Peter Elst

By now you will probably have heard the news that Adobe is laying off 600 people, or about 8% of their employee base supposedly because of “weaker-than-expected demand for Creative Suite 4″ which started shipping in October. It came as a real shock to all of us, especially timing this announcement just after the MAX Europe conference and with the holiday season coming up.

One of the most well known people affected by the job cuts is Mike Downey, former principal evangelist for the platform business development team, a cornerstone of the Flash, Flex and AIR community for over 7 years. His work at Adobe was a real inspiration to me and many others and am very happy to have regularly had him over to our Adobe User Group Belgium and the times I was able to meet up and present alongside him at events.

Another person leaving that was especially close to us in the community programs was the Developer Relations Manager for EMEA. Having been active in the various programs starting from June 2003 as a Team Macromedia volunteer for Flash, I’ve seen how difficult it has been to bring the European developer community together and with her at the wheel we’ve started to see some real momentum build. She’ll be greatly missed at Adobe.

I wish all employees affected by this decision the very best of luck, and am sure they’ll do great in whatever opportunity they decide to take up next! While writing this blog post I came across a twitter message from Adobe’s John Dowdell that resonated with me: “It takes a long time to get to know a person, but only an instant to miss them.”

What really struck me was the reaction of the community and seeing messages of support continuously streaming in on Twitter, Facebook etc. I barely had a few hours of sleep that night. At the breakfast table the conversation was dominated by the unfortunate news and Cyril, Pablo and myself found ourselves buying overpriced wifi access in the hotel lobby just to follow up on the latest news.

Much as we like to complain – the evangelists, people in the product teams and community programs are like an extended family. Their work affects what we do on a daily basis and while they might not always be in a position to come out publically in support of our rants I am convinced they are listening and are fighting the fight for us internally at Adobe.

At MAX this year I refound an appreciation for what they do after admittedly a few months of skepticism and uncertainty about the direction they’re going. Despite the recent news there is no doubt in my mind a bright future is ahead for Adobe and the Flash Platform!

 
More information here

• http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2008/12/twitter_on_adobe.html
• http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/12/04/on-changes-at-adobe/
• http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/12/4/The-Changing-ColdFusion-Team
• http://www.cfinsider.com/index.cfm/2008/12/4/Adobe-Layoff-Hits-Home
• http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/job_cuts_at_adobe/

Thanks to all who voted, my faith in the US is restored after 8 years of failed politics — congratulations President Obama!

I watched the election results come in on Twitter and arrived just in time at an internet cafe here in South India to see John McCain give his concession speech and Barack Obama take the stage to celebrate his victory. Truly a moment for the history books.

I’ll be heading back home in two weeks and will resume ‘regular blogging activity’. Until then, may the force be with you.

 

“Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life”

- Nelson Mandela

 
Today is Blog Action Day — thousands of bloggers will unite to discuss a single issue – poverty. We aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web!

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I don’t generally blog politics and this is going to be the one and only time I’ll bring up this years US Presidential election.

While the campaign so far has arguably resulted in some of the best political satire out there, the world is facing some serious challenges and whether we like it or not, the US plays and will continue to play a substantial role in getting this resolved.

Some people are frustrated to see how in Europe and other parts of the world the public consensus seems to lean heavily towards one candidate. That may well be true, and that bias could be explained in part by overcompensation because of our need for change and inability to make a difference through voting.

Those of you in the US can make that difference, I’m not going to ask you to vote for one candidate over the other but please do your research and most importantly vote. We are counting on you to turn the page on the last eight years.
 

When you go to conferences as much as I do and meet up with old friends and acquaintances, the number one question is: “So, Peter what have you been up to?”. I realized that, unless you follow me on twitter and actually read the dozens of messages I post there every week, fairly few people have a clue what I’ve been doing these last few months.

Well here goes, apart from the Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0 courses I teach in Belgium and the UK, I spend a good bit of time tech reviewing several books. Two great titles that are coming out soon are AdvancED Flex 3 (Friends of ED) and the Adobe AIR Cookbook (O’Reilly).

I’m also co-authoring a couple of books, one that has already been announced is AdvancED AIR Applications (Friends of ED).

Turns out I’ve so far attended 10 events and conferences this year, presented a total 12 sessions and have enjoyed every minute! That said I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep things going at that rate.

While I’d love to be in the position to speak at all conferences that would like to have me over, unless my basic travel and accommodation expenses can be covered (which thankfully and increasing number of conferences are able to do), I’m going to have to become very selective in what I take on. I’d prefer to spend my personal travel budget on community events that genuinely have limited resources or are just starting out. That’s not a dig at Adobe MAX by the way, there are different reasons why I won’t be speaking there this year.

The ActionScript Conference in Singapore is going to be my last conference speaking engagement of the year and have not confirmed anything for 2009 as of yet.

We’ll see how things go, after Singapore I’m heading to India for a couple of weeks and will get back to business again by the end of November.
 

Apologies to my international reader base for not blogging in English, after reading the latest edition of the Dutch “inside digital media” magazine on Flash versus Silverlight I felt compelled to clear up some misconceptions.

[update] the English translation is now available in the comments

 
Ik kreeg vandaag “inside digital media” in de bus, en naast een interessante bijdrage van Serge Jespers over online TV, kon ik uiteraard niet over de headline “Is de dood van Flash nabij? Flash vs Silverlight 2.0″ kijken, een artikel van Luc Jacobs, Managing Director bij GIALCO.

Op zich is dit uiteraard een leuk onderwerp om wat dieper op in te gaan, het is een vraag waar veel mensen mee bezig zijn. Dit maakt het dan ook des te noodzakelijker om informatie correct weer te geven en jammer genoeg lijkt me dat hier niet het geval.

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With all the talk about the huge difference in geographical pricing for Adobe’s products I wanted to do a quick comparison between what those in the US and those in Europe (or at least Belgium for as far as I can check) pay for some of the different suites.

 
Master Collection CS4

Full price US: 2499 USD
Full price Europe: 2799 Euro

Master Collection CS4 is 1.6 times as expensive for European customers.

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What can I say? I’ve really been overwhelmed by the great video comments you guys submitted. Thanks to everyone who took part, love what you did!

I’m now opening it up for my blog readers to vote on the video they like best and help decide the winners of our great prizes (including an FDT 3.1 Enterprise edition, two Flex Builder 3 licenses and tickets to the <head> conference).

You can see all video comments below and cast your vote until Friday, September 26th.

 

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[update] Thanks to Powerflasher we now also have a license for FDT 3.1 Enterprise edition for one lucky winner!

 
I’m happy to say that thanks to the friendly folks at Adobe I’ve now got two licenses of Flex Builder 3 Professional to give away!

So, don’t hesitate – record a video comment, right now you’ve still got a 100% chance of winning. To get things kick started the first person to leave a video message will get a ticket to the <head> conference!

The prize lineup now looks as follows, with some more prizes being sorted out for the runners up.

 
First prize
- Flex Builder 3 Professional (Mac or PC)
  or FDT 3.1 Enterprise edition
- Lynda.com one-year online training library pass
- <head> conference ticket

Second prize
- Flex Builder 3 Professional (Mac or PC)
  or FDT 3.1 Enterprise edition
- <head> conference ticket

Third prize
- <head> conference ticket

 

Video messages don’t necessarily need to be in English, feel free to record something in your own language if you prefer. Just be creative and have fun!

 

I never thought I’d keep anything up for this long but today is the 5th anniversary of this blog!

That comes to 383 posts (or an average of about 1.4 posts a week), 1482 comments/trackbacks and some 65.188 pieces of spam. Back in 1994 I had about 360 hits a month whereas now its grown to an average of 15.000.

 
To mark this occassion I figured I’d do a little giveaway, prizes include:

- 2 5 tickets for the <head> global web conference (donated by Aral Balkan)
- 1 one year pass to the Lynda.com Online Training Library® (donated by Lynda.com)

Still talking to some other companies, more to come!

 
To participate, all you have to leave is a video comment on this post using the new Seesmic video comment feature I’ve recently installed.

Anything goes, feel free to talk about what you like about this blog, where there’s room for improvement, heck you can even sing a song or tell a joke. Bonus points for creativity!

Next week, September 21st I’ll post a short list of my favorite video comments and will put up a poll so the community can vote on the winners. The winners will then be announced on Friday September 26th!

Good luck and have fun!