Did You Know...

From time to time I will be providing quick updates on items of note that I feel the larger Adobe community may be interested in. Thus, my first "Did You Know" post! So, without further ado....did you know:

Flex Developer's Journal - Yup, that's right. SYS-CON has started a DJ exclusively focused on Flex, mirroring the popular CFDJ. Check it out at: http://flex.sys-con.com/.

Flash Player 9 Update - has been released on Adobe Labs. This update, codenamed “Moviestar,” includes new features, enhancements and bug fixes for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux versions of Flash Player 9, including:

• Support for H.264 video and HE-AAC audio codecs (new Aug. 21).
  
• Multi-core support for vector rendering.
  
• Full screen mode with hardware scaling.
  
• Flash Player cache for common platform components, such as the Flex framework.
  
• Support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) in the Windows plug-in.

Get it now before they are sold out!!! OK, they won't sell out, but seriously, check it out!

That's all for now, folks. For those of you celebrating, have a great Labor Day weekend!

On AIR Bus Tour - Philadelphia, PA

Wow. Where do I start?

What a great event we had in Philadelphia...and for so many different reasons.

First off the venue was terrific. We were in The Franklin Institute Science Museum for the event. We had the Planetarium inside the museum dedicated for the game room, bar and break area for in between sessions. And then a sweet auditorium for the actual presentations.

The Adobe guys did their normal bang-up job presenting their sessions, but what made the event extra special was the audience involvement and excitement. Local Adobe Flash Platform user group manager, Robert Hall, held a contest for local community members to develop AIR apps. Four entries were received and the creator of each app got time on stage to showoff their app! They were super cool apps and each received loud rounds of applause.

Just when you thought the night couldn't get any better, I was pointed to a new online AIR resource, AIRDev and then told that the guys who developed it were in the audience, live blogging the on AIR event. THEN, an hour later I find out that the two "guys" in the audience are actually a couple of 13 year olds; my new friends Ari and Ben!! So I went down between sessions to introduce myself and you won’t meet two nicer kids. They were sitting there with their laptops open, furiously typing notes...it was great!

I wanted to take a minute to give a massive shout out to the local Philadelphia Adobe user group managers who went all out in helping us promote this event. Guys, it would not have been the same without all your support, so thank you for everything!!

So I took the easy way out...while the rest of the guys piled back on the bus and started a midnight trek to Boston, I cozied up in an airport hotel and flew home this morning. I cannot make the Boston on AIR stop, which is a shame because it is in my home town, but you should still go if you can!

On AIR Rewind - Pittsburgh

Just a quick post as I sit here at the Philadelphia event (more on that to come in a separate post) about a great video that some of the Pittsburgh user group guys shot at the Pittsburgh event.

This video is definitely worth checking out!

On AIR Bus Tour - Baltimore

Another great event in Baltimore last night. And even with the full day event the day before in nearby Washington, DC, we still had a terrific turnout for the Baltimore event.

The venue (Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park) which was right on the waterfront and overlooked the water was absolutely terrific. The food was right up my alley...appetizers were everywhere and I did some major damage at the mini-hamburger and mini-hotdog stations. In case I haven't mentioned it, I have a very unsophisticated pallet.

Back on the bus and off to Philly in an hour or so for another event tonight. The local Adobe user groups in Philly have really gone all out in promoting this event, so I wanted to give you guys a big shout out to express my appreciation and I look fwd to seeing you guys and meeting some of your members tonight. If you are local to Philadelphia, plan on coming out for the event!

OK, that's all for now. The live feed on the bus will probably kick in around 10:30 this morning, so if you have nothing better to do, take a peek!

On AIR Bus Tour - Washington, DC

I am officially on the bus and love is in the AIR (sorry, I couldn't resist)!

Currently we are on the bus, headed to Baltimore for tonight's AIR event. I flew into DC Sunday night to join the tour and attended yesterday's all day event in DC which was a tremendous success. We had a packed house at a super cool venue (The State Theater in Falls Church, VA) watching a series of presentations from community stalwarts like Mike Chambers, Mike Downey, Ryan Stewart, Kevin Hoyt, Ben Forta and many more!

The crowd was very lively and extremely engaged. Plus, most of the local Adobe user group managers attended so it was great to see so many familiar faces at the event. Thanks for coming out, guys!

There are still several tour dates left, so be sure to check the remaining tour dates and plan on coming out if we are coming to your city.

As I type this post live from the bus I am enjoying some episodes of Reno 911 (first time I have seen it) next to Ben Forta, who is thoroughly enjoying it!

More posts after the Baltimore and Philly events that are tonight and tomorrow night respectively.

Let the games begin....

Well I guess this has been a long time coming. And thanks to everyone for the warm welcome.

As Jonathan mentioned, one of my main responsibilities is overseeing the Adobe User Group Program. If you are not hooked into your local user group, you really should be. They are a tremendous resource for learning new skills, honing existing skills and keeping current on the latest and greatest from Adobe. If you are unsure if there is an Adobe UG in your area, please check out our handy UG locator at: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/usergroups/. If there is no UG in your immediate area, maybe it is time for you to start one!? If so, please feel free to drop me a line.

As also mentioned by Jonathan, I will be on the AIR Bus Tour all of next week, so if you are in DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia or Boston, plan on popping in to say hello. Early feedback from previous tour dates has been positively glowing! Additionally, I will be attending MAX in Chicago and will most likely be providing live updates from the conference via the blog for those of you unable to attend.

So, what can you expect to see from me in this space? A lot of the information that I make available to my user group managers would also be plenty valuable to the communities they serve, so expect to see that type of info frequently. Everything and anything as it pertains to the Adobe user communities will be fair game...information on user group events and meetings, special initiatives, technical content, as well as updates from adobe.com and Adobe Labs that folks may not have time to seek out on their own.

One great example of the type of info I will be surfacing is the fact that Adobe ColdFusion user groups worldwide are holding CF8 launch events in the month of August in support of our recent announcement regarding the immediate availability of CF8. Check the UG locator posted above to see if a CFUG near you is participating. These meetings will be a great resource for learning more about the latest CF release as well as provide an opportunity to meet and network with local like-minded professionals, win one of a kind CF schwag and maybe even walk away with a complimentary copy of CF8 Standard!

So thanks again to everyone for the hearty welcome and feel free to let me know via the comments section what type of information you would find valuable in this space.

One thing I can state in no uncertain terms is that the Adobe community absolutely rocks and it is a pleasure to work the leaders of these communities on a daily basis.

Thanks for listening (err, reading)...Ed

Giving back through code

I just got a note from Ali Daniali who is at the Flex 360 conference right now in Seattle. Ali has been running the Flex Code Jam, which has gotten a bit of mention in blogs, but I wanted to call it out specifically. Ali really wanted to find a way to give something back to the non profit world and pull a group of developers together to do it.

So he's organized a coding event at Flex 360 to pull some folks together to build a Flex based Virtual Food Drive application for a charity called Northwest Harvest.

Here are a couple of links:

• The Code Jam site - http://www.flexcodejam.org/
• Flicker pics from the Jam in progress -
• Northwest Harvest - http://www.northwestharvest.org/
  

And by the way, Ali runs our Seattle Flex User Group. - http://www.flexilicio.us/blog/

I love this concept and think that combining coding and charity makes a lot of sense. Special thanks to all the sponsoring organizations and most importantly all the folks participating in this!

Guest blogger: Ed Sullivan

Yes, that's right Ed Sullivan will now be blogging here. That means a few things:

1) If you already know which Ed Sullivan I'm talking about, you are probably saying to yourself "well its about time."
2) If you don't know which Ed Sullivan I'm talking about, you may be thinking about this one. Please read on to get introduced to the Ed Sullivan that I'm talking about. The bonus with this Ed Sullivan is that he's alive, so he should be able to blog periodically.
3) I haven't blogged in over a month, so by adding Ed here, I think we'll have a lot more frequency to the posts. Plus we'll probably pick up a few hits for TV nostalgia buffs.

If you don't know Ed already, he runs the Adobe program that supports about 98% of our user groups. He has a wealth of knowledge, and much of it gets disseminated via Adobe User Groups. But I'm sure he'll have some new interesting posts here as well. He always knows about the latest goings on for both designers and developers and I'd expect will be providing valuable information about things like MAX, new technical content, and much more, as well as of course, goings on in our avid user community.

So please welcome Ed by commenting away and look for a first post from him very soon. And for those of you attending the On Air bus tour next week, look for Ed. He'll be going to DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Or if you live elsewhere, see if you can find him on the bus video feed.

PS: You are probably wondering why we didn't change the name of this blog, so it no longer bears my name in the URL. We may do that, but it seemed like something that might take a bit of work, to ensure that the feeds and analytics were working properly. Most importantly I didn't want to cause any aggrvation for all of my 3 loyal subscribers (ok, thanks to Google Analytics and Feedburner, I know I have more than 3 loyal subscribers.) And with Ed on board I'm hoping/expecting that number will rise.

PPS: So yes, we may change the name of the blog at some point. But I don't think that will affect the feed. We'll let you know if it does. Or its possible that Ed might get his own blog. Who knows?