My take on MAX 2005

I thought it was about time that I too did a wrap on MAX 2005. So here goes …

What an experience! Having only been in the industry for 2 years since graduation, I never really understood the scale of such an event. With approximately 3000 attendees, this made for one massive Macromedia party … er umm, I mean a great forum for learning and discussion :-p

My main focus for the conference was to attend as many ZMZ (Zorn-Mistral-Zaphod) sessions as I could squeeze in. Starting with Steven Webster and Alistair McLeod‘s session on Flex Frameworks, there was a certain buzz in the air, you could almost hear the crowd chanting “Flex, Flex, Flex …”. Moving on to Next Generation Flash Player with Gary Grossman I could then understand the hard work that has been put in to make the current and future release Flash Players the best ever. The future of the Flash Platform is looking very exciting!

My favourite session was Next Generation Flex: Data Services presented by the all powerful Christophe Coenraets. The wow factor was there, as well as the ease of use and minimal coding involved. The Flex data services engineering team have really earnt their bread here. The new publish/subscribe messaging service, data synchronization, and local persistence for offline data access will really open the doors for new categories of Rich Internet Applications.

Without getting into too much detail on the sessions I attented, I’m sure most of you read MXNA and have a pretty good understanding af what happended over the 4 days.

Of most importance to me, especially being a new employee with Macromedia, was the opportunity to meet so many of the great staff and engineers, and of course to meet the customers who make the products what they are today. JD offers a great thankyou over at his blog.

As for post conference, download the Flex Builder 2 Alpha at Macromedia Labs and join in your local and online community. There is an abundance of information available but be sure to check out the Flexcoders Mailing List.

Was great to meet you all! Keep up the good work

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