Category Archives: MAX

Congratulations MAX Masters

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My second year being involved in the planning of MAX was even more rewarding than the first. And the average scores for all of ours speakers were up over last year so it seems like the content is resonating with attendees and we continue to draw great speakers. Thanks to everyone who spoke at MAX this year for making it a huge success.

But we also like to call out the best of the best. This year it was really tough to be a MAX Master and so a huge congrats to the following speakers who made the cut.

  • Adam Lehman, Adobe Systems
  • Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Adobe Systems
  • Chris Converse, Codify Design
  • Chris Kitchener, Adobe Systems
  • Colin Smith, Adobe Systems
  • Dani Beaumont, Adobe Systems
  • Dave Helmly, Adobe Systems
  • David Nuescheler, Adobe Systems
  • Duane Nickull, Adobe Systems
  • Greg Rewis, Adobe Systems
  • Jack Davis, Wow, Inc.
  • James Williamson, Lynda.com
  • Jason Levine, Adobe Systems
  • Jim Babbage, Adobe Systems
  • Joe Rinehart, Booz Allen Hamilton
  • Marc Esher, Booz Allen Hamilton
  • Michael Chaize, Adobe Systems
  • Michael Labriola, Digital Primates
  • Michael Ninness, Lynda.com
  • Mordy Golding, Design Responsibly
  • Nicholas Zakas, NCZ Consulting
  • Patti Sokol, Adobe Systems
  • Paul Trani, Adobe Systems
  • Russell Brown, Adobe Systems

Flex Mobile European Tour 2011

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Next week I’m going to be hitting the road with my colleague Mihai Corlan to spread the news about what Adobe has been up to the past few months. The primary reason for the trip is to show off the work the product teams have done with Flex on devices. Mihai and I are going to be doing some hands-on sessions showing just how easy it is to build great looking applications for iOS and Android. Bring your laptop, a copy of Flash Builder, and a device and we’ll walk you through all the steps you need to go through to start building and deploying mobile applications.

The other part of these events is providing some firsthand demos of some of the things we showed off at MAX. I think MAX was a major turning point for Adobe and Mihai and I will be showing off the touch tooling, talking about the creative cloud, and showing all of the things Adobe is up to in the world of HTML5. Plus we’ll give you some sneak peaks of the next generation of the Flash Platform. So there’s a ton of info and you’ll have the chance to ask questions firsthand. 2012 is going to be a great ride for the Adobe community so we want to make sure you have all the info you need to be successful.

Here are the cities we’re hitting:

Update: For those of you in the UK, there is an event on Monday, the 7th. I couldn’t make it out in time for that, but Mihai will be there covering everything.

November 9th

November 10th

November 11th

November 14th

November 15th

November 17th

November 19th

Can’t wait to see you and talk about application development and Adobe’s 2012.

MAX Reflections

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I’m sitting down with some tea while my little girl is taking a nap feeling the big exhale from MAX. The energy of the past few days has been largely fantastic and I always find MAX to be rejuvenating both from a professional standpoint and a personal standpoint. Getting to connect with the community and my colleagues at Adobe has been great. In the contrast to the buzzing of MAX, the current deep quiet of my house leaves me reflecting a bit on the week.

This will go down as a very transformational MAX. The announcement of the Creative Cloud and the fact that it will include all of Creative Suite Master Collection as well as the touch tools and services (including TypeKit) is one of the biggest things I’ve seen from Adobe in a long time. And it feels like we’re jumping in with both feet and getting back to the core of what Adobe does: empowering designers to create with great tools. I thought the news about the single edition of the Digital Publishing suite was a perfect example of that. It makes the blossoming world of digital publishing accessible to more people.

The PhoneGap announcement was, for me, the most significant announcement of the week. By acquiring Nitobi (fantastic guys) and contributing the PhoneGap project to the Apache Foundation, Adobe took a huge, huge step into the world of HTML5. It was a perfect way to start a day 2 keynote that focused on the things Adobe is doing to be a part of the HTML5 ecosystem.

Based on the Twitter stream there seemed to be a feeling that the lack of traditional Flash indicated that Adobe is giving up on it. I think that misses the big picture. With the Nitobi acquisition and the embracing of PhoneGap, Adobe is making a significant and meaningful bet on the web and cross-platform mobile applications. This can’t be overstated. For Flash developers we have AIR, which will let you build cross-platform mobile applications. For HTML developers we have PhoneGap, which will let you create cross-platform mobile applications. Both are web technologies that don’t require developers to be locked into a specific operating system or type of device. You see the same thing with our digital publishing suite; it doesn’t matter if you want to deploy on iOS, Android, or PlayBook, you can. And that’s possible largely because of the web formats that go into creating the DPS apps.

This isn’t about Flash versus HTML, this is about supporting creative and interactive content across the broadest platform in the world: the web. Whether it’s mobile apps or browser content; animations, interactive web applications, or 3D gaming experiences, Adobe genuinely believes that the web is the best way for our customers to deliver their creations. By making PhoneGap a cornerstone of our story, I think we’ve proven our commitment to that mission.

I’m glad I was at MAX to see all of this in person.

Edit: This is a great piece by Daryl Taft of eWeek that talks about Flash and HTML. And it’s great to see that the “and not or” message is getting picked up. But what I like about this particular message is that when you follow it upstream a bit more, it just means we love the web. And if that’s the case (and I feel like it is) then the technology becomes secondary to the goals of helping people create cross-os and cross-device content with web technologies.

Join us for MAX 2011! (And the Loyalist Discount)

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The site for MAX 2011 is up and has a ton of info about what’s in store for October. It’s going to be tough to match next year but with the launch of CS 5.5, the new mobile workflows in Flash Builder and Flex, plus a big focus on HTML5 and Gaming, there really is going to be something for everyone.

And if you were with us last year, we’ve got a special deal for you; our loyalist discount.

You have to use these before May 31st in order for them to work, but if you miss that you can still register at the early bird price before July 31st.

MAX has always been one of my favorite conferences of the year but last year it was really special. Between Kevin’s keynote, the device giveaways, and the excitement of the attendees, it was an energizing experience. So I hope you can all attend this year.

Adobe Refresh – Australia, Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore

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I’m really excited to be joining up with the crew for Adobe Refresh, which will cover some of the latest and greatest features for the Flash Platform as well as show off Adobe’s HTML story over a couple of weeks in March. We’re hitting a total of 6 cities in Australia, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Singapore. I’ll be tagging along with Richard Galvan, Paul Burnett, and Michael Stoddart.

The sessions are going to cover Flash Pro, HTML5, Flex/Flash Builder, Digital Publishing, and a Q&A for answering any questions you might have about the Adobe stack. Plus we’ll be showing off some things that most people won’t have seen live yet, so if you come, you’ll get a first crack at seeing some very cool stuff coming up from Adobe.

Here’s the full list of cities:

I’m looking forward to being able to see all of the community members in those countries as well as getting to show off the latest and greatest with the Flash Platform. I’ll be talking about multiscreen development with Flex and Flash Builder and there is some VERY good stuff for developers on the horizon when it comes to building apps across devices. This will be a great event to see it all come together.

MAX 2010 Call for Speakers Open Until May 3

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MAX is always one of my favorite shows of the year. It was my first big show as a community member and as an employee it’s become a great gathering of the community as well as a fun way to show off what’s coming. This year, I’m going to be a lot more involved because I’m taking part of the reigns from Ted and running the content side of things. Because of that, I want to make sure we have the most kick ass sessions and speakers as possible from the community.

Last year we did a call for topics but it got a little bit difficult to manage because there were some topics that the community submitted that overlapped with what the engineers where planning to talk about and there were some things the community didn’t know about and couldn’t submit for. So this year we’re doing a call for speakers instead. The idea is that instead of picking people based on topics, we’ll pick them largely based on their speaking chops, and then either use the session they mentioned or work with them to put them into a session that they are excited about giving.

The call for speakers is open until May 3 so if you’re interested in speaking at MAX, please go fill out the form. And if you have any questions, drop me an email ryan@adobe.com.

Rundown of the MAX News

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The press releases just crossed the wire and we have a ton of news coming out of MAX. Plus more surprises in store for tomorrow. For those of you not here you can still check the keynotes out. I’m hosting the online side of the MAX keynotes and we’re doing some fun stuff before and after the keynotes to give you a sense of what’s going on at MAX. As you can tell from the rundown, there’s some fun stuff today.

Flash Platform Runtimes

We’ve been saying all year that Flash on mobile devices is a push this year and we’ve made a lot of progress. Today at the keynotes we’re going to be showing off Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones. This is the version of the Flash Player that we’ve been working on so hard this year. We’ve been working with some great partners including Nvidia and ARM to optimize the player for those devices and create a quality mobile experience.

Possibly more important is that the number of companies committed to the Open Screen Project continues to grow. Today we announced that RIM is joining the Open Screen Project, which means that Blackberry will be supporting Flash Player 10.1. Google is also on board. We’ll have public versions of Flash Player 10.1 for Palm, and Windows Mobile later this year with Google Android and Symbian following shortly. Developers will have mobile bits in their hands soon.

We also announced AIR 2.0, which is going to give Flash developers a lot more native hooks into the operating system. A lot of the developers I talked to wanted it and so that’s what the team did. Mike Chambers talked about some of these features at Flash on the Beach. Another cool feature of AIR 2.0 is the ability to record from the microphone without going to a server. getMicrophone can now be a reality

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Tools

We also have public betas of both Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst that are available today. I’ve been really impressed with how far Flash Catalyst in particular has come from Beta 1 to Beta 2. It’s a lot more polished, has more functionality (including video) and feels a lot more fun to use. If you checked out Beta 1 and found it lacking, you should check out Beta 2. We’ve also made big progress on Flash Builder and I’ve been a very happy camper using the tool full-time.

Servers

Some very cool stuff is also happening on the server side. We’ve released ColdFusion 9, a spectacular release with some great features including the ability for you to consume ColdFusion as a service from inside of your Flex application without writing ColdFusion code. I’ve also been playing with the LiveCycle Data Services release and its modeler plug-in for Flash Builder. The team has focused on model-driven development making it easy to generate and create a model, and then link that model directly to your Flex application. It helps by generating all of the assemblers and you can directly modify the user interface just by changing the model.

Finally we’ve got some Flash Media Server news. We’re adding support for HTTP streaming, which will include support for content protection. We also have released the Collaboration side of Flash Platform Services and announced pricing so you can jump in and start adding collaboration to your application.

If you guys have any questions (sorry I don’t have more fleshed out info, it’s a lot of news), feel free to drop me an email – ryan@adobe.com and I’ll try and answer what I know.

Can’t be at MAX This Year? Catch it Online Live!

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max-online-screenshotEveryone I talk to is starting to get excited about MAX. Maybe it’s the Mark Hamill appearance, maybe it’s that some of the new features of the Flash Platform are starting to leak out, or maybe everyone is just excited to see a bunch of friends and hang out to talk tech. The keynotes this year should get Flash developers really excited about the platform. We’ve got some great stuff to show off and a couple of surprises that people will be talking about.

online_maxIf you can’t make it, you’ll be missing out on the networking and the chance to bother talk to the engineering teams but we still want to give you as much access to the conference as possible. So this year we’ll be streaming the keynotes live AND if you show up 10 minutes early you’ll get some behind the scenes peeks that even the regular attendees won’t get to see. There’s going to be some special content just for those of you watching online and we’re going to make it fun and entertaining so you not only get to see the news live but also get some insight into what’s happening at MAX.

In addition, the team is making the most popular sessions in our three tracks – Design, Develop, and Envision – available each day and the other sessions will be following shortly thereafter. So you not only get the info live from the keynote but you can see the best sessions at MAX from wherever you are.

New Project: Flex Collaboration Library

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I’ve been digging deeply into the dark crevices of Adobe Flash Collaboration Service (AFCS) for my session on creating collaborative components at MAX this week. One of my examples is a collaborative map so I relied heavily on the Yahoo Maps example that ships with the AFCS SDK. One of the things I like about the Yahoo Maps example is that it includes a class that extends ArrayCollection and includes some hooks for collaboration. It’s essentially a collaborative ArrayCollection, and I rewrote parts of it for my own example and have found it to be very useful across a lot of my projects.

I realized that it could lower the barrier to entry on AFCS if some of the Flex classes that people rely on a lot had “automatic” support for collaboration via AFCS. So I took the class I created based on the Yahoo Maps example and tried to make it as “drag-and-droppable” as can be for someone who wants to start using AFCS. It merges two concepts, the ArrayCollection concept, and the CollectionNode concept from AFCS. CollectionNodes let you store any piece of data on the server and let multiple people add/change/remove information from the collection. Events are fired so that any time someone changes a piece of data it can be updated across all of the connected clients.

What I’ve done with my SharedArrayCollection class is put all of that logic into a single class that extends ArrayCollection. Developers can use the SharedArrayCollection just like they would use an ArrayCollection but the difference is that the SharedArrayCollection is automatically enabled for multi-user collaboration with AFCS. The only major difference is that instead of listening for a collectionChange Event you listen for a CollectionNodeEvent.

I’m still hacking out the basics and after MAX I’ll try to provide an example use case so people can see exactly how it works. I’ve put everything up on GitHub under the Flex Collaboration Library project. I’m hoping to make the SharedArrayCollection more bullet proof and then create more AFCS-enabled Flex classes and components. Let me know if you find a bug or if you find this at all useful.

MAX Widget and Early Registration

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Serge Jespers created a badass MAX Widget with some funny facts about past MAXes (how many do you remember?) and also the ability to create your own testimonial for MAX.

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Check it out above and hopefully it convinces you to register for MAX if you haven’t already. The Early Bird discount ends on August 31st, so there isn’t much time to save!