Thursday, November 24, 2011

Goodbye Adobe - We had Fun

As many of you have heard, I am no longer with Adobe Systems as a Sr. Technical Evangelist.  While on the 3rd day of my vacation in Mexico, I got the call with the explanation that Adobe is doing a major refocus and as part of that, many of us "enterprise" types are no longer required. "Überflussig" I guess is the correct German word for the situation.    Keep in mind that I now speak as an individual, not as an Adobe employee.

I missed most of the official story due to the timing of my vacation but caught up with a few news outlets to get the rationale. Techworld News reported the following:

"In order to drive increased Digital Marketing bookings, which are recognized as recurring revenue, the company will reduce its investment, and expected licence revenue, in certain enterprise solution product lines," it said in a statement.
Its enterprise products include Adobe Connect and Adobe LiveCycle, as well as web content management software it acquired last year when it bought Day Software."
On top of this, another statement from Infoworld confirmed that Adobe has indeed thrown in the towel on Flash for mobile browsers. The headline reads "Adobe ends mobile Flash Player, reveals enterprise pullback" and subtext reveals a focus on AIR and HTML5 for mobile.

Confused?  I guess being known as the enterprisey guy for so long has now sealed my fate.   Although there was a minor shock as I got this news just a week after finding out that my Adobe MAX AIR Mobile Code Camp (one of the areas of major focus for Adobe) scored an all time high for the AIR track of 4.96/5 with over 70 responses.  My Flex Mobile Code camp also scored the same (4.96/5). This makes me a MAX Master for the second year in a row although I somehow doubt I will be there for the next MAX.

Nevertheless, the words I once heard from friend and fellow mountain bike racer Alison Sydor rang in my head.  Any time you have been doing something for longer than five years, it is time to re-evaluate and re-think.   Perhaps it is time to move on to a new opportunity.  I loved working at Adobe and appreciated everything I learned there.  The people are great, awesome company and the next generation of tools are things I will be working with.   It is too easy though to become complacent if you stagnate for too long a time.

I also want to thank the Evangelism Team publicly for working through a lot of hard challenges and say it was truly amazing.  Adobe - thank you and best of luck!!

So what is next?  Can't tell you but watch this space for a new announcement on Uberity!

19 comments:

  1. Dude! you are one of the top developers i ever meet!!! i pretty sure better times come and sometimes a change its necessary ;) . U rocks my friend!!!!

    see u soon and don't forget Flexico!!! XD LoL

    good luck!
    -Sergio Brito aka @yacaFx

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  2. This is a great lost to the entire Adobe dev community. You ARE the best(with or without the beer). I also wish you luck.

    Gerry

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  3. The Adobe Dev Community has lost one of the best, you certainly artifice Flex project for me personally, the band 22th Century into a combination to create applications ... I wish you good luck and success in your new projects. From Mexico a friend that rock you!!!

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  4. I hope that in couple of years you can say similar thing as Steve Jobs in his 2005 inspirational speech at Stanford, about being fired from Apple: "being fired from Adobe was the best thing that could have happened to me". I hope you've already saw it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA . I know, this restructuring at Adobe is a direct result of Steve Jobs policies. I'm trying to find positive in this story.

    I think you can do much more for the world compare to your excellent story at Adobe.

    Good luck with your new "super cool" enterprise!

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  5. I attended your adobe Max session this year and it was the absolute best one of the bunch. You are a "STAR" so whatever you decide to do next, you will excel at! Keep us posted on your new adventure through this blog and twitter. It's your time to shine brighter than ever!

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  6. Duane,

    LiveCycle has lost you. You were a saviour to many in many ctitical situations. The pain is it's not only you but we the LiveCycle developers will suffer. Pain to even to think about it !!

    Bibhu.

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  7. Dude, I did not know you were one of the ones hit by yet another craptastic shuffle by Adobe. Well it's their lose, you are a credit and inspiration to the field and I for one appreciate everything you have done so far... and I'll continue to appreciate what you do next!

    Thanks,
    Peter Witham

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  8. Good luck, Duane. I'm really shocked. John, Doug, now you...

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  10. Thanks for all your great work, I know for sure that you will shine in everything you do. I will continue to follow you on this blog and Twitter, keep up the good work

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  11. Duane, thank you for making the lives of LiveCycle developers so much easier over the past several years. We all appreciate it and we'll all miss your amazing contributions.

    Sincerely,
    Fred Pantalone

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  12. Duane, thanks for all your great work! You were the inspirational one especially for the LiveCycle community. We will miss you.

    Best wishes for the next thing. Take care.

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  13. Keep in touch though mate and give me a shout if your ever over here for a whiskey!

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  14. You were the coolest evangelist and part of a rare breed who sees the big picture across many perspectives (music, programming, creative thought, enterprise systems, etc.) There's no doubt you'll move on to many more great adventures, thanks for all of the inspiration throughout the years.

    - Peter Carabeo-Nieva @petercn

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  15. Hey Duane,

    super sad to hear this. As I also send you as text message: I don't get it. But I hope to see you soon again!

    /marc

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  16. So sorry to hear Duane. I'm sure you will be picked up immediately. Your ability and expertise go far. Good luck!

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  17. Duane, I wish you and your family all the best. Keep kicking ass and taking names. Just know that you are far better off long term, great people always are. Regards, Ted :)

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  18. Thank you Ted! I have weened myself off the Koolaid and my dev stack now contains only Heroku, Mongo, GitHub, IntelliJ, PHP, Java, HTML5, CSS, JSON and Objective C. I already feel far better off and coding is fun again. Look forward to catching up with you and everyone else who was kind enough to leave comments. Best wishes too.

    If any of you come to Vancouver, beers are on me!

    Duane

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  19. Duane, I wish you best of luck with the recent changes. I am sure it will be for your own benefit.

    Tarek.

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