Andrew Shorten

IBC, one of the leading events for video professionals, is taking place in Amsterdam for the next 6 days. On the Adobe stand there are continuous presentations covering the latest developments within the Flash video ecosystem - including creating video experiences with Flash CS3, monetizing and protecting content with Adobe Media Player and distributing content with Flash Media Server 3. Ideal if the flurry of press releases has left you wanting more information.

You can watch all of these presentations live or choose to watch pre-recorded sessions using a rather nice Flash-based application at http://www.adobe.com/uk/events/ibc/index.html - the live stream has nice features  including picture-in-picture and live swapping between the presenter view and the presentation screen. The quality and reliability of the broadcast stream has been superb throughout the day - I’d recommend that you take a look if you get a chance.

After an interesting 12 months, in which I moved to Microsoft and then re-joined Adobe as a Platform Evangelist, the badge I received for Microsoft’s MIX event in the UK brought together everything on a single bit of plastic… it made me smile anyway so thought I’d share the moment.

I’m sure there will be some familiar faces at MIX UK next week from the Flash community - if you’re planning to write up your take on the event let me know so I can link to your post.

It will be good to catch up with some of the agencies I worked with to see if and how they’ve leveraged SilverLight 1.0 and get their thoughts on recent Adobe announcements regarding H.264 video support and how that changes the landscape for distributing video on the web again.

BTW, after spending the last week with some the product teams, talking about what’s coming down the line from Adobe I’m very excited to be back The announcements and sneaks lined up for MAX are impressive - to get the full lowdown make sure you’re signed up for MAX Europe.

As part of the CS3 Creative License Tour there is a session on ‘Web and Rich Internet Application development’ which might be interesting if you (or one of your colleagues) has yet to get up to speed on developing with Flex, AIR and ColdFusion 8.

The session runs for the afternoon (there are other sessions in the morning which might also be of interest) and provides about 2 and a half hours of content targeted at web developers. If that sounds like something that would interest you then please register on the site or help us spread the word and pass the link along to someone who you think would benefit from this event.

The tour will be at the following locations:

• London, September 17th
• Birmingham, September 19th
• Cardiff, September 25th
• Edinburgh, October 9th
• Newcastle, October 11th
• Manchester, November 20th
• Sheffield, November 22nd
• Dublin, December 4th
• Belfast, December 5th

One of the things we do traditionally do at MAX is organise ‘Birds of a Feather (BOF)’ sessions - they are always really popular and provide a great way to interact with like-minded developers and people from the Adobe product and evangelism teams.

This year we want YOU to be in charge of the BOF sessions! You choose the topic, we’ll provide you with a room and refreshments at MAX in Barcelona.

Here’s how to host a BOF session at MAX Europe 2007:

• Join the MAX Europe 2007 BOF discussion list
• Post a BOF session for review to the list in this format -
  • SUBJECT: BOF - Future Web Applications
  • BODY: Let’s get together and discuss what sort of apps we’ll be creating with Flex and AIR.
• Based on the number of session requests made we will list the sessions for community voting and announce the most popular which will then take place at MAX Europe 2007.

We want to open this part of MAX up to the community and give the BOF sessions a BarCamp-type feel, so get your session topic posted on the discussion list.

Update: BOF sessions will run from 7.00pm - 9.00pm on Monday evening, with each BOF session lasting approx 50 minutes.