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My Thoughts on Adobe Abandoning Linux

So what.   I’m sure there’s lot’s of linux users out there, there’s also probably a lot of Pine users and Mac PPC owners, that doesn’t mean they matter. Linux folks are used to adversity and being an undervalued minority, so really nothing is changing for them. If they want AIR, let ‘em compile their [...]

Blackberry playbook, so close, so very very far

No Hulu, no netflix, no Kindle, no Email/calendar, no twitter client… just to name a few glaring shortcomings. Awesome screen, great size, interesting and capable OS just to name a few of it’s strongest points. I got my playbook (finally) about 2 weeks ago, and was holding off on my review to give it a [...]

Adobe needs to buy Palm.

Picture this.

Adobe buys Palm. Retools WebOS (or goes android, but I think that’s a bad idea) to be more Flash focused. Basically create a “Flash Phone” Build out a marketplace, somewhere between Draconian Apple, and Hippy-free-for-all Google, for Flash devs to build and sell their apps. SELL. Adobe, you build the market, and back out. Don’t start building your own things and giving them away for free. That screws your community over, cut it out!

Flash Devs have been denied a reliable, useful marketplace… well pretty much forever. Companies like Litl are working on devices to show how awesome Flash apps (Channels) can be, and hopefully help developers make money too. Adobe could easily kill some of their soon-to-be-dead-but-no-one-knows-it-yet projects, and focus on a mobile SDK for Devs to build stand alone “apps” that the “Flash Phone” could run.

Apps that exist as good citizens, outside a browser, as a standalone executable/process. They kill when closed, and don’t burn through the CPU. This is totally possible!

I know I’d buy a Flash Phone (assuming it’s the Pre aka nice hardware) in a heartbeat. I’d want to support the community, but I also think it’s a huge untapped market. Look at the flash content out there on the web! So much could easily become apps.

360Flex San Jose – Recap

It’s been a while since our last 360|Flex. Almost a year in fact. Indianapolis in May.

Since getting back from 360|Flex, I’ve been full tilt forward on 360|iDev (rest? Decompress time, weak sauce!!), but wanted to take a few minutes to write down my thoughts on this latest 360|Flex.

For one thing it was a huge success. We made money. Not a metric buttload, and it would have been more if we hadn’t carried a ton of debt with us out of 2009. BUt still, we made money, and that’s a good sign for the event and the company.

We did a few things (as usual) differently.

We had volunteers to help out. We had I think 8 folks, that got a free pass in exchange for helping out. w had them help assemble SWAG bags, work the reg desk (This was THE first 360|Event where the keynote wasn’t delayed, and where I was able to actually hop up on stage, vs have some one go start the keynote.) work our video cameras (more on that), and in general be around to do whatever we needed.
We had Nicole on board officially. As Tom leaves, Nicole joins. It’s pretty cool to be working with my wife to make the events even better!
Video. We’ve wanted to do video since Seattle ’07. In fact we had video in Seattle, but marketed them poorly. We had Video in San Jose ’09, but it was Adobe TV. This time we decided to go lo-fi to start and see how it works. We used 8 SD Flip Cams, and Camtasia Relay. Volunteers swapped cams out for each session, and set up Relay on speaker laptops. Now that hard part. I’ve got 40+ sessions to process into usable video. We’re not sure what to do yet as far as distribution. Attendees will get the video for free, but I’d love to try and sell access to the video (un-DRM’ed of course) files. I think there’s value in the videos, and think it’d be nice if we could support the company between events with video sales.
Panels. Panels are another thing we toyed with for a while, thinking it’d be cool to do, but never really executing. We decided to pull the trigger. 360|Flex had 3 panels, and they all rocked! Panels are here to stay. We also put a panel as the last session on the last day, to bring everyone together at the end of the conference. The panels are a great way to have all attendees in the same place, and get great discussions started! I’m really excited about the Panels, and can’t wait to do more.
Official hotel while using Ebay. Normally when we do the SJ event, we don’t have an official hotel, or if we do it’s just a room block at the Holiday Inn. This time we went downtown San Jose to the Marriott. Who offered a shuttle bus each day. That worked out awesome! Each day the bus brought everyone to Ebay and took them back to the hotel at night. After the evening receptions, folks bussed back to the Marriott, and partied at the bar, out in downtown, etc. it was awesome.
Over all I couldn’t be happier with 360|Flex San Jose. We had an almost sell out crowd, at about 365 registrations, not to mention the “I had to register?” Crowd that we printed badges for on the fly.

Now on to 360|iDev, San Jose! I can’t wait to see my Apple crew! We’ll all be fresh off iPad euphoria, and ready to talk iPad apps!

Looking Forward, Looking Back

It’s been an interesting year. More so than normal years. It’s also the end of a decade, so I’ve got some thoughts on that too. Fair warning. This is a longy.

Decade first:

in 2000 I worked for a company that was basically an IT Staffing firm that decided to get into software. I worked internally on a web app that would (in their terms) revolutionize staffing. I bailed, they failed, it was 2000, that happened a lot to a lot of people and companies.

I spent most of the 2000′s as a programmer, first doing ColdFusion, then moving to Flex. It never occurred to me to try out M$ tools, or any other. I liked Macromedia (Now Adobe) offerings and stuck with them.

Events, fun and why i do them

360|MAX

Adobe MAX is the annual “geek out” for those of us doing anything with Adobe technologies. It’s a huge event, costs a metric buttload, and is usually pretty over the top. It’s also hugely fun, and a great way to see folks who don’t come out for other events typically. It’s also nice to attend an event that I’m not organizing, or at least not organizing much of.

360|Conferences does an unconference at MAX, to bring some community to the event. It’s always a good time, we get some great speakers to give us some time and share what they know. It was really cool this time that we had some more interesting topics; Arduino/Flex interaction, How a rock band uses Flex/AIR and even iPhone in their performances, etc.

It was a good time.

Next time, we’ll limit talks to 30 minutes. It’s about double the sessions, but I think 30 minutes is a good time slot, we can get more great topics going.

The funnest part of my job (If I can call it that) is doing different types of events. They’re not just always the same event over and over. Even 360|Flex and 360|iDev, while super similar, and based on the same ideals, are vastly different. Then throw in Ignite, 360|FlexPress, and hopefully a Festival of Books, and it’s just a great time bringing people together!

I helped Adobe quash bugs

This past weekend, a few folks who’d never met got together at the EUI office for some good ol’ fashioned nerd fun. Adobe Seattle held a bug quash, and allowed developers all over the world to help out.

Denver Come quash Flex SDK Bugs!

EffectiveUI is hosting a group of people to get together and quash bugs with Adobe. Adobe is hosting the official effort in Seattle, and opening a connect room for developers all over to participate!

When you register make sure to sign up on the Bug Quash site to get the instructions on setting your computer up for SDK Development.

How to ruin a brand and influence people

On a smaller scale but equally disastrous, Adobe is extending their brand confusion to their community. A little history: Adobe created Flex Camps a while back, as one day events for Flex developers to come together to learn and network. Topics ranged from beginner to advanced, and were generally well received. There have been Flex Camps all over the world.

At MAX adobe decided that the community was confused about Flash, Flex, the platform and everything.

I think the confusion is Adobe’s. No one I’ve met is confused about what Flex is or what Flash is.

What a stupid AIR problem to have

Lately I’ve become very fond of the expression “This is a stupid problem to have”, the other night I got to use it in relation to AIR. I’m working on a tool to view (hopefully) live survey data for when we have booths at conferences. We’ve come up with a simply iPhone survey, and want [...]

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