Here’s the slideshow, done in LR2

It would have been nice if we had more information about the unconferences ahead of time, so we could have planned what to attend around our sessions and labs. Nowhere that I know of were the schedules posted except at the unconferences themselves. They should have been online and updated online somewhere where the 5,000 plus MAX attendees could have easily checked them. Anyway here are the schedules (I photographed them yesterday)

Durango is drag and drop of live widgets from one AIR application to another. A swf doesn’t have to be Durango enabled to enable a mashup. The components autoconnect. Also allows you to edit properties of an application while its running. To Durango enable an AIR application takes only a few lines of code. You can save your drag and dropped mashup as a flex application and then edit it that way. There is a technical session on Durango tomorrow morning at 9:30. It went live on Labs 20 minutes ago.

Check my twitter (@abunur) for up to minute updates on the Sneak Peeks. I will post the images here later.

It’s late even by PST so I will keep this brief, perhaps another post later along with my photos from Max Day 1. This is my second time attending MAX, the first being last year in Chicago. According to other sites my reviews of MAX last year were full of ‘breathless enthusiasm‘ so it may be surprising that my comments regarding MAX this year have been largely negative. So here’s the short list:

• At MAX last year, we had some issues with the WiFi - it would go out intermittently. This year though, the question is more like Internet? What Internet? There is maybe one place in the entire convention where you can sit and receive a decent WiFi signal. Even speakers on the wired lines had issues getting a network connection. For a company who’s business is all about the Internet, this is just sad. We can live without the gaming area, just give us a network connection already.
• At MAX last year, the entire convention was held in a single location. This year, there are at least three different geographical locations. I am guessing that the McCormick place in Chicago must be vastly larger than the Moscone Center…or is it? McCormick has two halves, an old half and a new half, only the new portion was used for MAX last year. Moscone has three separate buildings, only Moscone West is being used for MAX this year. However many, if not all, the labs are being held in the Marriott a couple of blocks away, and tomorrow night’s event is being held in Golden Gate park. As one fellow attendee mused to me today, I wonder at the logistics of bussing over five thousand people from Moscone to Golden Gate Park. As for walking to the Marriott, a complaint last year was that the rooms in McCormick were too far apart so it was hard to get to sessions on time. How about a ten minute walk to a totally separate location?
• Last year Adobe gave lots of cool stuff to the attendees, including a laptop carrier bag. This year we got a grocery bag (at least it was cloth, not paper). The city of Los Angeles, in celebration of holding MAX ‘09 next year, also threw in a funny looking pen made out of used toilet roll cardboard and a half Popsicle stick.
• Last year when we would come out of a session, there would be tables and tables of yummy treats to grab and munch on. Lots of drinks, too. This year, the few treats there have been, there is a mob swarm briefly and then everything is gone. Complete opposite of last year. This morning at breakfast there was a huge line for the orange juice. You’d think there was a session on Degrafa people were waiting to get into, but no, its just the Orange Juice, man.
• Last year there were lots and lots of vendors, and they all gave out shirts and many other cool prizes like USB drives and fun toys. This year, it seems like there are far, far fewer vendors, and they are mostly giving out nothing, or small things like peppermints or those cheap aluminum buttons that political parties like to give out to their supporters. There may be a reason for this, see below. I could have missed them, but this year I did not see Yahoo, nor Google, though Google seemed to be one of the most talked about companies other than Adobe itself at MAX this year.
• In general, my impression has been that this year’s MAX has been rather thrifty, if not trimmed down, and less organized as well.

So what are the reasons for this? I would have assumed that with each progressive year, MAX would be bigger and better. There was a lot of hype on Adobe blogs about how there is record attendance at MAX this year. My guess was that one reason is the poor economy. I ran into the owner of a major award winning studio (hint, they are a finalist in the MAX awards) and he had some interesting comments on this as well. For example, he said that the attendance at MAX this year was lower than expected. Yes, it might be more than last year, but it’s less than the increase that it should have been. Again, he agreed that the economy probably had a major impact on this. Another attendee commented, regarding the vendors, that apparently this year the union rates have sky rocketed. In other words, the cost to move a box from one end of a room to the other has gone up exponentially, hence the vendors costs have gone up greatly and therefore they have brought fewer and smaller items. Still, what about the apparent disorganization? I was commenting about this to one of our team members as we came out of a session into the crowded hall and a lady in front of us turned around and said, “I’m an Adobe employee, and even I feel that way!” This is pretty disheartening considering that we’ve come all the way to Adobe’s home town. A big disappointment after traveling from the other side of the country. On the other hand, at least we are enjoying San Francisco…Muir Woods and many other things to see here. Finally, why is MAX being held in California AGAIN next year? Do they already feel that the economy is going to slump further, and hence everyone else should bear the expense of coming to Adobe?

My last post with a link to preconference photos never made it onto feeds.adobe.com. I wonder if this is some system glitch or if Adobe is deliberately screening out unauthorized sneak peeks? If so I guess the guy who asked me to leave Moscone West Saturday morning wasn’t kidding when he said there were no photos allowed…

So we flew in to San Francisco on Virgin America. My first time ever flying this airline, and I have to say it was the best domestic airline I have ever flown. Sure, to save on costs / maximize on profits, they and many other airlines now charge for meals even on a flight like this from one coast to the other. On the other hand, this is the first time I was able to order free beverages using the touch screen at my seat. It was also the first time I sat in an airplane cabin with purple mood lighting and the first time I was able to chat with another passenger using a chat application in the said console. But perhaps the best, and most unexpected perk: regular power outlets at every seat. I bought the airline power adapter for my Macbook Pro just in case one day by some crazy chance I would find a power outlet in the main cabin of an airplane, but now I feel like that was a waste. Every seat in the main cabin of Virgin America has a full size power outlet that works without having to pay for anything. There is also USB and some type of network port, but the USB didn’t seem to have any power so I’m not sure what you’d use it for; perhaps its there for future use.

We arrived Friday night and our hotel is next door to Moscone West so we passed by and noticed that much of the signage and other preparations for MAX were already complete. I wanted to take some pics of it that night but we were exhausted from the flight. The next morning I came by, snapped some images on the outside and then noticed that the doors seemed not to be locked so wandered in and was about to start shooting away when the guy in charge asked me to leave, saying it was ‘private’ and no photos or anything could be taken. Hmm…so I came by again tonight and got plenty of pictures of the inside through the glass. For some reason the Moscone seems quite similar in architecture to me to the newer half of the McCormick place where MAX was held last year.

Here’s the Lightroom gallery of my MAX preview exposures.

Some things to note:

• there is a designated area for the free Unconferences. I have heard about them here and there on folks blogs but don’t really know anything about it. I suppose there will be more info available upon registration tomorrow or on Monday.
• There seems to be a booth that is a big multisided chalk board for folks to put share ideas on. Hmm…
• Level 2 of Moscone West has: Adobe Support Lab, MAX Playground, MAX Store, Sessions, Unconferences
• Level 3 of Moscone West has: General Session
• Ground level of Moscone West has: registration, Community Pavillion, and that showcase area they had last year, what’s it called???
• They had been working on hoisting up a huge MAX sign onto the side of the Moscone since early Saturday morning. I guess they finally got it up. I overheard some MAX staffers as they were exiting the building Saturday night and apparently its a big deal they are really proud of.

A few other observations I had so far:

• people seem really friendly around here. It’s kind of like, the further you get from New York, NY, the better the temperament of people are…and this is just about as far as you can get. Well, maybe that’s not always true - I found the temperament of folks in Kentucky to be amazing and that’s only half way across the country from NYC. But really, strangers in the elevator told me to have a nice day…how often does that happen on the East coast?
• There are a few homeless folks who seem to actually live along the Howard street side of Moscone West. If you’re feeling charitable maybe you can help one out by giving him some bottled water or buying him a meal.
• if you have time while you are here in SF, go visit Muir Woods. The redwood trees are awe inspiring and help you to realize your place in this vast universe by putting things in perspective. There is one tree there they dated at 1,021 years old.

Hitting the ‘delete’ key in Adobe Bridge and Lightroom used to bring up a dialog offering options like whether I wanted to remove the image from the collection or permanently delete the image from my hard drive. Since upgrading to Lightroom 2 I no longer get this dialogue, and I couldn’t find a setting in the preferences to make it come up. After a bit of searching on the web I found this page that says “To remove a photo from a collection as well as from the catalog, select the photo and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Delete (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift+Delete (Mac OS).” Now to me, removing from a collection and dumping something in the trash are two totally different things, yet when I used this shortcut it did give me a prompt offering to move the image to the trash.

So there you have it, if you want to actually delete an image from your drive from Lightroom, you need to use the above key combination.

Ever since we first saw the early preview of Thermo at MAX in Chicago last year, every time we have started a new project I have mused, ‘man we could have really used thermo!’. Since they were offering hands on labs on Thermo this year at MAX SF I assumed either Thermo was going to be released at MAX or some type of preview would be released. Well, the good news is finally in and looks like we will be returning from MAX with Thermo in our hands at last.

Well this has been a month of new things being implemented; Barack Hussein Obama won the presidential election, Adobe MAX SF is around the corner, and our web site is finally live! For ages now we have only had our blog on the site; our workload has been such that getting a decent site together has been beyond scope…but a little over a month ago we finally put our collective feet down and declared, enough is enough! Developed with Adobe Flex, of course…enjoy!

Lots of thanks to everyone who participated in the alpha release.

We decided to deploy in phases…so stay tuned for lots to come still.