Looking Ahead to the Next Version of Flex Builder

My final session, one focusing on new features in Gubmo (Flex Builder 4).

Optimizing Adobe Air for Code Execution

Another session on optimizing Air applications, but for which the tips often apply to Flex apps in a browser as well.

Building High Performance Applications for Adobe Air

A number of techniques for optimizing the performance of Flex apps running in Air, though many apply to any Flex app.

Flex Framework Features for Supporting Large Applications

The session largely covered the use of sub applications to support large applications, a feature that was introduced in Flex 3.2.

Playful Development

The idea of the session is that development should be fun.

Max Awards / Sneaks / Special Event

They had some sort of reception going with alcohol just before the Max awards.

REST of SOA

Another more general session, this one highlighting the differences between REST and Web Services and when REST is the preferred technology.

Deep Dive into the Flex 3 Framework

A deep dive particularly into data binding, styles, collections and the system manager.

Creating new components in Flex 3

Need to be aware of the Flex Component Lifecycle
Flex 3 – Halo
Flex 4 (Gumbo) – Spark

General Session

Just before the general session on day two, we got to all play an interactive game on the main screen.

Best Practices for Developing with Flex in a Team Environment

The session didn't have much to do with Flex at all, it was more generally about project management.

Opening Reception / Birds-of-a-Feather

Well, unfortunately I came to Adobe Max almost directly after spending a little over a week in Europe. Jet lag arrived late Monday, and I ended up missing the Opening Reception and the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions (the latter one being one of the things I was looking forward to at Max).

Real-World Collaboration: Building Rich Experiences

Didn't have much take away from this session. Might have been jet lag setting in.

Advanced Tips and Tricks for Flex Builder

My third session was "Advanced Tips and Tricks for Flex Builder". It was a mixture of various tips and admonition to use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible and a descriptionf of some of the more useful keyboard shortcuts.

SOA in the Enterprise

My next session was "SOA in the Enterprise". Nothing worth reporting on. It was a session that assumed you knew what LifeCycle was, and then talked about three customer success stories using it. Wasn't the hard core technical talk I was hoping for.

Lunch in the Exhibit Hall

Lunch all three days was in the Exhibit Hall. The first day it was warm, the next two days it was a box lunch.

Looking Ahead to the Next Version of Flex

My first session was the "Looking Ahead to the Next Version of Flex" session. They covered the new features including:

Max Opening General Session

You definitely realize that you’re at an event for a company that is involved in presentation software. The video playing before the session begins is very flashy.

Check in

Check in went smooth. Adobe sent out an email a couple of days before the conference with a bar code I was supposed to print out and then scan in when I showed up.

Registration

Adobe seems to believe in “eating their own dog food”. The registration tool is Flash based.

Mobile Star Awards 2008

Sybase took honors in several categories of the Mobile Star Awards, including a Gold in the Application Development category for PocketBuilder.

Application Development
Gold Star - Sybase PocketBuilder
Database
Gold Star - Sybase SQL Anywhere
Email
Silver Star - Sybase iAnywhere - Mobile Office
Middleware
Gold Star - Sybase iAnywhere Suite