Sowing the seeds of AIR in Dubai
So right after the onAIR train tour I got on a plane to Dubai. I had absolutely no idea on what to expect from Dubai but I gotta tell you… Dubai is totally overwhelming! The architecture in Dubai is amazing and the people are extremely kind. I travel a lot these days and I have to say that I’m bumping Dubai high up on my list of favorite places to go to. Business wise, I think there’s still a lot of work Adobe can do here, which is a good thing since we haven’t been doing that much in the region yet but I’m pretty sure that will change soon. Especially with the upcoming release of Flash Player 10 which will have built in support for RTL-languages (right-to-left) like Arab and Hebrew. So you no longer have to come up with a hack for RTL-languages, it will just (finally) be built right in to the Flash Player.
The event itself was really wel organized. Kudos to Adobe’s MEA team Rianette, Andrew, Jacob (and his lovely wife) and Mohammed. The speakers were really pampered before, during and after this event! Excellent job guys. I’ll come back next week if you want me to!
My presentation was on Flash, Flex and AIR. Even though it was more a designer-crowd, judging by the amount of questions I got afterwards, people are really warming up to AIR and Flash here. Especially after I told/showed them that Flash Player 10 (and thus also AIR) would support RTL-languages. This is going to be huge here.
Highlight of the day (besides my own presentation off course :D) was Scott Kelby‘s presentation. I have to be honest, I could learn a thing or two from the way Scott presents. He really is an amazing presenter who can captivate an audience with the snap of his finger (Ok Scott, you owe me big time for writing this :D). But really, if you haven’t had a chance to see him speak somewhere, make sure you catch his session at an event even if you’re not in to Photoshop.
Next stop on my little trip to the Middle East is Egypt for UX-Guru‘s. If you’re in the neighbourhood, come and say hi!
Oh… Did I already tell you I really really love my job?! :D
The pictures above I took with Scott’s camera. This picture below is shot with my modest Canon 20D.
4 Comments
Feel free to follow me on: 
You’re quite a decent speaker, Serge! Don’t think too low of yourself! Just don’t crack too many jokes, you’re not very funny.
Dubai looks awesome! I’ld like a session in a room like that! Really wow!
And yes, you did tell many times you love your job, and to be honest with you: if I were in your place, I’ld no doubt say the exact same thing! :)
it was the best presentation in the whole event, i actually came for this one.
though i would have loved to see you build an adobe air app from scratch using XHTML/JS/CSS/AJAX.
still the flash player thing wasn’t all bad.
the time was short for such big titles, i mean flash,flex and adobe air. would be great if we could have you here again just to cover one subject “Adobe air for javascript developers”.
oh and the arabic support thing man thats wild, would really be nice if it sees the light early. u should have seen my twitter going wild when i broke the news :D
Serge, you are doing a great job man!
@Sander: I don’t know what you mean? Serge is the most funny man walking on this planet’s surface.
He should have his own sitcom. He’d beat Seinfeld for sure!