Overall impressions:
This year marks the second year Adobe Max was held in Los Angeles, CA. This was my third Adobe Max. Every year, personally, I’ve had extremely different take-aways; however, the main thing that seems to stand out is multiscreen/mobile development. Next year, Max will also be in Los Angeles.
Adobe is out to push products; without selling products, they can’t exist. Therefore, they are pushing the Flash platform. This would be all good and well, except Apple refuses to add Flash to their iOS devices, which continues to gain ground and marketshare. Adobe continues to leverage strong partnerships with Google, Samsung, Motorola, and others to push Flash to standardize multiscreen platforms (TV, Mobile, Tablets, Desktops, etc.). The clear message spoken throughout the conference, though, was Flash and HTML5 get along. They’re not enemies.
Regardless of platform, mobile “hits” on the internet are growing. They are growing so fast that, according to the first keynote speaker, mobile will overtake desktop by 2015. This doesn’t mean that the World Campus needs to shrink every course and put it into mobile devices (or does it?); it does mean that we need to pay attention and take mobile development seriously. However, with the advent of devices such as the Logitech Revue sporting Google TV, we need to look beyond to multiscreen – rather than just mobile. This is probably my biggest take-away from Max 2010 – start pushing out parts of courses to multiple devices. There doesn’t seem to be a great push for multiscreen in general – especially in higher ed – so pioneering in this technology would present great opportunities to push to envelope, publish, and present.
I’ve also had a chance to pick up many practical skills. In particular, due to the recent push for more media/video in our courses, I attended a few sessions on streaming and the Open Source Media Framework/Strobe Media Playback. Adobe finally has a decent media player (that is NOT the flv media playback inside Flash Professional). It’s fairly easy to skin, but may be more challenging to fully customize. The Flash Media Server seems to continue to move forward adding a lot of features (peer assisted streaming).
Finally, jQuery is now adding Mobile specific code. This, in essence, will replace other frameworks such as iUI or jqTouch.
I only attended one session that was higher education specific presented by the University of Denver. They are running some interesting applications using Adobe AIR, but nothing very exciting in the mobile field.
Recorded sessions and more: http://2010.max.adobe.com/online/