This is incredibly late since tek·X starts in four days, but it's definitely worth noting here. After a headed battle of Rock-Paper-Scissors against Cal Evans and Marco Tabini, I finally lost. While I thought we were deciding who was going to pay for dinner, it turns out the stakes were a bit lot higher.

It turns out that I will be Live Coding for two back to back sessions at tek.

You don't believe me? Well, here's the description:

It’s one thing to bring samples of code to show off and share. It’s something else entirely to write them live in front of a group. Come to this code-along and we’ll break out of the browser to get a crash course in Flex development and interact with the Flickr API. We’ll learn how to authenticate, upload images, add tags, and set privacy for single or a group of photos.

Yes, I will stand in front of a large group of people, start with an empty Flex project, and come up with a real life functional client for Flickr. Will it be visually ugly? Definitely. Will it be elegant? Probably not. Will I make a fool of myself? Possibly. But regardless, it should be fun.

Part of what will make this a success is you. I need the audience to help point out bugs, typos, and generally dumb things, so here's the deal:

If you attend the session and assist me in some way, I'll give you a piece of candy. And don't worry, these aren't little M&M's, I'm bringing good stuff. And they're individually wrapped. Afterwards, I'll buy the two most helpful people a tasty beverage at one of the nearby restaurants.

Finally, even if I completely screw things up. The session immediately after mine is "Best and Worst Practices Building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)" from Josh Holmes (interview) of Microsoft and Ryan Stewart (interview) of Adobe. I've already heard bits and pieces of their ideas and they're fantastic.

T-04 Days and counting...