On day number three I managed to attend only three technical sessions and now I need to make a confession.  When I first saw the sessions approved for MAX, I was disappointed by the fact that there were too many presenters from Adobe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s Adobe’s event and they can do whatever they want but I wanted to see more presentations from the trenches. But now I need to say that Adobe’s presenters that I’ve listened to where to notch.  These engineers knew what they were talking about.

MAX, as a big brother hosts a number of small unconferences, which are located in the well equipped half-open spaces in the hallway. They have AV, comfy coaches, and are less formal gatherings of the developers. At 8:30AM I was sitting at 360MAX unconference listening to the presentation of Shashank Tiwary on communication protocols. The next hour I spent at interesting official presentation on testing with Flex by Mike Labriola. Testing of RIA is a gray area, and pretty often is being ignored.

On the MAX eve, I went to speaker’s reception.  First of all had to meet with three other panelists participated in Monday’s session “Flex Architecture Faceoff” - Chafiq Kazoun, Todd Anderson , Joshua Noble are very experienced software developers and published authors.  We’ve expressed our views on how to do things in Flex. Then I started bugging some Flex team members: “Please tell me a secret”. “What secret? “ “For example, what will be announced as a new name of Thermo tomorrow?

On Sunday morning, I got my two conference badges – one for Press and the other one as a Speaker.  Each of those gives an access to special receptions or meetings with Adobe big shots, and I don’t want to miss any of those. While waiting for the doors to the AIR Lab room to open, I overheard how one of the attendees have whispered to the other, “T-Shirts are over there!”. Now I can fulfill my main mission at MAX – bring MAX T-Shirt home for kids.

Of all domestic air carriers, I like Continental the most.  They showed Mamma Mia and the food was bearable.  Last month, I was in the air for 14 hours flying to Japan, and now the trip across the USA is a piece of cake. I have only carry luggage with me. This small bag has all the clothing I need for four days (4 t-shirts, four pairs of underwear, socks, three shirts, camera, laptop, over-the-shoulder laptop bag, toothbrush and shaver.

Yesterday, I called my friend from SF to arrange for a dinner.  During the conversation, I said that I have to be on a number of technical sessions there. He was surprised that I’m not going to present there, but will be sitting at the desk studying how to do things in Flex and AIR. Actually, I like studying even more that teaching. Conferences of such caliber don’t happen too often and  if you are lucky to be there, you need to get the most out of it.

Leaving for MAX 2008 in a day. Had to sign the Speaker’s agreement. This is not unusual, but this time it was a 5(!) page agreement. Lawyers run America. How do you like this clause: “Speaker shall take all necessary precautions to prevent injury to to any persons (including employees and other agents of Adobe) or damage property (including Adobe’s property) while performing the Services.

At the end of January, we’ll run a two-day public workshop in New York city for Enterprise Flex Architects. This unique event is not offered anywhere else. Details and registration at http://www.eventbrite.

Yesterday, I was invited to participate in the MAX panel called Flex Architecture Faceoff that will take place on Monday, Nov 17 at 2PM. This session has been created by O’Reilly, and the panelists are Flex architects that write for O’Reilly. On Monday evening, I’ll be moderating a BOF on Flex frameworks. My Tuesday morning’s talk on Flex Frameworks at 360Max corner got circumcised from one hour to 30 min because a general session starts right after 30 min of my preso.

In 2008, our company ran lots of various Flex training classes for our private clients (mostly Wall Street), and several public classes and seminars.   We are closing 2008 with a week of public Adobe Certified Flex 3 training that will take place in Jersey City, NJ on the week of December 8, 2008. Details and registration at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/202308109. Have you used your training budget of 2008 yet?