MAX was awesome. While I’ve been to quite a few developer conferences before, I have never been to a Macromedia one. Here are a couple semi-random things I noticed.
There are women at the conference. Almost every developer conference I’ve ever been to has been like 99 – 100% men. And I don’t mean women just in the designer classes, as stereotypes would lead you to believe, I mean in the coding classes too. I’d say it was about a 50/50 mix between men and women at the conference. With the news talking about the decrease of women in math and science, it was refreshing to see.
I also think that not only the gender but also the ethnic diversity that seems to form around Macromedia gives it it’s edge on elegance in code as well as design. Men and women from different backgrounds solve problems in different ways which often leads to an adaptable environment. Where a homogenized environment tends to lead to stagnation and few innovations.
Not that I fear they will, but I hope they don’t lose that in the Adobe acquisition…
There were tons of Apple computers there. I’d say it was about a 60/40 split with PC’s being on top. And not one ibook – all powerbooks. I was blown away by the number of Mac’s there, and again, not just the designers as homogenized stereotype would have you believe – they were in coding classes as well.
That means that MM customer base has a large number of Mac’s in it – regardless of the overall world domination of Windows. If my customer base was 40% Mac, I think I’d consider Mac’s rather important… but that’s just me.
Get out the salt shaker…
Every Macromedia employee I saw (save Sean Corfield, and a lady I saw back stage), was using Windows. Every single presentation. Just an observation, but it was interesting that the keynote was ribbing Redmond, but every single person, on every single development team was using windows – seem kind of double talkish.
If we “can’t trust” Redmond to write cross platform software, why would we trust a homogeneous windows shop to do it?
I can’t be the only one who noticed / thought that which is why I am bringing it up. Everyone knows I like MM, but this just seems kind of funky and out of place.
Leaving that out of it, Max was one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to. There are tons of cool products coming out of MM + Adobe, and I fully agree with Kevin Lynch, we are on the verge of a new accelerated web growth with a focus on user experience and productivity – it’s gonna get cool.