Adobe MAX 2007 : Night 2 : Awards, Sneak Peeks and The Party

So after a long day of learning, it was time to chill out and party like it’s 1985.

Last year, the Awards and Sneak Peeks were done on the morning of the third day of the conference. I can only assume they moved them to a night-time event in order to allow for more morning sessions on Wednesday.

The MAX Awards

The Finalists and all the award winners can be found here.

Sneak Peeks

Peter Elst has videos of these on his site, so I’ll just go over the ones that really grabbed my attention.

C/C++ to Actionscript compiler

Wow. Just amazing. You don’t have to know as to write complex Flash code if they release this. Just write your logic in “old school” C and port it to AS in seconds.

Flex Builder 3 on Linux

I’ve got a pile of stickers with Tux waving the Flex flag. I’m about to convert my laptop to either Ubuntu or CentOS, so I’ll be giving this a spin for sure.

Photoshop Express

Photoshop as a web-based application. What more can I say?

Seam Carving for Photoshop

“Just 20 lines of code.”

So the CEO of Adobe was shown this video on YouTube:

He sent an e-mail to over 40 people suggesting “we might want to talk to this guy.”

They all responded, we just hired him!

This Sneak Peek won the People’s Choice prize by a wide margin.

The Party

Last year in Vegas, the party was held at The Palms Hotel. We had the run of the pool area (freezing as it was), plus two clubs: TAO and Rain.

This year, the party was held at the convention center.

The theme was “Back to the Future” or “the 80’s” or “remember being a geek in high school and spending Saturday nights playing computer games on a 286 at your friend’s house?”

The entertainment included break dancers, BMX stunt bikes, RC cars, vintage arcade games and air hockey. The video games were on the Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii or actual stand-up video cabinets. I only played one round of Tetris, I swear.

The only thing missing was a group playing Dungeons and Dragons in the corner.

The band was great, but I didn’t get their name. They played 80’s era songs with a Jazz/Swing/Big Band flavor. I really wanted a CD if they were selling them.

The party was ok, but for a sold-out event (and considering last year), we were really expecting more. Many people had gone back to their hotels during the Awards and changed for “the big party”, only to show up for a bit of a let-down.

After winding things down with a few hands of Texas Hold’em and a few beers from the open bar, it was back to hotel in search of more fun.

The After Party

Thankfully, just as we got back to our hotel, I was stopped by Josh Berling of digital primates and was informed of a gathering of MAX people at the hotel bar.

Now here was the kind of mixer I was expecting of the big shin-dig. The bar was an Irish pub with good music, good drinks and close quarters, so meeting people was easy. Everyone was a tech of some sort, so the conversations tended towards geek-speak with the odd sports reference here and there.

Big thanks to Josh for buying me a few rounds.