Wednesday’s Refactor was great. I want to thank Ray Niemeir and Brian Shaler for their terrific presentations.

Ray’s talk was filled with special insights; I was really struck by his observations on bubbles, and looking for The Fizz.

Brian did a great job explaining how to work with CS3 and AIR, and there was a ton of useful info on getting rolling, and especially with using a local database. Check out the code for the talk here.

At the end of the meeting we did another round of Lean Introductions, and this time the tag was to offer up a current trend and a topic for future Refactor.

Here’s what came up (trends and topics mixed together):

• JavaScript applications (e.g., in browsers or browser derivatives)
• Mobile computing
• Virtualization
• Spore creatures and the ideas underlying their creation and behavior
• Cloud computing
• Game programming
• Rhino
• Social computing & networking
• Scalability
• The realm of add-ons and “social media” sites
• Open Social

Mike Wolfson has offered to give a talk on mobile computing; that’s slated for August. Thanks, Mike!

If you have something you can give a talk or demo on, please step up. It needn’t be long; 10-15 minutes works fine. It needn’t be formal; a walk through of a project or some code would be great.

And be sure to keep the last Wednesday of each month free to catch the Valley’s tech talent sharing their insights and know-how.