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 were top notch.

These engineers knew what they were talking about. I’m not sure if results from the evaluation forms will be published, but I can guestimate that speakers from Adobe would be leading in the top presenter’s list.

Ted, if you read this blog, here’s a friendly advice for you - introduce Rock Star Wall of Fame program similar to what JavaOne has. Great speakers should get public recognition. It’s not too late to create a nice looking RIA that would feature best speakers of MAX 2008.

If such list would be created, Oliver Goldman from Adobe engineering would definitely make it. I’ve attended his session on AIR security. Oliver is one of these guys that you start respecting right away. Not only he’s smart – Adobe has a lot of smart engineers – but he also has excellent presentation skills, which doesn’t happen too often. I really enjoyed his session - my closing session at MAX 2008. I had to leave earlier because there was yet another presentation on my schedule. This one was in San Jose at the conference called– SOAWorld 2008.

I rented a car, took 101 South and drove through the Silicon Valley for an hour. Do these names sound familiar - San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Santa Clara? It was so cool seeing headquarters of the companies who are playing major roles in my professional life. But this trip was a bit spoiled – I’ve never seen before so many ads stating that the entire building is available for lease. In this picture, the building next to McAfee has a sign that reads "Full Building Available"

Guys, this is a bit scary. The Silicon Valley has lots of vacant professional real estate - not a good sign.

The SOAWorld conference was collocated with Cloud Computing, and this subject is getting hot. Alan Williamson, who ran Java Developer’s Journal for many years is now editor-in-chief of Cloud Computing Journal. If you are one of these guys who’s always looking for the next big thing, pay close attention to the cloud. It seems that sooner or later, one way or the other we’ll be working in this virtualized world where the infrastructure is a service.

In the evening I delivered my session on using RIA to consume SOA, and the cameraman said my session was the best of the day even though he was not sure what I was talking about. It’s not an evaluation sheet filled out by a professional, but it’s still a compliment, isn’t it?

To finish up my coverage of this trip to California, I’ll just give you a couple of more news and links.

Tour de Flex is an AIR desktop application that makes exploring Flex and AIR so much easier! The site is build using look and see principle. There is a bunch of application that demonstrate coding techniques accompanied with the source code and running examples. Tour de Flex will let third-party developers to showcase their components.

Here's a new community site for Adobe groups.
Not to be missed yet another announcement – there is a Flex plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio - an interesting twist, don't you think so?

The closest conference for Flex developers is 360Flex . It’ll take place in Indianapolis on May 18-20, 2009.

The next MAX conference will take place on October 4-7, 2009 in LA, and I’ll do my best to be there.

The fun’s over. Getting back to my consulting work – my younger son is a freshman in high school – it’s time to put aside some money for college.