We finally announced the MAX 2009 event schedule. Ted Patrick sent out the message this morning.
"Despite the challenges presented by the economy this year, Adobe is excited to be moving forward with our largest designer/developer event Adobe MAX 2009. MAX will take place October 4-7, 2009 in Los Angeles and online. We will not hold a unique Europe event in 2009, however, we are actively exploring options to make the Los Angeles event more accessible for our worldwide community.
MAX Europe has been a real success for Adobe and it is our intention to return to Europe in the future. Personally having been a part of every MAX Europe event, I know how important the event is to our global community. In order to make MAX a more global event, I want to encourage everyone, regardless of location, to participate in the "MAX Call for Sessions and Labs".
We are actively working to bring Adobe MAX to a far larger audience online in 2009. In 2008, we recorded MAX sessions and published them on AdobeTV for everyone to view. To date, MAX session content has been viewed by over 250,000 users, 50 times larger than physical MAX attendance in 2008. This year will be taking the online experience to the next level."
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
4 comments:
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If things are going towards online "conferencing" what benefit would we have in getting there other than networking. But I am pretty sure that a lot of European developers will be EXTREMELY disappointed. They have so much talent there. I kind of like the comment that flashmagazine.com that they tried to put an "American" conference in Europe without taking account in cultural differences.
ReplyDeleteBeing there is still the best experience IMO however due to travel restrictions, being able to attend virtually is next best thing.
ReplyDeleteAs to the cultural bits, we really screwed up last year. Someone distributed 5000 flyers at MAX in San Francisco to advertise the European MAX event in "Madrid, Italy". The Spanish attendees were not nearly as offended as people at another conference I went to when they gave someone a name tag that said they were from "Brussels, Belgium, Germany"
Nevertheless, having one big MAX is the way it will be in 2009.
There's a number of common problems you can hit when you run a conference in Europe. One of the big ones is the language barrier, even if the conference is advertised as being run in English. People can feel uncomfortable going to a country who's language they don't speak. And of course you have speakers presenting who's first language isn't English, etc.
ReplyDeleteNext you've got the cost of flights between countries in Europe. They're not necessarily cheap. For example, it would have cost me 400GBP to fly from Edinburgh to Milan.
Then of course, you have the different currencies. OK, so most of Europe has fallen into line with the single currency, but there's still a few of us who haven't.
Putting these complications aside, the comment about the cultural differences is very true. Adobe didn't take this into consideration at either MAX 2007 or 2008, and the CFUnited 2008 conference flopped, partially down to this as well.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how MAX 2009 turns out. Will the online event be successful (assuming Connect holds up), and will those who are US based pay the full price when they can view online for a fraction of the price? Sure you don't get the networking, and grabbing a beer with the product teams, but in the current financial climate...
Totally agree mate! As someone who travels to Europe 8-12 times per year on average and at least tries to speak the native languages, I find I am an exception rather than the norm. Not sure what I can say. Ich liebe Deutschland und reise nach Berlin 14 Juin 2009 fur ein "Flex Kamp" Spreche. J'aime la France de tout mon coeur aussi!
ReplyDeleteI try. C'est la vie!