Technology – Page 4

Two Weeks, Two Conferences

: Image via Wikipedia

So last week was Adobe MAX and this week I headed off to Las Vegas for BlogWorld Expo. Talk about a study in contrasts and two very different conference experiences.

One week, I’m working the show and surrounded by so many people I know that I spent the entire conference talking and still managed to miss connecting with some folks. As much as it’s a ton of work and exhausting, it’s also inspiring and just plain fun to spend the week surrounded by a few thousand of your company’s most passionate customers. However, if you’re not mindful and self-aware, all that attention can go to your head.

Then the next week, I’m just an attendee. I knew some of the people at the show and even a couple of the speakers, but by and large I was on my own when it came to finding people to connect with and things to do. If I wanted to enjoy myself and get the most out of this conference, I couldn’t coast; I’d have to work for it.

In a way the relative anonymity was refreshing – for one thing, I actually had the time to have in-depth conversations with people without the pressure of having to constantly run off to say “Hi” to three other people. I could attend sessions other than just the keynotes. I could enjoy relaxed meals with some really cool people like Kyle Flaherty, Aaron Straut, Jennifer Leggio, Stephanie Schwab, and Lindsay Lebresco. As an added bonus, I could do it all without having to spend all day killing my feet on the show floor.

Most important, I got outside of my day-to-day life and got to hear about how other people are addressing some of the same issues we’re grappling with, like: how to connect to always-on, global, engaged and intense communities of customers. Or how to stay on top of the torrent of voices that increasingly defines the Internet today and still have time to get some work done.

The longer I work for Adobe, the more strongly I feel that it’s critical for me to keep a sense of perspective and stay connected to life outside the Adobe bubble for me to be at my most effective. Spending time at events like BlogWorld is one way to do that.

If I’m totally honest with myself, though, I’d have to say I preferred my MAX experience.

PS: I’m testing out a new tool called Zemanta with this post – I got a demo of their stuff at BlogWorld and thought it was worth a try.

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:

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:

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.

Adobe MAX – Fun Facts & a Widget Too!

My colleague Serge built this cool widget for Adobe MAX:

One of the “fun facts” includes Adobe Groups — thanks Serge for remembering us!

New Gadget Alert

New to me, that is. I recently adopted an iPod Touch from a friend who had upgraded to a Pre and didn’t want the Touch anymore. It came with me on my recent trip to NYC and I had a chance to put it through its paces pretty thoroughly along the way.

I like it quite a bit — for games, web browsing, and of course music. Battery life is decent (a cross-country flight didn’t even drain half the charge) and the screen is lovely. But I am still glad that I didn’t get an iPhone. The iPod’s virtual keyboard does not even come close to being as good as a real keyboard and I’d go nuts trying to manage my email with it.

I do feel a bit silly carrying an iPod Touch as well as a Blackberry. I think it’s the size. I’ve had an iPod Nano for ages, so I shouldn’t feel different about the Touch, but it is bigger than a Nano and that seems to matter. Even so, it’s not a showstopping issue.

I really hate the lack of a decent web browser on the Blackberry but its superb email handling still makes it the winning smartphone for my needs. Unless an AT&T Palm Pre comes out and utterly blows me away, looks like I’ll be staying a two-gadget gal for the foreseeable future.

This is Not a Post about Michael Jackson

But it is about music.

One thing that technology has done to music is the decline of shared musical spaces. Years ago, it was habit for me to bring a boom box and a pile of tapes or CDs to the office & play music every day. Music was a shared experience — coworkers would bring in and trade CDs, vote some stuff on or off the playlist, even make office mix tapes. It wasn’t a paradise — especially when your co-workers had very different musical tastes — but it was more social.

Now, each of us sits at our desks plugged into our own private music streams. Nobody has to argue about whether or not [Band X] is good work music, or negotiate a preferred volume level — but also we’re more isolated from each other.

On the whole I’m not sure it’s a step in the right direction.

Weekend Hacktacular

I couldn’t resist. I should be focusing on getting my trip photos dealt with, but instead I did a little hack project this weekend.

The fact that the Dell Mini 9 is one of the few netbooks out there that can run OSX has not gone unnoticed. And after hearing from one of the Adobe community folks that the method for turning a Mini into a “Hackintosh” really did work as reported, I was intrigued. So when an extra Mini crossed my path, I decided to give to a try.

The necessary ingredients:

One Macbook Pro, One Dell Mini 9 (1 GB RAM, 16 GB SSD HD), One copy of OSX 10.5.6, One 16GB USB drive. Not pictured: a 2nd USB thumb drive for the bootloader.

How I did it: the “Two USB Drive” version described here.

It was actually quite easy. The only pain in the butt was getting the ISO of the OSX install disk onto the thumb drive — it took a long time. Other than that, though, everything worked as described. After the standard installation and setup process and a few reboots, I had this:

There was only about 2GB of free space left on the drive after installation, but Monolingual cleaned out almost 3GB of additional space. I used Xmark to sync my bookmarks onto Safari, threw on a copy of NeoOffice in case I need to do any basic document editing, and added Last.FM so I can listen to music without having to load any MP3s onto the Mini.

I haven’t tested the Bluetooth yet but everything else is working like a charm. I can stream videos, listen to music, check email, and do pretty much anything else I need to, on a machine that’s small enough to fit into my purse. I can even plug SDHC cards from my camera right into the Mini and then upload photos to the cloud. And I don’t have to put up with Windows to do any of it. 🙂 The only drawback is the tiny keyboard on the Mini. It’s fine for a few emails but I wouldn’t want to use it for extended writing.

And yes, installing OSX onto non-Apple hardware is most likely a violation of the EULA (and may void the Dell warranty as well) so bear that in mind if you decide you want to give this experiment a try.

(Hint: Having a sweet little Hackintosh is worth it IMHO)