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October 22, 2006
Early MAX
Early MAX: Before Adobe MAX, before Macromedia MAX, before DevCon, there was UCON, the Macromedia User Conference. Darrel Plant describes some of the early ones here. I've been told that the first one, organized by Devorah Canter, was held in a house in Chicago. MacroMind later moved to San Francisco and held a conference at the Hilton Hotel in Portsmouth Square... I hung around outside that event, not having the $1100 ticket price or even a computer, although I had purchased Director 2.0 and was reading the manuals. The t-shirts Darrel shows here tell of realtime 3D engines, the first efforts at a richer web, then the beginning of DHTML. Today there's a lot more of us, and we have more tools at our disposal -- serverside development, machines always talking together, and connected computers you can put in your pocket. Adobe adds the video world, and business document systems, and the entire ecology around visual design. Instead of being a few early adopters united around a single packaged software box, we're now a very large group of smart, optimistic people, with a great range of technical skills and priorities. Good times ahead.
Posted by JohnDowdell at October 22, 2006 07:00 AM
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Comments
I'm not sure UCON is the parent of DevCon. Before DevCon there was a ColdFusion conference in Ft. Collins. It was attended by many Allaire folks and was the first real CF conference.
[jd sez: True. I didn't attend Allaire DevCons myself, and that's definitely where the "Macromedia DevCon" name came from. If you or others have a history on those early events this week then I'd enjoy reading it, thanks.]
Posted by: Raymond Camden at October 22, 2006 07:57 AM
Hey John - here is a bit of info:
http://www.sumoc.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=1F61371D-1320-1704-6788C06BD00E3775
I presented on... hmm... I think using JS and CF together.
Posted by: Raymond Camden at October 22, 2006 08:39 AM
Actually Ray, It became DevCon in 2001 in Orlando, in 1999 (Boston) and 2000 (Washington D.C.) it was Allaire Developer's Conferance. ;-)
Some pics of those events are at http://www.forta.com/about/theroad.cfm.
--- Ben
Posted by: Ben Forta at October 22, 2006 08:41 AM
Ah. Cool. I thought it was always DevCon. :)
Posted by: Raymond Camden at October 22, 2006 10:09 AM
And, it was the Allaire branch that brought us the over-the-top parties. I mean Ucon had a party but nothing like what we got once the merger. Let's hope Adobe can even out do that.
Posted by: Phillip Kerman at October 23, 2006 08:51 AM
To be accurate, I don't think that I ever claimed that UCON was a predecessor of DevCon. [jd sez: I thought it was me noting that UCON came before DevCon...?] The only major event under the DevCon name that Macromedia held (that I'm aware of) was the 2002 Orlando conference, which is the one I missed, and was -- I think -- not long after the Allaire merger. The 2001 NYC conference was the last Macromedia show held as a UCON. For the 2003 show in Salt Lake, the MAX name was introduced.
And in my own opinion, what brought in the over the top parties was Flash. More particularly, the money and growth Flash brought into the company.
Posted by: darrelplant at October 25, 2006 02:24 PM