed.

The next day was Flash Gaming Summit! I woke to find that my feet did not appreciate the fact that I needed to stand on them. I had many blisters due to following people who relied on technology for directions... this doesn't work when your phone dies guys, lucky for us the battery on my map in my pocket was fully charged and we found our way after walking up hill for 4 blocks in the wrong direction. Anyway the point is my feet were broked, and very not happy at all.

SO I walked 1.5 miles to the summit and stood around talking and walking up and down stairs all day and loved every second of it. I really enjoyed it, I learned a lot and met TONS of awesome people.

We then went to the Zynga After Party. This was where everyone wanted to talk to each other and to make that easier the DJ played the LOUDEST MUSIC HE COULD. I doubt that anyone came out of there without losing their voice. Still was great to hang out and meet people and get recognized for my work by other developers and fans.

After the After Party Luis and BomToons and Hans all disappeared, so I hung out with Mike and Zeebarf and EntropicOrder. We found out about an unofficial After Party After Party for old school flash game devs and headed out to that. We wound up spending the rest of the night there and it was a really surreal experience.

I got to talk to Sean Cooper, which was awesome. I am such a huge fan of his work. The guys from Nitrome, who apparently hate me for no damn good reason. Either that or British people just hate all their fans. Which might be the case.

jmtb02 and Dan from ArmorGames were there. John West the founder of Crazy Monkey Games, Hero Interactive and tons of other developers were there. It was a great time and really blew my mind being surrounded by people of such quality and all talking shop together.

The next day I had breakfast with Chris from Ninja Kiwi and got a lot of good tips out of him. Then he and I walked down to the Mochi Media offices and I met everyone down there. I also walked past the Kongregate offices I didn't stop in though cause I had to hurry back to the airport for my flight... and by this point my feet felt like they were bleeding out. Which come to find out they were bleeding pretty bad.

I got back on the plane and flew home and on the flight I got to see the ocean for the first time well a little bit of it. I saw the bay while on the ground but not the ocean side of town. I flew back home and when we landed we sat on the tarmac for a half hour... My buddy Keith picked me up and we had some Chipotle and I went home hobbled up the stairs got to bed and passed out. Until the dog started licking my feet and I almost kicked him across the room cause it hurt so much and startled me.

All in all it was a great experience and I really want to do it again.

Next year I'm going to try to go a little earlier cause I heard there was disc golfing on Sunday morning and I would love to go to that with other developers.

Here is a bad picture of me with Zeebarf! Enjoy.