Adobe Community Summit
May 14th, 2008
This week I’m attending the Adobe Community Summit, a once-a-year event hosted by Adobe to connect to their various community leaders. It’s invitation only, usually for Community Experts and User Group Managers, though global advocates are usually extended an invitation as well. Let me begin by saying that the vast majority of material covered is under NDA, so I’m not even going to go into the nature of it, however one thing that isn’t covered is the people I’ve met and some of the managers I’ve talked with.
First of all, I was pretty intimidated walking in. There are people here who don’t just play around with technology, they rip it apart and dissect it with a scalpel. Overhearing conversations about audio sampling latency and the specifics of video codecs make this little developer here feel like more of a script kiddie. Even so, it’s been an amazing experience, because while many people here have played with AIR, I seem to be one of the few ones who’s actually constructed a full application with it. Bringing my performance concerns directly to Mike Chambers was also kindof awesome. All in all there are a lot of really big brains here, and picking them has been a blast.
Secondly I want to talk about the Manager’s summit, where we as managers got together to share ideas and figure out what we’re doing right and/or wrong. The biggest revelation was that we’re all dealing with the same problems: Finding speakers, motivating volunteers, driving attendance and so forth, and some of the solutions we’ve come up with have been absolutely ingenious.
First, I present a few ideas provided by other managers (attributed as bets I remember):
- NYC: Don’t do a presentation style meeting, do a roundtable style meeting.
- Bob: Write a Cron job for your email reminders.
- Bob: Go for Intermediate to Advanced topics: Challenge the newcomers, don’t bore the experts.
- Small crowds are just as important as big crowds.
- Educate, Entertain, Employ.
Now, some potential topics:
- My Biggest Mistake
- Social Networking Tools
- The Freelancer Toolkit
- What interesting things have you done?
- Mapping in Flex
- How to be a Passive Job Seeker
And lastly, 12 golden rules for Group Longevity, presented by Michael (forgot his last name) from Chicago.
- In two months an opportunity might come up, so don’t become too rigid in your planning.
- Treat the group as a democracy of one. One man, one vote. You’re the man, and you have the vote. Going to committees adds unnecessary overhead and makes you dependent on others.
- Give it a try, no matter how crazy the idea is. There’s always another month.
- If it interests you, chances are it’ll interest someone else.
- Sell it big! Make it sound like something they can’t miss!
- Big Name Speakers do not make a great meeting. Have the community drive the events.
- The best meetings are ones where everyone gets to participate.
- Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Ask the stupid questions, so others know it’s ok to ask them.
- Have newbies be presenters. Let the experts learn from them rather than the other way around. It’s better to learn what struggles they’ve had at the beginning, and what skills are developing in other areas when you’ve become very specialized.
- Avoid being the presenter as much as possible. You’re the facilitator, not the presenter.
- Focus on what makes sense to your group.
- Expect Nothing, Appreciate Everything.
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