I must say it was a really great speech (You get that a lot I see, but credit where credit is due) During your speech “Letter to the CEO” it really was a shame my CEO wasn’t there I think he really could use the help :) also your speech really opend my eyes for some things I already actually knew where there…also the “rediscovering the fun” presentation was great I really found the exact same feeling when I bought my Mac so I could totally relate. all I can say is keep up the good work and I will totally try to attend another of your presentations when I can.

Greetings From The Netherlands

I’m really happy to hear that you enjoyed the sessions. I definitely think that Adobe Live in Netherlands was a very big step in the right direction for these events and I hope that it will be a beacon for other Adobe Live events in the future.

I think it’s probably a side-effect of only having half an hour for my session but I wasn’t able to fully qualify some of the points I was making. Although I do state at one point that waterfall = failure, I did qualify that with the next slide where I state waterfall ~= failure, elaborating that with the right group of people, you can succeed with any development process (but how long will those people be happy working in an environment that actively hinders them instead of supporting them?)

Similarly, my point regarding inside-out versus outside-in development was not about making a “good looking UI” but rather about considering the human/user-interface factors as a priority (in other words, the user’s needs not your own needs as developers). One section that I may have had to rush through was where I qualify this by saying that usability is not just about the user interface but that it is a function of numerous factors, including reliability, responsiveness, etc. (all factors that *are* affected by how the applications works behind the scenes.) So, yes, it is very important that your application doesn’t crash every two minutes and that it doesn’t keep people waiting for half an hour between commands.

However, the point I was making is that since ultimately it is your users who determine whether an application is successful or not, you should start thinking about their needs first (and thus the part of your application that communicates with them) and then let the decisions you make there trickle down to the rest of your system design. The opposite of this is to make all the internal system design decisions first (your database schema, business classes, etc.) and then have these decisions trickle up to the user interface (and these decisions *will* have an impact on how flexible you are when designing the user interface and responding the change.)

I hope that clears up the point I was trying to make. Next year, hopefully, all sessions will be an hour long (or 45 minutes with 15 minute breaks between them) and I can have the luxury of going into further detail on certain points :)

Thanks again for attending and for your valuable feedback!

For the first time an Adobe event for developers in Amsterdam. Great to see it was a succes.
I really liked both your sessions.

In “your letter to the CEO” you mentioned that waterfall = failure. I agree and if someone uses RUP or any other iterative way of programming, that’s always better.
The one thing I’m not sure I agree on is that developers first have to make a good looking UI. I’m convinced the UI is very important for the user, but I don’t buy your remark that the user is not interested what happens “behind the scenes”.
They are not interested how it works (java, flex, .Net, Ruby or whatever) but they are surely interested that it works.
Software with a great UI and poor performance will never be a winner.

I agree we, developers, don’t pay enough attention to the UI but the first iterative step should be configuring the system and work on the biggest risks first.
After that the UI is very important since the client will be testing the software.

Hope to see and hear you again,

Gerdt

Like Waldo already mentioned, our marketing dudes really noticed the success of the developer theater and I’m sure that next year we will have a bigger impact on the schedule.

Yes… Developers can definitely be inspirational. People like you, Eric Natzke and Yugo for instance have been inspiring me for a long long time.

Don’t forget that this is a whole new world for the “old” Adobe crew and they’ve only come to know this developer world just a little over a year ago. People like Waldo and me are really pushing hard to get more awareness for the developers as well and to see a packed developer theater at Adobe Live, gave a really good feeling.

oh… and euhm… You did a really good job and I really enjoyed the “Message to the CEO” session (hadn’t seen that one before).

See you soon,
Serge

I remember Adobe Live UK last year and the only real session that stuck with me was the evening round table event with the user group.

Both events clearly attracted a different audience though, it was fun actually seeing people react with awe when 3D features in PS CS3 was demoed. Having seen it presented dozens of times its sometimes easy to forget that its still new to quite a number of people.

Have got mixed feeling about all the alleluia-style evangelism (where Greg, Jason et al. keep getting the energy beats me) but I suppose it does the trick and makes for some good laughs.

Developer sessions are really needed in the mix to get through to people, its a discerning audience that knows that the (dare I say it, highly scripted talks) are very marketing driven and not exactly coming from a real-world workflow.

What I didn’t get is the half hour sessions thing, it could be an idea for product highlights (after all there’s over a dozen of them) but I’m sure I couldn’t present anything meaningful in that amount of time — its just about enough for an introduction and conclusion.

I think Adobe is definitely going in the right direction and I’m sure Waldo and Serge will be pushing for more of this.

BTW, what about bringing ApolloCamp to Europe? There’s a real need for Adobe to reach out to the community, not just from the user group side of things.

Looking forward to what MAX Europe has to bring!

I know for sure that f.e. Serge and myself will push hard for even more developer tracks next year (in addition to all the designer content of course). It can lead only to more fun!

ps: Adobe Live was in Amsterdam, Netherlands and not in Belgium ;-)

Was good meeting you again, cu next time!