I am a person who follows what Adobe is doing as closely as I can, but since it has so many technologies under its umbrella, it's hard to keep on top. With this in mind, I look forward to Adobe MAX 2010 in Los Angeles, which starts next weekend.
MAX came to Adobe by way of Macromedia. It had been a developer's playground where Flash, Flex and ColdFusion developers got together, sat in dark rooms, and coded their hearts out for a few days. Also, there were awards, seminars, hands-on labs, and a constant supply of snacks.
After Adobe and Macromedia merged, it wasn't clear to us who were coming at it from the Adobe side whether it made any sense. I had the good fortune to attend a few years ago when Adobe Creative Suite 3 was new, and presented a day long deep dive session on the then state-of-the-art design suite. We designers and printers felt very much on the margins of things during that week, although as a guy who enjoys a few lines of code from time to time, I attended several of the "Make your first..." {insert your favorite technology acronym} "Application!" sessions. Wow, what an eye opener.
For those of us stuck in color booths on press checks, entrenched in marketing speak, or worrying about dotgain and ink dry times, MAX represents a whole new world of exciting possibilities.
This year, the conference is in Los Angeles, and while I am indeed working the show again, there will be ample time to sit in on those "make your first..." hands-on sessions and see what I can do. Since my first MAX, though, I have become a pretty decent PHP and MySQL guy with a solid understanding of CSS. I have also gotten very, very excited about Flash Catalyst and Flex, as well as the HTML5 features in Illustrator and Dreamweaver. I continue to be amazed at what can be done with InDesign, which looks more and more like the Swiss Knife of all media document production as it evolves.
What's exciting about this MAX is that as a designer/printer, I'll not be an outsider. There are many programs designed just for us, and that have been selected to expose us to other revenue streams for our companies as well as ways to branch out of our narrow design cubicles. New features in Design Premium aside, the real ticket to success lies in the Master Collection and the additional video, web and mobile content you can create with it.
I hope that more traditional designers realize this and don't think that MAX is just for code geeks anymore. Come to the conference and you'll be glad you did!
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