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October 21, 2005
Thoughts on MAX 2005
photo courtest Kevin Baird of digital OutPost, see Kevin's MAX 2005 flickr photo set
Now that I'm back from Anaheim I can sit down and write a few thoughts about MAX 2005. I've got an older laptop with dodgy wireless abilities and as such I wasn't able to hop online while actually at the conference thus I was unable to post to my blog on the fly. Honestly that didn't break my heart too much as instead I was able to attend some sessions and spend a lot of time with the Director developers that were there. So here I am, and here's what I thought...
Director Sessions
There were three sessions in total this year that covered Director in one way or another, and all three speakers did quite well in my book. The first of the week was Andy Phelps and the 'Mastering the 3D Experience' session, Andy gave folks a good high-level overview of what the 3D engine in Director and the Shockwave Player has to offer. I think that presentation was particularly well timed at this year's conference due to the growing interest in the Flash world surrounding 3D in Flash, which is currently at the same state as Director 8 offered when Imaging Lingo was first introduced (as a full-on feature). The interest level in the real-time 3D capabilities seemed to draw a decent crowd and Andy delivered a great session. After that was Steve Zehngut and his session on 'Web and Downloadable Game Development Using Macromedia Tools', while this session wasn't dedicated to Director in specific it did feature prominently in the discussion. Steve has a long history in the casual games market and he brought that experience together in a great presentation that was less about tips and tricks using the tools and instead more about the business end of things and how to find a path to success. He discussed both his own projects and client issues along with talking through some popular downloadable games out there today to help convey to folks what makes a good game, what makes a successful game. The session was good and offered great information to anyone developing casual games whether they do so using Director, Flash or both. Last but not least was Mark Jonkman's session (offered twice during the week), 'Using Flash and Director Together to Produce Rich Applications', which obviously discussed how you can use both Director and Flash together to create the best of experiences. I think a lot of folks in both camps feel that it's an either-or situation, either you use Director or you use Flash, when in reality having both products in your toolset offers you the best chance at success (sentiments echoed in Steve Zehngut's session as well), Mark made a clear case to help support the need for both products. He offered great advice on how and where folks can use the integration points to achieve a richer experience and in addition he helped show off some of the new and as of yet unreleased Flash 8 Asset Xtra functionality.
Birds of a Feather and a Director Gathering
In addition to the presentation sessions this year's MAX featured an official Birds of a Feather (BoF) session on Monday night as well as a Director Gathering sponsored by the folks at Integration New Media (INM), Director-Oline and Macromedia. The BoF session was well attended and there were a lot of questions to be asked. In general I think the session went well and I was happy to address as many of the questions as possible, of course in some cases there were either no answers to be had (what will happen when Adobe takes over?) or ones that I might not be in a position to share (when will the new Flash 8 Asset Xtra be available, and how?). But overall the exchange was great and I walked away with a few good ideas to work on going forward. After the BoF session we made our way over to the Marriott hotel where the Director Gathering was held and there we had yet another solid turn out. This second gathering event was a whole lot more casual and it featured a number of prize giveaways to those that filled out a Director trivia test put together by Kristen from INM. The prizes ranged from a few Director pins and blankets to product licenses for INM Xtras and even one full commercial copy (boxed product) of Director MX 2004. All in all both events were great in that I had a lot of exposure to our developers both in a professional format (the BoF session) and a more personal format (the Gathering), and in both cases I learned a good deal about our users and what they need from us.
Sneaks
One of the key features of MAX events (and UCON events before them) is the Sneaks presentations in which product teams get to show off what they've got in the oven for possible future releases. This year we were able to participate and I was lucky enough to have a chance to show-off a few goodies we've got on the go. Each Sneaks demo is in theory limited to five minutes (some go over but that's ok!) and as such I had to keep things scoped a bit, besides, you can only show what's ready at the time anyway! :) I demonstrated some great new authoring UI features that we feel will help the Director developer feel more at home inside the MX UI (do we call it MX UI anymore?) and then I showed some demos and examples of the Flash 8 Asset Xtra in action. I'm going to work on a Captivate demo version of my Sneaks presentation and hopefully post that here for others to view so keep an eye out for that! Beyond my personal presentation there were great demos from a number of other products, those demos ranged from Flex and Breeze, to Captivate, to Flash 8.5 authoring (!), Contribute, etc. The presentations were fun and entertaining and I think all presenters had a great time of it.
Macromedia Labs
If you're not yet clear on what this is, then I encourage you to take a look now: Macromedia <labs>. This is a great new effort being put on by Macromedia in which we'll now begin sharing early previews into the technologies that we're working on, something that's long been sought by our users. For now Macromedia <labs> is focused on Flex 2.0 and the Flash 8.5 Player/AS3.0, but going forward that will change as the door is opened to other products to participate. I for one am quite eager to have the Director team get involved in this effort so that we can provide some better insight into what's going on with Director and the Shockwave Player to those outside the company walls. Give it some time as there's work to be done in order to open the lab to all products, but do look for us to get involved as soon as we're able to.
Keynote, Disney, Show Floor, Community Outreach, Presentations, Etc...
I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't comment on the aspects of MAX besides those related to Director. The event as a whole was awesome, the keynote presentation very interesting and in general the conference as a whole was well worth my time and effort (and Macromedia's expense ;) ). In addition to having the chance to listen in on sessions about other products (Flex in particular for me!) we had a great community effort and an awesome night at Disney's California Adventure Park, free food, drink and rollercoasters! Yowza! I can say that I personally thank everyone on our events team for putting together such a fantasitc event, the amount of effort involved and the stress levels incurred must be incredible, they deserve hefty servings of gratitude for their work.
Ok, that's my post MAX brain-dump, there may be more to come than the above, but it's Friday and I'm set to relax this weekend. I hope you all do the same, get some R&R and we'll all be back at it on Monday. <
Posted by thiggins at October 21, 2005 04:52 PM