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October 26, 2006
In the Fullness of Time
In the Fullness of Time: I just got in the house from the Adobe MAX 2006 conference. I was mostly in the Community Booth in the fifth floor exhibition area, asking what convinced people to attend, what they hoped to get from their investment in time and money, whether they were actually finding what they sought (and doing support work if not), asking what they thought of the week's news. I was learning. At the airport I asked other Adobe staffers what they saw, what they heard, what they thought. I need to rest to process it, but right now, I'm seeing a few themes emerging from those conversations: (a) We finally started seeing what this new Adobe company might be capable of... hints before, but this week the shape could be seen. (b) We're currently flying under the radar of most tech pundits... in 2006 they got Flash Video because of the YouTube deal, and there are explosive businesses to be built atop the omnipresent AS3 Virtual Machine... for such a familiar brand, Adobe is almost in stealth mode right now. (c) Those of us who are exposed to it, get it, bigtime... when people told me what they thought, I heard consensus of deep excitement, and we couldn't find ways the facts fit together wrong. (d) Adobe's a big new clumsy company, instead of two big old clumsy companies... this conference was lots of work to organize, particularly for new workgroups, and the bug reports will later help in their usual way. Me, the top event was Flash Lite hitting North America, because when people see it, they get it, and the US has been behind the times... pockets worldwide suddenly contain computers, with internet, and multimedia screens instead of old DOS ASCII... creatives are making interfaces to services, creating experiences, engaging their audiences. Things change deeply when the entire developed world experiences this each day in their own lives. But my top thought is how we've already got all these people aligned together, doing different work in different fields -- there's this entire creative technical culture doing business apps or film or websites or whatever, all parts of the world -- and they all share this common Adobe technology base when they pursue their own goals. We permeate nearly all sectors of every modern society. And we're gonna use this stuff! More later, but those are my top thoughts, coming off the plane.
Posted by JohnDowdell at October 26, 2006 10:40 PM
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Comments
I feel your excitement. I feel like I'm on the edge of something that's going to be huge in the near future. Or like you were pointing out, Flash is already huge but many people are just beginning to notice.
Right now I'm making RIAs for Xbox and Zune websites. Tomorrow I could be working on applications - Apollo - and mobile devices - Flash Lite. Adobe/Macromedia has given us the tools to do just about anything we can imagine. More and more people are beginning to see that.
Posted by: Oz at October 27, 2006 07:13 PM