Category: Personal

Adobe MAX – The Aftermath

The tidal wave that is Adobe MAX has come and gone for 2009 and I’m back home recovering.

I have attended a lot of industry conferences over the years and even helped organize a few. To me, what separates the good from the bad conferences is not the facilities, the speakers, or even the wifi availability, it’s the people. Obviously MAX is about an intense amount of information transfer — with hundreds of hours of sessions, keynotes, BOFs and unconferences — but it’s also about building connections within the Adobe community. The advent of MAX Online means that if all you want is information, you can get that without having to leave your home. The true value of attending MAX is everything else that is layered around those sessions.

Although I’m biased, I think the fact that one of the first things you saw when coming onto the show floor at MAX was a very large and comfortably furnished community lounge speaks volumes about the importance of building connections at MAX. And that lounge was never empty, not even early in the morning. Any time you came by, there were community members and Adobe staff filling the chairs and gathered around the tables; talking, working, Twittering, demo-ing, and much more.

A lot of other people have written extensively about the news Adobe released at MAX this year, so I’m not going to talk about that here. And if I tried to list all the people or all the cool stuff I saw this year at MAX I would fail miserably. Instead, I am going to call out two things that were particularly meaningful to me.

First, there’s this:

Community at MAX Keynote
Community at MAX Keynote

(Photo Copyright © 2009 by Kendall Whitehouse, used with permission)

I knew going in what the theme of the Day 2 keynote was, of course, but had no clue at all that the keynote would open with a display of Adobe User Group logos from around the world onscreen, so when I saw the screen it was a big warm fuzzy moment. The Adobe User Groups work very hard to build community in their local communities and it was great to see them included onstage. Many of those user group managers were not able to be present at MAX due to the cost of travel, but as one manager put it “At least my logo could be there!”.

And next there’s this:

CF9 Launch Gift

It’s been a very long time since I first sat down with a copy of ColdFusion and tried to figure out how to connect a database to a web page, and CF has had a special place in my heart ever since. That the CF team included me in the launch gift for CF9 means a lot to me. Thanks guys!

This post is getting a little long, so I’ll just wrap it up by saying that MAX rocked, and if you;re on the fence about going next time, just go. It’s worth it.

Aspects of Forgiveness

People who know me in real life know that as Jewish observance goes I am on the low end of the spectrum, but I do take Yom Kippur seriously. I believe we reap what we sow in life, and thus this is the time of year to stop and consider what it is that you’re putting out.

There are three aspects to teshuvah, as I see it:

1) Asking forgiveness from Adonai
2) Asking forgiveness from other people
3) Forgiving yourself

I struggle a lot with number three.

For those who observe, I wish you an easy fast, and may we all be sealed for a blessing this coming year.

Labor Day Post: Personal Observation on Socialism & Slurs

Lately in American political discourse, there’s been an increasing tendency to use the word “Socialist” as a bogey-man threat around policies people don’t like, or even as a slur against people.

This rampant fear-mongering would be bad enough, but using the word “Socialist” as if it were the worst thing you could ever call a person makes me even more annoyed.

My late grandfather, Harold Luxemburg, was a Socialist. In fact, one of the earliest mentions of his name in the New York Times was June 2, 1934, when he and some of his fellow Socialists got arrested for forming a picket line in front of a Brooklyn bakery they were trying to unionize.

Scary stuff, right? Um, no.

Grandpa worked all his life for the rights of people who didn’t have many. He could have had an easier time of it had he chosen some less contentious profession, but instead he saw poverty and discrimination and unfairness all around him and decided to do something about it. He worked to improve the lives of milkmen and restaurant workers and janitors, and he always rooted for the underdog.

In his private life he was a kind, intelligent, and caring man with a strong work ethic who valued education and cultural literacy extremely highly, and loved spending time with his family. And sadly, he left us in 1990. To this day I miss him and am proud of him.

So to the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh loving troglodytes who think that “Socialist” and “Socialism” are a slur and gleefully hurl those words around as if they actually had the power to hurt (if any of you should happen to find your way to this little corner of the Internet) — with all due respect I say, you don’t have a clue. My grandfather the Socialist was a better man than any of you.

What a Week!

It’s been more than a month since my last post. Sorry about that. It’s been hectic lately. Getting promoted tends to do that. 🙂

Last week, though, was even crazier than usual. Here’s a rundown:

A week ago Saturday: wake up to the news that Scott’s grandmother had died. Cancel all plans for next few days, book flights, get emergency petsitting in gear, frantic packing. 6 hours later, on a plane to NYC. (NB: flying United is just no fun when compared to Virgin America or even JetBlue.)

Sunday & Monday: Long Island / Brooklyn. Lots of time with the in-laws, the funeral, sitting shiva.

Tuesday: Bid farewell to the in-laws, head into Manhattan for a fast visit and lunch with my mother. Then book it back out to JFK for a flight to Dulles. (NB: the JetBlue terminal at JFK is really nice.)

Wednesday – Friday: Attend CF United, meet with as many community people as possible, spend time in the Adobe booth handing out t-shirts, participate in the Community / User Group BoF, talk, talk, and talk some more. Exhausting, but had a fantastic time. The CF community rocks and the venue was excellent.

Friday: fly home (United still thoroughly uninspiring). Walk off airplane with a massive head cold and a 102-degree fever. Stagger home, climb into bed. Stay there.

Saturday & Sunday: head cold hell. Sleep a lot, load up on drugs, pray for fever to break.

Sunday night: finally starting to feel human again. Still have not unpacked from the trip (wrote this blog post instead).

Hopefully next week will be a little calmer.