I participated in AdobeMAX 2009 (Los Angeles) in early October. Without a doubt, this was a great conference. Some of the highlights are listed below. In addition to AdobeMAX, I was able to participate in a WOW Summit (Sunday), an Adobe Community Managers meeting (Sunday), a reception for educators and Adobe Education Leaders (Sunday), a meeting of the Los Angeles Web Professionals Adobe User Group (Monday), and a meeting of the Educator’s Advisory Board for Lynda.com (Tuesday). Obviously, there was a lot packed of information and networking packed into a few days.
Adobe Community Managers summit (Sunday, Oct. 4) highlights – roughly 150 people were present at this meeting (some 40 were present virtually via ConnectPro). There are 510 active Adobe User Groups representing 40 different languages (from Arabic to Thai) with 270 community experts and 11 community champions. Rachael introduced her team from Adobe and discussed why we were present and where this initiative is going in the future. Dee Sadler reviewed her work with Adobe user groups in the Kansas City area. Himanshu Mody reviewed efforts in promoting Adobe technologies within India. Elder Vasquez reviewed a number of Adobe events held in Latin America. Nate Beck reviewed his work with BugQuash. Amanda Johnson and Josh Lucero discussed the Denver Adobe Camp. Lastly, Marc Thiele reviewed various Adobe related events in Germany. It was great to meet and network with so many community managers.
WOW Summit (Sunday, Oct. 4) – core WOW members met to discuss numerous initiatives and plans for the next year. Our focus will continue to be on education. We reviewed our educational efforts so far and discussed progress within the last year on various initiatives. One main outcome of this meeting is that we will continue updating our student learning outcome documents along with a review of developed objectives and career pathways for aspiring web professionals.
Adobe Educator’s Reception (Sunday, Oct. 4) – approximately 200 people attended this event. This was held at the Figueroa Hotel (Tangiers Room). A number of educational initiatives were showcased. Individuals involved in many of these projects were available to demonstrate and answer questions. I got a lot of great ideas from this event.
Los Angeles Web Professionals Adobe User Group (Monday, Oct. 5) – Michael Bierman and I were the key presenters at this event. Michael spoke on the Nokia Web Runtime and their Dreamweaver extension. He demonstrated how one can build a widget for various Nokia phones using only knowledge of web technologies (such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). The market for mobile widgets is growing and he also reviewed various ways to monetize developed applications. I then spoke on the use of CSS within Dreamweaver CS4 and touched on CSS3 and HTML 5 (including many of the new elements and attributes that are presently defined in the evolving HTML 5 recommendation. Thanks to Nokia for providing the food for this event. WOW also provided selected books as prizes to some of the meeting participants.
Lynda.com Educational Advisory Board (Tuesday, Oct. 6) – roughly 25 people were present at this kickoff event. Laurie did a great job of identifying key individuals from throughout the U.S. representing a number of disparate disciplines and backgrounds. We should all be able to provide significant suggestions to help improve the offerings of Lynda.com. Numerous items were discussed (obviously, I can not share the details in this space).
AdobeMAX (Monday – Wednesday) – approximately 4,000 people attended this event. I will provide a separate post on this event.
As you may surmise from these notes, I gathered a significant amount of information. Those who wish to discuss my experiences (and learn more) are encouraged to contact me.
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