Adobe User Group XL, November 17th, Amsterdam
If you’re in the Benelux and couldn’t make it to MAX then the Adobe User Group XL event is probably the next best thing. With international speakers from Pixar, BBC, North Kingdom, Achtung, Addikt, Adobe, and more this event is not to be missed.
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In the keynote I’ll be talking about and showing Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.5 running on multiple devices. Adobe Photoshop legend Russel Brown has something special prepared for the keynote as well. I’ll also be doing a session on Flash Builder Burrito and Flash Catalyst Panini and a session on personalized video on the web. If you’re interested in building mobile applications with the Flash Platform then I can highly recommend Mike Jones’ hands-on lab.
Last friday I heard that there are only a few tickets left so if you want to go then make sure you get yours today!
See you in Amsterdam on Wednesday!
Adobe User Group XL, Amsterdam, Dec 3rd – Win 1 of 5 tickets!
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I am extremely proud to see how well the Dutch Adobe User Group is doing. Proud to see how fast they have grown from a dormant user group to the group that it is today. Every single meeting is very well organized and always sold out with over 250 attendees.
On December 3rd (a little over 9 days from now), they are raising the bar for themselves by organizing the Adobe User Group XL event. The speaker list is very impressive and I really hope I can catch some of the sessions myself. I’m really eager to see what Ralph Hauwert has been up to. He’s been teasing his Twitter followers with little sneaks of his new 3D engine and I really can’t wait to see more. I’m also looking forward to OOO-ii‘s session. These guys must have the coolest job ever. They build all the cool screens you see in Hollywood blockbusters like Star Trek and Minority Report and they use Flash to build them. And then I’m not even talking about the sessions by Group94, Layar, De Monsters, PowerFlasher and all the other speakers. This is really going to be a fantastic event and tickets only cost €75!
While I think the ticket price is well worth it, I did manage to get 5 free tickets. Want one? I’ll make this easy for you. ;-) Point your browser to the Adobe User Group XL website and write down the names of 5 speakers (speaker names, not companies) as a comment to this post. The five first commenters win! (Don’t forget to add your real email address) Well… That didn’t take long :D Congrats to Jolijn, Hans, Marien, Marc and Bart.
See you in Amsterdam!
ColdFusion is alive and kicking in Belgium
I can’t keep count of how many times people have asked me if ColdFusion was dead and the answer is pretty simple: “Hell no!”. Actually, ColdFusion 9 is currently in active development and from what I’ve seen and heard, it’s going to kick some serious behind!
In Belgium, ColdFusion is powering some seriously big and high-traffic sites (like Kinepolis, Immoweb and ZDNet to name a few) and so it’s great to see that the Belgian ColdFusion user group is now being rebooted. Their first meeting is on September 29th at 2pm in Brussels. Fellow platform evangelist Adam Lehman is going to talk about CF and LiveCycle DataServices, monitoring and system alerts and will also let you in on the ColdFusion 9 (codenamed Centaur) roadmap.
More info on their Facebook event page or via http://www.cfforum.eu/ (currently only in French though).
Sowing more seeds in Cairo, Egypt
Last week, I had the chance to visit Egypt by invitation from our new “Adobe User Experience User Group” there. I have to be honest… there could not have been a greater contrast between Dubai and Cairo. Especially traffic in Cairo is well… euhm… very interesting. It’s extremely chaotic. Imagine a 2 lane road. In Cairo, there would be 5 cars next to each other on those 2 lanes. It’s insane! You do not want to drive here as a tourist. Even crossing the street is a challenge.
I had never been to Cairo so I had no idea what to expect. There is a big difference between being there as a tourist and being there for business. Let me explain. As a tourist, you are really treated as such. Prepare to pay a premium for just about everything. A taxi-ride that would normally cost €5 will cost you up to three times as much! On the other side, when being there for business, the people you work with treat you like royalty. Egypt is a country of contrasts.
But like I said, the people you work with really treat you like royalty and so I really need to thank Mohamed Moussa for putting together this event and for inviting me and also everyone at Link.Development for supporting it. This new usergroup has a massive potential and I would be more than happy to go back and speak for them.
Sadly, because of a massive headache the last night I was there, I could not meet with our other usergroup manager in Egypt, Rafiq Elmansy (Sorry again Rafiq). But I’m sure that I will get the chance some day.
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