After months of build-up, Adobe MAX 2008 (North America) managed to live up to its expectations! Its not unusual for conference organizers to over-promise — after all they want more and more folks to sign-up. However, this year’s MAX was hyped not only by its organizers but the general community ho-hum that something cool and big was coming. People knew Thermo, Flash on the iPhone and Flex 4 with its new workflow were in the oven, but there was the mystery around what the final baked product might look like and if something else was cooking that nobody had a clue of.
So with all this expectation in mind, I landed around midnight on Sunday November 16th in San Francisco. Caught on some sleep and got to the venue (the good old Moscone Center) at 8.00am the next morning. Well in time for breakfast and the opening keynote. The registration process was smooth but the breakfast was a huge disappointment. Hordes of people were gathered around a few tables. There was hardly any place to stand, let alone sit. It was difficult to find coffee in that mess. When I walked towards the rooms at the back I found plenty of coffee. The second day onwards it wasn’t so bad. Guess the bad experience of the first day breakfast had turned some people away. (See every bad problem finds its own solution!) Also, lunch was far better and well organize.
The first big thing of day 1 was the keynote. Of course day 1 wasn’t really day 1. Of late, most conferences are sold on the idea of the zero offset and end up having a pre-conference before the conference. Some believe its the warm-up day, some others believe its the revenue day (because of the paid trainings — beyond the regular conference attendance fee — on that day) and some others believe its the day to mingle with the community. Whatever the reason MAX had a day zero too and from what I heard it was fairly well attended. Ok, back to the keynote.
The keynote followed the format that has become established in almost all one company driven conference keynotes (think JavaOne, Oracle OpenWorld or MacWorld) –
- Fancy audio, video and images — the eye catchers (Sherly Crow certainly makes the slides look better). There was a funky DJ with his turntable as well.
- Big announcements — almost always expected
- Key customers on stage — these folks had the Disney CTO and the Salesforce guy
- Focus on Charity and changing the world — project RED was talked about (thank god it wasn’t someone like the JavaOne UN guy)
- Political or Social celebrities on stage — they had Maria Shriver — the California first lady
Look at a few pictures from the keynote address – http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/11/18/adobe-max-2008-keynote-pics/
(I found this online)
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