If you don’t know it already, the Adobe MAX conference is always a great learning and networking experience and this year it is sounding better than ever. They’re offering some new things I believe will really help developers get the most out of their experience with the addition of more lab-type sessions, Birds of a Feather discussions at lunch-time etc and more sessions overall. There will also be a ton more content this year focusing on LiveCycle ES and Enterprise RIA which is particularly cool to me as someone who works on both the client and server side and want to know my options for different business solutions. And of course there are always the sessions focusing on Adobe’s creative tools, not to mention really big secret announcements and a sneak peek at upcoming coolness seen only there first.
As a developer attending a conference, I have always been one to seek out as many lab-type sessions as possible believing in the extended benefit of working on something hands-on while learning. The Adobe people must have realized the value in this as well and decided to offer a new alternative to lab-type sessions called BYOL – (Bring Your Own Laptop), where you can use your own laptop to work along with the class. You will still be given a handout of the code lessons etc but instead of using a workstation provided, you simply use your own laptop. The biggest pro here is that you are comfortable on your own laptop already and will have the final version without having to copy it off quickly before getting to your next session. You will however have to be sure that you have the necessary requirements for the class on your laptop prior to attending, and these requirements are posted along with the session details on the MAX portal.
This year I’m fortunate enough to have the opportunity to co-present a session on two different days with Greg Wilson entitled, “Making Real-Time Data Come Alive with Flex Data Visualization.” I’m very excited about this session because I think it’s a topic that is great fun and offers a unique learning experience by giving people a taste of not only using data visualization with real-time data, but experience using Messaging with Data Services on BlazeDS. From this session you will learn how to do push-subscribe messaging acting in both a publisher and subscriber role as well as how to take real-time data and visualize it in a Flex Charting component. We will also talk about the Tour de Flex Dashboard, so you are sure to walk away with some really cool stuff here.
The session times are Monday, Oct 5th at 2:30pm and Wednesday, Oct 7th at 1:30pm. So if you have not already registered for Adobe MAX 2009 then what are you waiting for?! Hope to see you soon in L.A. 
