Three days learning about new products, sneak peeks of emerging technologies and networking with over 5000 of your peers and industry experts. The annual event, held last week in Los Angeles, brings all of these elements together to give attendees an unparalleled conference experience. From the general sessions to the workshops and labs attendees are exposed to the tools that they need to get the job done.
To start the conference off on the right note Adobe released ColdFusion 9 the night before the first general session. This release contains new features and enhancements that make developing, maintaining and managing CF apps easier than ever. More on the features and benefits of ColdFusion 9, and ColdFusion in general, will be coming in a future post.
General Session #1
“Our goal is to help you and all of your clients reinvent their businesses in this digital age. To be more effective, more profitable and more agile.” Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO – Adobe Systems Inc.
The kickoff session was about using all of the available tools to create a uniform experience across multiple platforms and mediums. Development is no longer just about making sure your application works on a PC and a MAC, but that it looks and functions the same on all web enabled devices (web browsers, desktops, smart phones, web enabled TVs)
Flash 10.1 which will start rolling out on computers, netbooks and mobile devices in early 2010 will eliminate the need to build different versions for multiple devices and allow developers to build and maintain one codebase. The notable exception is the iPhone (and iTouch) which will support pre-compiled flash apps, but not web based flash through the built in Safari browser.
With Adobe’s pending acquisition of Omniture, it will become easier than ever to allow developers to gain access to analytics for rich internet applications.
The first session was closed out with a exclusive sneak peak of the upcoming film Avatar introduced by producer Jon Landau. He explained how they used Adobe products to solve real life production issues and throughout the entire production process. 3D technology has definitely come a long way!
General Session #2
The second general session focused on real life applications built using Adobe technologies.
FedEx has developed a real-time tracking application with Flex and LiveCycle Data Services that allows them to monitor the location and status of their delivery vehicles. It can also track trending and send alerts when it detects problems with equipment or delivery delays. History is also stored and can be used to replay the route for review.
The crowd was shown a demonstration about a truck with a failing refrigeration unit and a package that needed to remain between a certain temperature range. When a sensor started showing a rise in temperature over a relatively short period of time staff was alerted and immediately began to look for a service location on the current route. The truck was re-routed and the delivery times were updated to display the new delivery time. Within 20 minutes the vehicle was fixed and the driver back on to the destination. Once the vehicle was within 30 minutes of the destination a delivery alert was sent to the recipient and the package was delivered on time. In this case, the application helped FedEx prevent delivery of a spoiled product and the liability of replacing the item as well as meeting the customers’ expectations. (http://www.youtube.com/?v=Tqn2iXsqQ44)
The U.S. Postal Service Augmented Reality demo was by far the most practical AR application that I have seen to date. The premise is o place the item you would like to ship in front of the camera and a virtual box appears around it. This allows the user to select the correct size box for shipping. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpS3LeCiCtc)
John Mayer Augmented Reality demo – http://max.adobe.com/johnmayer/
Sneak Peeks – These live demonstrations showcase features that Adobe is working on to make their products better. Among the fan favorites were Hierarchical Undo, Content Aware filling, ROME, server side actionscript and the Flash CS5 physics engine. These features, while still in early beta, are impressive to say the least and promise to help designers and developers to spend less time working and more time on innovation.
The conference provided valuable information about all of Adobe’s products. While I tailored my sessions to focus mainly to Cold Fusion, most of them also detailed how the different products work together seamlessly to provide the best solution for the end user.
Additional information and links to the general and individual sessions can be found at http://max.adobe.com
