Adobe Max 2008
It has been a little over a week since we got back from San Francisco and the MAX conference. It has taken me this long to surface for air after getting caught up from being away. Adobe announced a dizzying amount of updates and initiatives. Serge Jespers has a list of most of them here: http://www.webkitchen.be/2008/11/22/weekly-blend-the-max-edition/. Let’s just say that it will be a while before I can digest all of this.
The picture above (taken by Charles Freedman) shows the massive display that was set up for the keynotes. I have never seen anything like it before. When I walked into the hall, Icky Thump by White Stripes was playing through the incredible sound system and I could feel the thumps on my chest. I had goosebumps.
The intro to the keynote was my favorite part of conference (and not because he used my video in his mix!). DJ Mike Relm took the stage and performed an incredible video scratch mix live. Check it out: (video by John Wilker. I was sitting a few sections further back)
Mike Relm was also featured on the recent YouTube Live launch:
I managed to make it to every session I signed up for except for 1. Add to that the keynotes, dinners, sneak peaks, awards, birds-of-a-feather sessions and general schmoozing on the show floor and you get three freaking long and exhausting days. The stand out sessions for me were:
- Intro to Thermo (Catalyst) by Ryan Stewart and Heidi Williams
- Sketching Interactivity (with Catalyst) by Ethan Eismann
- Cocamo Deep Dive by Nigel Pegg (fellow Edmontonian)
- Creating New Components in Flex 3 and Beyond by Deepa Subramaniam
- Debugging and Profiler with Jun Heider
- Yahoo! ASTRA and YUI by Allen Rabinovich and Zach Graves
Making a talk about the Flex debugger interesting is a credit to Jun Heider’s speaking abilities. It was refreshing to go to a sessions not given by Adobe employees (a lot of them were) and it was great to see the extraordinary work that Allen Rabinovich and his team at Yahoo! are doing with open source components. In their case, it’s not just marketing and feature speak. It’s about real life, war tested implementation and integration with other technologies. For example, they are creating flash/javascript hybrid components that leverage the best of both technologies. I hung out a lot with Allen and Zach and declared myself an honourary Y! employee.
I did a presentation at the FITC unconference area on Y! Maps in Flex and using “Mapverstising”. Unfortunately the Unconference sections/sessions were not promoted at all and given the time and location, my presentation was not well attended which made it really hard to deliver.
More photos here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/randytroppmann/sets/72157609627771667/
