Impressions of the Conference: Wednesday

Breaking the technical topics out from the non, so that those who care not a jot for the computer industry can skip happily over this one...

It was a conference again today. But the keynote was an interesting contrast to yesterday's.

Yesterday, the intro was Blue Man Group, the presenter was the Chief Architect of Macromedia, and the emphasis was on Cool Toys -- this got a rousing response from the crowd. Today, the intro was the "Can You Hear Me Now?" guy from Verizon Wireless (representing the imminent rollout of Flash on Verizon cellphones), the presenter was the SVP of the Mobile division of Adobe (that is, a suit), and the theme was, "Look! You can make money writing programs for cellphones! See the fancy business plan! Look at us waving bills in your face! Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney!". It was very amusing to watch his pleasant befuddlement as this presentation fell completely flat in front of a crowd of 3500 developers. Methinks he doesn't quite grok his audience.

Other than that, little of interest to mention here (save that today's book report for work was 450 lines). But I will observe that, in all the brouhaha of Microsoft vs. Google, almost everyone has managed to overlook the imminent and far more interesting battle of Microsoft vs. Adobe. It is quite clear from the current product announcements (both what they have now, and what they'll have within a year) that Adobe is making an unsubtle and pretty well planned run at Microsoft's desktop-apps business. Indeed, the real amusement is contrasting last week's .NET Roadshow conference and this week's Adobe Max one. Microsoft is working on glitz and communications; Adobe is rolling out an increasingly well-integrated desktop platform. The two are heading for a very loud collision; should be fun to watch...

Impressions of the Conference: Wednesday

Breaking the technical topics out from the non, so that those who care not a jot for the computer industry can skip happily over this one...

It was a conference again today. But the keynote was an interesting contrast to yesterday's.

Yesterday, the intro was Blue Man Group, the presenter was the Chief Architect of Macromedia, and the emphasis was on Cool Toys -- this got a rousing response from the crowd. Today, the intro was the "Can You Hear Me Now?" guy from Verizon Wireless (representing the imminent rollout of Flash on Verizon cellphones), the presenter was the SVP of the Mobile division of Adobe (that is, a suit), and the theme was, "Look! You can make money writing programs for cellphones! See the fancy business plan! Look at us waving bills in your face! Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney!". It was very amusing to watch his pleasant befuddlement as this presentation fell completely flat in front of a crowd of 3500 developers. Methinks he doesn't quite grok his audience.

Other than that, little of interest to mention here (save that today's book report for work was 450 lines). But I will observe that, in all the brouhaha of Microsoft vs. Google, almost everyone has managed to overlook the imminent and far more interesting battle of Microsoft vs. Adobe. It is quite clear from the current product announcements (both what they have now, and what they'll have within a year) that Adobe is making an unsubtle and pretty well planned run at Microsoft's desktop-apps business. Indeed, the real amusement is contrasting last week's .NET Roadshow conference and this week's Adobe Max one. Microsoft is working on glitz and communications; Adobe is rolling out an increasingly well-integrated desktop platform. The two are heading for a very loud collision; should be fun to watch...