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Adobe MAX 2007 – I’m Here in Chicago

I arrived in Chicago saturday morning after a quick flight from Philadelphia to O’Hare Airport. I grabbed a train from the airport to downtown and then hoofed it a few blocks on over to the Chicago Hilton and have been having a great time so far. I went to the final stop of the AIR Bus Tour here in Chicago saturday evening and had a great time – great sessions and food – nothing beats a real Chicago style hot dog! I tossed some photos from the stop up on Flickr here [1]. It was fun to get to meet new faces and hang out. I was so rushed and running around at the AIR Bus tour stop in Philly doing user group manager “things” that it was hard to even catch all the sessions. I definitely got to to see a bit more here in Chicago, which is quite a cool city. This is my first time here and the lake and surrounding parts of the city are pretty interesting – wish I had more time for sightseeing. I’ll be sure to come back just to check it out at some point. Overall I’m pretty relaxed this year at MAX as I managed to squeak out a number of deadlines for clients just prior to departing. Also I am not speaking this year or doing any sessions or trying to bring crazy electronics with me through the airport security so its nice to be able to just take things in and attend all the great sessions and meetings that are taking place over the next few days. Managed to get in quite a few games of Halo 3 with Mike Chambers, Mike Downey and Ryan Stewart (who beat me severely in pretty much every game) last night and again tonight in their gargantuan hotel suite. The O’Reilly Ignite sessions going on during the reception this evening were pretty interesting and afterwards we had a great dinner for all the speakers and community leaders attending MAX and I got to sit down and eat and chat with Will Law and Phillip Kerman about some interesting Flash Media Server stuff. Actually David Zuckerman [2] and a couple other folks from the Flex team were at our table, but I didn’t really get to talk to them much – sorry David! To give some props to David he has worked on some really cool features of Flex 3 (re-factoring, shortcuts, editing features, etc).

I am really looking forward to the keynotes, bird of a feather sessions and sneak peeks. There is going to be some amazing stuff shown and announced over the next few days. If you thought the barrage of applications and info from the CS3 suite of apps, AIR, Flex, etc. has been fast and furious, well its still not slowing down – we are going to see some pretty-frigging-cool stuff very soon. 🙂 It also been really fun getting to see and catch up with friends and acquaintances I have made over the years that I often don’t get to see except at conferences – got to see Matt Voerman [3] for the first time in almost 3 years! Looking forward to bumping into more folks and meeting new ones as well. I’m also eager to attend some of the partner sessions now that I am an official Adobe Solution Partner [4].

Also not to diminish the news or importance, but my wife and I are pleased to announce that we are expecting our second child! Owen our first child is 16 months old and he is amazing, and now he will have a little baby sister or brother in about 7 months this coming April. My wife Melissa and I are both very excited about having another child. I am not quite as nervous this time around having been through it once and I can’t wait to meet our new baby in April. 😉

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