On May 8th, Chicago will be the host to the 2nd annual RIAPalooza mini-conference, and in the same fashion as last year, Roundarch will be one of the event sponsors.

The 2008 RIAPalooza event was a great success, and brought together designers and developers from the Microsoft, Adobe, AJAX and Java camps to discuss the progression of Web and Web-connected desktop applications and to dive in and take a look at the competing technologies in marketplace.

RIAPalooza is different from many of these types of events and the organizers are committed to keeping RIAPalooza a “platform agnostic and PowerPoint-free zone”, which means a strong focus on keeping the presentations compelling, with no hidden agendas and company marketing pitches masked as presentations on technology.  RIApalooza is about creating Rich Internet Applications; how to go about building them and what is being built.

Roundarch is proud to be a sponsor of the event, and I am excited to see that our own Adam Flater and Pek Pongpaet will be one of the featured presenters. We wanted to give a talk that would capture the interest of attendees and cover something different than what they may have seen at other events. Because of this, we settled on the topic “RIAs beyond the mouse and keyboard”.

This talk is going to show off a variety of technologies, including our own Merapi Project, a bridge between desktop software and the local operating system and other technologies, including Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and AJAX.Be prepared for Adam and Pek to show off some of the exciting things that they’ve been experimenting with. I am positive that the content of their presentation will inspire you.

Other speakers at the event include Kevin Hoyt (Platform Evangelist at Adobe), Josh Holmes, (MS UX Architect Evangelist), Michael Labriola (Lead at Digital Primates and author of “Flex 3 Training From The Source”) and other RIA experts from Chicago companies working with Rich client technologies.

For more information and/or to register for RIAPalooza, be sure to visit  http://www.riapalooza.com.