MAXUP - Call for Feedback and Thanks!!!
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Comments
Published
Friday, October 27, 2006
at
4:12 PM
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I would like to thank the presenters and attendees for making MAXUP a success. The session content at MAXUP was impressive and I have received a large number of compliments on the session quality and the format. I would like to get feedback on MAXUP, please include your thoughts in the comments.
Here are my takeaways from MAXUP:
15 Minute Sessions - The tight timeframe of 15 minute sessions forces the presenter to focus on key points and demos. Where longer sessions tend to wander, 15 minutes provides a very nice balance.
Community - Adobe has an amazing community of designers and developers. The content presented at MAXUP was amazing in quality and was a tiny glimpse into our vast community. We need to find a way to surface more community and get developers and designers involved.
Business/Employment - After almost every presenter finished, a small group of interested attendees would chat with the speaker in the back of the hallway. At a future MAXUP, we should provide an area to foster business/employment opportunities with developers. There are 1000's of projects/jobs looking for developers and I think MAXUP provided an ideal venue to foster this business.
Stuff not Fluff - I was pleased to see that MAXUP really highlighted cool stuff, not marketing. We had several speakers representing commercial products at MAXUP and fluff was kept to a minimum.
Self-Managed - Speakers made MAXUP very easy to manage. Everyone was professional and courteous. If a speaker finished early, they allotted their time to the next speaker.
Location/Marketing - Our location and marketing need some work. MAXUP was planned in 1 month with limited budget. The MAXUP schedule was finalized the night before MAXUP began so we had limited ability to post a schedule or market. Although in contrast many presenters and attendees created a large buzz about the event.
Thanks for making MAXUP a success.
Regards,
Ted :)
I thought MAXUP was great, and I was surprised that a few people still hadn't heard of it by Thursday (after it was done). Still, though, many people did catch the buzz, and that's awesome.
I like that you had two stations so that the next presenter could get ready while another was presenting. This kept things fast, from what I saw, and issues can generally be corrected before they affect the flow.
The only thing I didn't like was that I only had a few chances to actually sit down and watch a presentation. All the official sessions kept me moving around a lot. It would have been nice if MAXUP were on Thursday too so I could have hung out (and still learned stuff I was missing by skipping a session or two) while I recovered from the Palms party!
I went to a few MAXUP presentation and they were excellent. I agree with Josh that it was difficult due to the other MAX sessions going on at the same time.
The first problem I had was that the registration desk had no idea what I was asking about when I was first looking for MAXUP to sign up as a presenter.
Secondly, I was unable to do my demo due to the terrible wifi at the Venetian. This was obviosuly not Ted's fault and probably not even Adobe's fault. I would assume it was an overflow of the Venetian's bandwidth although the wired connections in the room worked very well.
Overall, it was great and I would like to see it again next year. Thanks Ted for your hard work.
Agreed, I thought MAXUP was a terrific idea and seemed to go off quite well. As noted by others, it was hard to attend as much as I would've liked, but the topics being presented were quite varied and the presentations I did see went pretty well.
I thought the setup for presenters was nice, too. Simple to setup (the extra station for the next presenter to setup at was nice), nice screen, nice mic, got to use our own laptops. I didn't have or see anyone have any problems with the provided equipment during their presentations, which is always a plus for presenters and spectators alike.
Personally, I felt it was nice to see some of the Adobe folks take time to contribute to the "community" with presentations, as well.
Overall, great stuff... a big thanks to Ted for putting this together.