I just got back from Chicago where I attended the technical sausage-fest that is Adobe’s users conference, MAX. Some 4000 code monkies and graphic design zealots descended there to see the latest technologies and mingle over a lot of free beer. Yeah, that’s right, if Adobe spares no expense on one thing, it’s the open bar. For several hours, every night, free beer and wine. The cost must be staggering.
But back to the technology. You can certainly tell this is the Macromedia MAX conference from days past, only adapted to their new corporate parent. The products covered are all traditional Macromedia products (Flash, Flex, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, ColdFusion, etc.) with only an occasion mention of Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects. Even the Adobe CEO made only a brief appearnence and left the bulk of the emceeing to the former Macromedia figurehead, and current Adobe Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch.
There was a good mix of sessions, ranging from the all-attendee general sessions of keynote speeches and product coming attractions, to smaller focused presentations and hands-on workshops, to very small discussion groups. The best sessions I saw included ColdFusion security (e.g. how hackers will attack your stuff 101) and an introduction to AIR, Adobe’s new desktop runtime. Some of the less technical talks were great, too, like presentations about building an experience for a user, not just an app. – thoughts that may make their way into future blog entries.
There was also a wide range in users, from gurus to newbies, which makes for a good mix of ego-inflating and humbling conversations depending on whom you ran into. It was also cool catching some of the Adobe product managers (like for Flash, After Effects, and ColdFusion) for one-on-one talks. But one of the most intriguing conversations I had was with a couple guys from from the design house Big Spaceship. They were at the conference winning an award for their amazing HBO Voyeur project. It was really interesting to hear about how HBO approached them for the project, how they worked with the HBO film crews, and other technical details of the Flash build. Most impressive was how it involved (at most!) 3 people on their end and lasted 3 months, from bid to delivery. It’s hearing and seeing things like this that make me want to throw in my boring corporate towel, and move to New York.
Oh nevermind, I think there’s a SQL Server database calling my name…
