Last week's Flex Camp was a huge success in Toronto - over 175 talented developers came to learn about Flex in person, get copies of cool Flex swag (copies of O'Reilly's Flex book), t-shirts and more. Perhaps the only problem with the whole event was the $399 that the Metro Toronto Convention Center was charging for wireless internet access, per person per day. (Yes, three hundred and ninety nine dollars per person.) If you're interested in the event, I've posted the slides for my keynote presentation online on the Flex Camp page.

So, what's this have to do with an RIA for airlines you ask? Well, I left the hotel and took off for Pearson Airport (Canada's busiest airport) early the next morning for my flight back to Ottawa, and noticed a lot of people waiting to check in. A lot of people. Probably everyone who had arrived at the airport that morning actually. Air Canada had a major system failure on Friday that forced the cancellation of many flights to and from Toronto. OK, great, when are you getting to the RIA I hear you asking.

While at the airport and waiting, I was able to connect online and read some email and RSS feeds. I noticed on article at the New York Times titled "Airlines Work on Systems to Reduce Delays". So, I clicked on the article and started reading. About 1/2 way down the page I noticed this image - clearly a Flex application built by American Airlines (check out the drop down boxes). The application helps track flights after they've been diverted to other airports.

It was a little late for Air Canada, but hopefully someday that Flex application will help reduce the wait time that someone has in an airport. For me, I ended up driving back to Ottawa instead, while Air Canada resolved their computer problems.

Hot off the press... The team from the Toronto Flex User Group has just finalized the date for a Flex Camp event in Toronto - November 15th. The event will take place from 5 PM to 10 PM at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (yes I did spell that correctly.). I will be presenting at the event, and hope you can join us. Registration for the event is free, just head over to torontoflex.com to sign up. Registration is limited.

I just posted a note over at the official Flex team blog that the slides for Flex Camp have now been posted online at Flex.org. If you were unable to make this event at the Adobe San Francisco office, you can still see the sessions via Acrobat Connect. The Flex Camp Keynote, Flex and CS 3 Integration, What in Flex Builder 3 and Getting started with Flex and AIR were all recorded and are available online.