Click on any photo to launch the gallery view, and when you’re done, just click on a photo to end the gallery view. This is kind of my own little “highlight reel” of my experience at this week’s Max Conference.
Adobe Max Day Three. I’m exhausted… but today’s going to be awesome!
October 27, 2010 By 3 Comments
7: 18 PM
Wow. What a couple of days (three for me, including pre-conference sessions) and I’m starting to feel it. I don’t have a lot of time to write a lot this morning, today begins the day that I’ve been waiting for. Today I get to code in a couple of “Bring Your Own Laptop” lab sessions. These are hands-on coding sessions where you actually create software. This morning we’re going to create an Android App from scratch, and in the afternoon, I’ve got a four hour “Adobe AIR Code Camp”. This is going to be basically an Adobe AIR Boot Camp. You must have the software installed (In my case, the Android 2.2 SDK, Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder, and AIR) and you work on your own machine.
In between those two sessions is “Designing with Fireworks”. This also represents one that I’m really looking forward to, but for much different reasons. This session will be “me out of my comfort zone”. I’m a developer, not a designer. As a developer, I need to have what I call, “Designer Empathy”. So I’m going to put on my “designer hat” and do some learning “as a designer”. Should be fun, and I’m hopeful it’ll give me some great stuff to take back to my creative department that can facilitate the “design to development” workflow. Fingers crossed!
So I’m off. My sessions are long, so I might not blog as much today, but since it’s the last day, I’ll try to wind up this post with a Photo Gallery tonight. I’ve been taking a lot of pictures over the last three days, and it’d be fun to put them into a fun little gallery and blog ‘em. So I’ll make up for not blogging as much by posting some more visual, fun things.
9:23 AM
*groan*
Sometimes it’s great to be able to make an informed decision. For instance, I don’t think I’ll do any AIR for Android development. I’m going to stick with this, all the way through the end. I promise I’m not going to bail on this one. I just… well… I just don’t see it. My first thought was, “Do I really want a runtime layer on top of my cellphone or device?”. Superficially it seems cool, and I admit, if I had a client that needed a branded app for Android, this would certainly be a way to rapidly deliver something for a reasonable price… but it feels a little… I dunno… “dirty”? I mean, these little computers are pushing it to be able to deliver the experience they’re delivering. A lot of the most brilliant apps and experiences come at the cost of squeezing every bit of performance out of these tiny little processors, and adding a runtime layer to that just feels like it runs counter to everything you learn in college computer science classes. You remember those? Back when discussions were centered around clock cycles, memory management, and efficiency? Right. Those.
Let me be clear. This is just my initial reaction. I haven’t dug any deeper than an initial gut-reaction to what I’m sitting here doing. If I played with this a little more, I’m sure I’d become a little more comfortable… but that’s the problem. Do I want to become a little more comfortable using this as a mobile development process? I mean, if I’ve got a certain amount of time in a day to learn new things… why wouldn’t I just learn how to do all of this natively? Objective C for iOS? Java for Android?
I’m just saying. This is my sort of… initial reaction. My gut, so to speak. Like I said, I would love to give all of this the benefit of the doubt, and I certainly will… but for now, if I were to make a list of “skills I’d like to learn more about and become better at”, “making AIR Apps for Android Phones” isn’t really in my top 5 right now.
3:51 PM
The “Design with Fireworks” session was great. I mean, every time I do something or learn something new about that program, the more I’m convinced it’s just THE way to create and move graphics from the design process into the web/interactive production execution process. I understand why Photoshop is still used. I just don’t necessarily agree with it. If I were working on CMYK, high resolution images going to print, it would be all over my workflow. But I’m not. If I were to start any interactive project right now from scratch, I’d basically only need Fireworks and Dreamweaver. I could prototype, design, create, and execute using just those two tools and I would need nothing else. However… old dogs are old, and new tricks are new… and well, a cliche becomes a cliche because it happens enough.
That being said, I’ll just end with, “I love Fireworks” and this last session I attended on designing with it, was preaching to the choir.
I think I’m gonna end the evening with a trip over to Hollywood and hunt for some authentic mexican. I’ll let you know how that works out, but first, I really gotta lay down. The last four days have completely wiped me out and I’m not even sure I’ve got the energy to walk downstairs… Way too much nerd-action over the last four days.
Adobe Max: Day Two – CSS3, Web Fonts, and The Future of Advertising.
October 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment
7:24 AM
Today should be a really good day. We’ve got another Keynote, the always great “Sneak Peeks” session later this evening, and of course, tonight’s the “Max Event”. Tonight we’re getting a concert and a party featuring “The Bravery“. I can’t wait for that, love the album and I love, love, love “Time Won’t Let Me Go”, so I’m really looking forward to tonight. So it’s going to be a long day/night. Today’s Keynote will also be available live at max.adobe.com/online, so you can watch along. I’ve heard that today’s Keynote is going to be pretty big, and there was an obvious absence (at least for me) of developer content. No Ben Forta, No ColdFusion, No Flex, and only a brief mention of codename “Edge”. So I’m hopeful that today will have more code, less Martha Stewart (don’t get me wrong, Martha’s not all bad, but I’m not into grouse). My sessions today are going to be really terrific and I’m especially looking forward to the one titled, “The Future of Advertising”. I mean, with a title like that, how could you not be curious?
Well, my first session begins in about an hour, and I’ve got a nice walk ahead of me, so I’m gonna go get ready and head downstairs. More coming!
8:23 AM
Whoa. Why didn’t anyone tell me Starbucks’ “Perfect Oatmeal” was so… well… perfect? They give you a little pack of brown sugar (more than I would ever use), a great little pack of dried fruit (they even tell you how many calories… I love that!), it’s a perfect portion, and dammit, it’s delicious! I’ve been getting beaten over the head and robbed at the hotel just to get a bowl of oatmeal. To hell with that, I’m eating Starbucks from now on.
Sitting in “Using Web Fonts Now” eating my oatmeal. Here’s the description from my schedule:
Discover how you can finally use real fonts on the web. Broad browser support for CSS with @font-face brings a new era of web typography, but that’s only the beginning. New technical hurdles, new font formats, and new licensing restrictions need to be considered. Come learn about the latest tools and techniques for navigating this landscape and for using web fonts to their fullest potential in your design and development projects.
I know, sounds cool, right? Well, we’re getting ready to begin, so I’ll fill you in when I’m done.
I love the music they're playing. Any Keynote that starts with Jay-Z and Kanye is instantly a great Keynote.
10:02 AM
Keynote Day 2. The Music is MUCH better today. There’s buzz about today, but I don’t know what the buzz is about. I’m hoping today is more “developer-centric”. Yesterday was great. Set the tone for the conference, broadly focused, and very positive. I’d like today’s Keynote to drill down a little bit more and go into a little more detail about Adobe’s roadmap. As I sit here typing this, I suddenly realized I haven’t heard the word, “ColdFusion” mentioned by anyone at the conference since I got here. That’s not really hyperbole, that’s just a pretty straightforward observation. I’m not sure how that leaves me feeling, but I’m hoping they do more than talk about it over the next hour or so.
As an aside, the web-fonts session I just left was great. I still feel like a lot of what we’re talking about, design-wise, isn’t quite there yet in terms of audience (CSS3, HTML5, Webfonts and compatible browsers) but we’re getting there, and I feel like it’s a great time to be a developer-designer. There are a lot of tools out there enabling a much richer experience and they’re rapidly gaining traction in ways I haven’t seen in years. It’s a great time to be a… well… whatever I am.
1:30 PM
Well, the day two Keynote was pretty interesting. We started off talking about Adobe Customer Service. Apparently it’s bad. Lots of talk about “Flash and HTML being friends” and how we can all share. There was even a Sesame Street Muppet Spoof featuring “Flash” and “HTML” as puppets who fought (but were really good friends). It was kind of to be expected. I mean the assault on the senses the last few months have definitely put Adobe on the defensive, and… well… it showed a little. A little overcompensation, a little bit defensive… but all worthwhile. It really is a big world, with a lot of screens and a lot of places to put your stamp on an experience. Adobe is well positioned for content creators, creative development, and overall development. It doesn’t have to be Flash, and it’s obvious Adobe sees that.
4:30 PM
“The Future of Advertising” was good if only for the fact that hearing other people reinforce your ideas and philosophies is always nice. Lots of talk about collaboration, flattening the structure of your agency, partnering with the client, etc. If you’ve been in advertising for even 30 minutes, you’re already keenly aware of the “change or die” mantra in advertising that’s permeating all levels of the discourse. Agencies are in the midst of a serious revolution. A revolution in process, a revolution in execution, a revolution in accountability… all the while trying to eek out billing and revenues. It’s a scary time for some, and exciting time for others. I’m glad I sat in on it. I did walk out thinking to myself, “okay, that’s good, we’re on the right track…”.
6:30 PM
Okay, I can’t make it to the sneaks session. Yeah, yeah, I know, Spock is there… etc. But over the years, I’ve kinda grown tired of the Sneak Peeks. I realize it’s a peek into new, cutting edge technologies, but my head can’t go there. I’ve got enough “cutting edge” right here, thankyouverymuch. I think instead I’m going to rest here at the hotel, go downstairs and get something to eat right here without walking around or going anywhere, then come back upstairs and relax before I head over to the Bash. I’m old. I can’t go, go, go with the energy of a teenager anymore, so I’m not even gonna try…lol.
Adobe Max: Well it’s officially day one. Let’s LiveBlog this bad boy.
October 25, 2010 By 3 Comments
Great coffee. I called down to the front desk and had them bring up a couple more of these things.I'm drinking them like they're going out of style.
6:58 AM
Lots going on today. Have I mentioned how much I love this coffee? They have Starbucks “African Kitamu” for the little single-cup coffee maker here in the room. I’m drinking the crap out of this stuff. I’m gonna head downstairs, get some breakfast and walk down to the Convention Center. According to Google Maps, I’m about a mile away from the Convention Center and they say it’ll take about 13 minutes to walk there. I don’t really feel like sitting on a shuttle this morning, and I wanna move my legs, so I’m gonna walk it. It’s a nice walk, actually, I’ve walked it both nights I’ve been here.
By the way, today’s Keynote Address can be viewed online. Visit max.adobe.com/online for more details. I’ll be blogging thoughts as they come to me (if they come to me) so I’ll try to add some editorial commentary to what I see live.
Why anyone would ride a bus/shuttle around here is beyond me. The walk is fantastic. Best mile you've ever walked. Perfect temperature.
9:06 AM
Okay, we’re inside the Nokia Theater. Pretty much a mob scene. The place is completely packed and the whole center-front of the theater is reserved for “Press”. I don’t recall so much space being held for “Press/Analyst” before, so my curiosity is definitely aroused. I don’t know if this is just natural curiosity on the part of the press given recently developments in the “Apple vs. Adobe” skirmish over Flash, or if it’s because of some impending “announcement”. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough though. Lots of talk about Flash, Flash’s future, Android, Apple, iPhone and the Mobile-slash-Tablet space. The ground is definitely shifting beneath a lot of people’s feet, and that’s a pretty uncomfortable place to be for a lot of developers to be.
9:12 AM
Okay, I gotta admit, starting off the Keynote with a DJ playing live dance music while a guy onstage writes code projected onto the main stage screen is… um… interesting. Didn’t ZeFrank do something like this in 2003?
9:22 AM
Oh, I see what you did there. There’s a live DJ creating music using AudioTool, Natzke creating live artwork and Joa Ebert live coding some sort of 3D sound visualization display thingy. Now you’ve hooked all three of them up and there’s this sort of live-3D-Flash-Art-Trance-DJ-German-Bitmap-Visual-Performance-Code thing happening… with a giant multi-touch screen. This is the sort of thing my friend Marty Hardin would mess his pants up seeing… However, it’s the sort of thing that causes me to have a Grand Mal seizure and bleed from the eyes.
9:36 AM
Kevin Lynch onstage now. Processing power is driving the whole revolution. Power per weight and battery power have enabled the mobile revolution. Cool slides. Lots of logarithmic growth charts.
No, no, no... it's not the *Gadget* Lab... it's the *Device* Lab.
1:36 PM
Okay, so the Keynote is over, I’ve gotten my free Motorola Droid 2 phone (CDMA, and I’m on T-Mobile, so it’s basically just a Wi-Fi enabled Development/Testing device) and I’ve spent the last couple of hours in the Max Pavilion. I spent about 45 minutes or so wandering around various booths and checking out the vendors (effectiveUI is top of my list so far. UI testing, User research, Interface research services… I’m all over that one) and about 45 minutes playing in what I’ve been calling “The Gadget Lab”. Apparently it’s “The Device Lab”. You say “tomato”… But seriously. Google TV looks awesome, and I have to admit, Adobe AIR for TV looks, well… it just looks cool. If enough set manufacturers support it (Samsung is first!) then I could see it gaining significant traction. Personally, I’d love to develop apps for HDTVs. That would be cool, daddy-o. SDKs are everywhere. Every group inside Adobe is pimping their SDK and I’ve already got a hella collection of discs. I’m doing the whole “Bring Your Own Laptop” labs this time, and I’m probably going to install the Android 2.2 SDK and Flex for Android SDK tonight after I get back to the hotel.My sessions start in about 15 minutes. First up is “Dreamweaver and HTML5 & Javascript based Widgets”.
Here’s the description:
“Join Scott Richards for a guided tour of the latest features in Dreamweaver that enable you to harness the power of HTML5 and CSS3 in your site. See how you can use the Widget Browser to easily add Javascript based Widgets to your pages. As your web sites rely more and more on CSS and Javascript make sure you are taking advantage of the tools in Dreamweaver to help you quickly navigate to the css controlling your web pages and help you troubleshoot problems.”
After that one, I’ve got “From Design to CSS and HTML with Fireworks and Dreamweaver”:
“Learn how to take a finished web design and turn it into CSS and HTML using Adobe Fireworks to optimize the images and generate the initial CSS and HTML pages, and then use Adobe Dreamweaver to refine and optimize the code. We’ll cover essential techniques to control the page layout in the CSS, as well as hints and tips such as how to save time by generating CSS styles directly from the design and how to use placeholders for interactive elements and dynamic content.”
Then I finish the day with, “Creating Interactive Rich Media Advertising Campaigns with Video”:
“In this session you’ll learn how video can be one of the most engaging components in Rich Media Advertising. We’ll discuss how: use multiple videos in standard or HD format leveraging Dynamic Streaming; record your own video with a webcam and send it to email or a smartphone; post videos on Facebook; play a 3D multiplayer game using Papervision and Flash Media Interactive Server; and go mobile with your campaigns. We’ll show examples of real rich media campaigns from top advertisers, discuss the technologies powering the creative, and try to dispel all the myths around the limitations of video ads.”
So the next three hours or so should be really really fun. On to the first session!
7:30 PM
So, as you can see… long day. Exhausted. Drained. Stuffed with horrible food (not badly prepared, or bad tasting. Actually really, really, really delicious food… just bad for you) and getting ready to buy Adobe Creative Suite CS5 Web Premium. Again, I don’t really know what to think about all the Flash stuff. With everything going on between Apple, Android, Adobe and Flash, it’s tough to make a call right now. AIR for TV looks really cool, and there are arguably a LOT of devices out there besides the iPad and the iPhone. I know because I actually spent a great deal of time today touching a lot of them. Then there’s blackberry. Say what you want about RIM, there are a TON of people using Blackberries, and the audience is out there. The Playbook looks really good. I can’t speak for the UI or touchscreen, because the single Playbook they had on display was behind glass, but the damn thing sure as hell exists, and it looks nice.
So while I can’t speak for the rest of the world, I do know that for a long time people lived and did business without Apple hardware, and there’s an entrenched community that simply isn’t going to vanish overnight. The Samsung people seem committed to Android and Flash/AIR, and I personally talked with representatives from a lot of companies, from TV to print manufacturers (have you seen the Lexmark printers with built in apps and CCD scanner/printers? They’re hot… seriously cool) and they’re sinking millions of dollars into products that integrate with Flash and Adobe AIR. There are literally hundreds of screens out there beyond the iOS world, and honestly, Flash is viable on pretty much all of them. That’s my take-away today. All I know is, the next time someone says, “Flash is dead”, I’m not going to be so quick to agree with them… that’s all.
The other thing that I took away today was this: I’m a died in the wool Dreamweaver user. You’re going to have to pry my Dreamweaver from my cold, dead fingers. The things I saw today with HTML5/CSS3 integrating Fireworks and Dreamweaver and Photoshop for a robust development and design workflow leave me absolutely convinced that if you’re a creative professional, and you’re creating online interactive solutions for your clients, you owe it to both yourself and your clients to check out the production workflow that these products represent.
Okay. That’s all for today. I’m exhausted. I’m going to go use my Max discount and grab my copy of CS5. I’m hopeful that the bandwidth here at the hotel will accommodate me. I’ve got some “Bring your own laptop” (BYOL) sessions tomorrow, and the requirement for a couple of them are several of the CS5 Web Premium products (Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder) as well as the Android 2.2 SDK, and I’ve got to take some time tonight and make sure they’re all installed before I go back tomorrow.
More liveblogging tomorrow. Another Keynote, probably more big news (if the rumors I’m hearing are true, it’s going to be another big day), and I’ll have plenty more to write about.
See you tomorrow!
Adobe Max: post-pre-conference reflections.
October 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Well, today’s over. It’s kinda late, but not really. I mean, it’s late back home but it’s somewhat early here. My body’s still on eastern time, so I’m struggling to stay awake. I wanted to get today’s thoughts down though, so I’m gonna soldier through a post and try to put some things down. My class in preconference was fairly straightforward and pretty awesome. Earlier, I had written that I was looking for insight into CS5 interoperability and I got it. We touched on every application in the Creative Suite Web Premium family, and some great stuff came out of it. For design-to-development iteration, I can think of no powerful tool than Creative Suite 5. Designing in Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fireworks, enabling “Creative” to work in an environment that they’re already comfortable with. From exporting concepts & proofs as interactive demos complete with clickable links and mockups of pages to creating fully immersive PDFs straight from Fireworks (complete with all the benefits of providing PDFs, taking advantage of Acrobat features like annotations and comments). The speed and flexibility of being able to rapidly revise pages before writing a single line of code means significant savings of effort, time and energy on the part of all involved while maintaining almost limitless flexibility during the design process. It’s quite simply amazing.
So I was pleased with what I played with today. Well… almost.
I’m really struggling with the Flash question. (I mean really, really struggling) I’ll probably need a little more time to wrap my head around how to both think about it and what I’ll say. But today was a good start. I definitely see reasons to immediately upgrade to CS5.
I’m just not sure how much of it I’ll actually use… right now.
Adobe Max: Brewing coffee and getting ready, it’s pre-conference day!
October 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The great thing about traveling east to west is that timeshift that makes you dead tired at 9PM because your body thinks it’s midnight. So after a gruesome day of travel, (why didn’t I remember that you can’t recline in the last row of the airplane?) I was completely wiped out. I managed to head down to the LA Convention center, completely amazed at the sheer number of people, until someone next to me mentioned that they couldn’t wait to see Shakira… then I realized I was walking at the Staples Center the night Shakira was playing Los Angeles. Yeah… pretty big crowd. Stopped in at Max, missed registration by about 15 minutes, and walked over to LA Live to grab dinner. One delicious steak later, I’m barely keeping my eyes open on the way back to the hotel.
A great night of sleep later, including the wonderful experience of waking up 15 minutes before your alarm goes off, and I’m ready to go. Today is preconference day and I’m really looking forward to my class, “Creating Engaging Websites with Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium 5″. I’m particularly hopeful that I’ll get some exposure to application interoperability. I want to be able to go back to the beach and take with me a real good working knowledge of being able to integrate Fireworks, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver into a efficient workflow. With so many different disciplines working on creating engaging interactive solutions for our clients at work, knowing that everyone in the process can contribute in a streamlined, efficient, flexible way only helps to create an environment where everyone wins.
I like it when everyone wins.
So here I sit, sucking down my second cup of African Kitamu this morning, I’m filled to the brim with nerd-excitement and looking forward to jumping in with both feet this morning.
Now, let’s head downstairs and see if this hotel will cook me up an omelet. I have a craving for egg whites and spinach…
Adobe Max and the clam before the storm…
October 22, 2010 By 1 Comment
No offense to clams intended. Some of my best friends are clams.
As I frantically pack for Adobe Max this year (why do I always wait until the last minute, then invariably create a “to do list” a mile long 18 hours before I leave?) I’m keenly aware of the opportunity I have. Think about this for a minute. Flash, Mobile, Dreamweaver based development, Photoshop techniques, Interactive Creative, Interactive Workflows, AIR development… how much of that stuff do you think goes on in Myrtle Beach? Don’t know? I’ll tell you, “A hell of a lot”, that’s how much. Every creative entity in town has their fingers in this pie.
So ask yourself, why am I the only person in town going to this event?
Yeah, I don’t really know either. But one thing I do know, I plan to take full advantage of it. Everyone you talk to is using a CMS as a platform these days (and rightfully so, I might add). They’re efficient, cost effective, they allow website owners to participate in the creation and maintenance of content… there’s a list a mile long why people are flocking to Dupal, Joomla, and WordPress. Positioned squarely in the center of that storm is Dreamweaver CS5. I mean, I totally get using another IDE. I do. I’m not so narrow minded that I don’t understand why developers use TextMate, and Eclipse, and a host of other IDEs to get their shit done. I’m just saying, if you’re going to spend your time working on something like a wordpress site, wouldn’t you at least be interested in a solution that integrates so tightly to the site you’re building that you might… you know… save time and money developing it? I’m just saying… Don’t get me wrong, Dreamweaver isn’t the end all be all and I’m not here claiming it is. It’s just one of the tools that Max shines a light on.
Then there’s Photoshop… oh, and Flash, and AIR, and Android, and don’t forget the Packager for iPhone… the list of important technologies, not just from a client standpoint, but from a technique and execution standpoint, is mind-blowing. I mean, if you’re in this business, and you do this for a living (develop creative interactive solutions for clients’ marketing needs) then there’s this conference, and maybe one or two others the entire year.
So I’m always a little blown away when I realize (sadly) that I’m the only person in town going. There’s a great developer community in town, but I’ve always (and I mean always) been a little saddened by the lack of interest in Macromedia/Adobe/Allaire solutions, when in fact, 95% of the advertising and marketing business in this town uses them in some way, shape, or form. Hell, I’ve tried on three separate occasions to form user groups, only to abandon them after months of meetings where I was the only attendee (I didn’t even win any of the drawings for free Adobe software, that’s how much of a loser I am).
Well, this year I’m gonna make sure I don’t blow it. This year I’m gonna really try hard to make sure everyone I know gets an opportunity to see all the great stuff I get to see every year when I attend this conference. I’m gonna blog as much as I can, shoot as much video as will fit on my MacBook, and use up every square inch of my camera’s SD card taking pictures of as much as I can see. I really don’t know how on earth I’ll have the time to do any of this, that’s why it feels like an impending storm. I feel like as soon as my feet touch down in Los Angeles tomorrow, all hell is gonna break loose and I’m going to be a whirling dervish of multimedia activity. I hope I can pull this off, because I’d love to share everything that I think is cool with an audience that I think will have an appreciation for what I think is cool. I would like to think I’m a pretty good judge of, “okay, that shit is cool…”.
I’ll let you be the judge. Stay tuned and make sure you check the site out frequently during the next week. I hope you enjoy what I post!
…and so the jitters begin.
October 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
TEDx is tomorrow, and I’m petrified. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, tomorrow is TEDx in Myrtle Beach and I’m one of the guest speakers. My topic (which I picked myself) is, “Technology Ubiquity, A Brief History of the Future”. When I decided on my topic, I was confident that I knew what I was going to talk about. I’ve been working on this presentation now for almost two weeks (seriously) and it’s evolved now to such a point that I can honestly say, it’s not very close to what I originally envisioned.
I’m not complaining, in fact, I think it’s a better presentation overall, than what I originally thought up. It’s just that the self confidence I initially had when I was asked, “what would you like to speak about?” has given way to, “boy, I hope this thing wows ‘em.”
Anyway, I’m rehearsing today, going through the slides, making notes, making sure I don’t go over my allotted 18 minutes, and whenever I need a break, I’ve been listening to Vampire Weekend. I dunno, it just lifts my spirits and centers me a little.
So without further ado, enjoy a little of what I’ve been enjoying. Here’s “California English” which is a little appropriate considering I leave for Los Angeles on Saturday:
Adobe Max 2010 – A peek inside my conference schedule.
October 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
As I mentioned last week, I’m attending the Adobe Max Conference this year in Los Angeles, and I’m really excited. As it gets closer and closer to Saturday, I’m gearing up to blog more and more, culminating in what’s essentially going to be a non-stop blog-tacular beginning on Saturday (the 23rd) and ending on Thursday (the 28th) of next week.
I plan on posting as much as I can in as many media formats as I can possibly squeeze into an already jam-packed schedule.
Speaking of schedule, I took the liberty of dropping my agenda below for you to check out. As you can see, it generally begins early enough, and runs continually through most days ending fairly late in the evening. It looks to be a couple of 12+ hour days with activities and sessions scheduled throughout most of my time out west. Now you can see why I get so excited about the conference and why I’m looking forward to it so much. It’s basically 24-hours-a-day immersion into all things Web/Interactive. If you do what I do for a living, and you do it where I do it, this is essentially the Super Bowl of Interactive Development.
Take a moment and give it a once over. If anything jumps out at you that you’d like to see me blog or write about specifically, by all means contact me directly and let me know what it is you’d like me to blog/video-blog about and I’ll make sure I give it the ol’ college try.
I’m really looking forward to trying my hand at video-blogging some of this stuff to try and get a more spontaneous-off-the-top-of-my-head reaction to the stuff I’ll see and do. Fingers crossed. If not, rest assured I’ll be writing until my hands fall off. Stay tuned!
| Sunday, October 24, 2010 | |
| 9:00 am – 5:00 pm | Creating Engaging Websites with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium |
| 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm | Adobe Design Achievement Awards |
| Monday, October 25, 2010 | |
| 9:30 am – 11:30 am | General Session: Welcome to the Revolution |
| 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm | Dreamweaver and HTML5 & Javascript Based Widgets |
| 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm | From Design to CSS and HTML with Fireworks and Dreamweaver |
| 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Creating Interactive Rich Media Advertising Campaigns with Video |
| 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm | Sponsor Welcome Reception |
| 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm | Meet the Teams |
| Tuesday, October 26, 2010 | |
| 8:30 am – 9:30 am | Using Web Fonts Now |
| 10:00 am – 12:00 pm | General Session: User Experience: The Next Generation |
| 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm | The Future of Advertising |
| 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm | Best Practices: Working with Flash Catalyst CS5 and Adobe Design Applications |
| 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm | Sneak Peeks |
| Wednesday, October 27, 2010 | |
| 8:30 am – 10:00 am | AIR for Android: Discovering the Magic |
| 11:00 am – 12:30 pm | Designing with Fireworks |
| 1:30 pm – 5:30 pm | Adobe AIR Code Camp |
In keeping with the “Snack Food” theme I’ve got going on…
October 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I just discovered the most awesome thing. I’m claiming it as my own “invention” and passing it on, because as I sit here eating it, I’m enjoying the pure pleasure of a newly discovered treat that’s blowing my mind, man!
This weekend while I was out, I grabbed a large container of Fage Total 0% Greek Yogurt. Now, this is plain, unsweetened… (did I mention plain?) Greek Yogurt. I loved it because a frickin’ CUP of this shit packs about 20 grams of protein, zero fat, and only 120 calories. We’re talking good shit here. But, like you, I was a little concerned about the “plain” part. So I had a kind of “stroke of genius” (or perhaps simply a stroke) and thought, “why can’t I make my own vanilla yogurt?”.
I know, right? Like I said, genius.
So last night, as I was putting together my lunch, I decided to measure out a big ol’ cup of this stuff, add a few drops of vanilla, and a tablespoon of clover honey. Stir, place in refrigerator, and I’m good to go.
But that’s not all.
Pineapples are cheap as hell right now. I’m talking a fresh, whole pineapple for like, $2 if you look around. So naturally, when I saw ‘em, I grabbed one, sliced and diced it all up, and put it in a handy little tupperware container, 2 cups at a time.
So what does the kid do? Why, he tosses all that delicious naturally wonderful shit into a big ol’ container and stirs it all up. The result? Only the greatest single snack in the history of snacks. I’m telling you, I could eat this 24/7… and until the pineapple runs out, I just might.
What’s the final tally? Well look no further, here’s the rundown:
329 calories
21.73 grams of protein
4.3 grams of fiber
64.3 grams of carbs
.37 grams of fat (yes… that’s 1/3rd of 1 gram for 329 calories)
89 milligrams of sodium
I told you. Run, don’t walk and get yourself some Plain Yogurt, Vanilla, Honey, and Pineapple. You’ll thank me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some gorging to do…
