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Mix '06 vs Max '05
A lot of people on lists, etc were wondering how Mix (by Microsoft) compares to Max (by Macromedia). Well, I was at Mix ‘06 and Max ‘05 so I’ll do a slight comparison. In my comparison I’ll remove any bias I may have as an Adobe Users Group manager. One other thing to note is when I say Macromedia I mean Macromedia..not Adobe. We have yet to see how Adobe will do things. Let’s get started.
Here’s what I think Macromedia did better than Microsoft:
# Bird’s of a Feather (BOF’s) are much more evident which provides much more of a community feeling.
# Sponsor booths were easily accessible which allowed me to make connections, as a UG manager, to many different vendors.
# A lot more sessions and labs to attend with a structured setup. You had to actually register for the sessions versus just going to anything. This is a good and “bad” thing but I’ll touch on it in the Microsoft section.
# Event night is always a family oriented event. There is liquor, which is fine, but the event is always somewhere the whole family can enjoy.
# It was somewhat riveting watching their speakers present. This somewhat falls in line with the keynotes because they were really sweet. They had skits, etc all setup to be more enticing.
Microsoft did some good things too.
# The preso’s didn’t seemed canned. Obviously they were prepared before hand and some of them were intertwined in a way but not all of the code was intertwined or pure marketing fluff. Some presenters really geeked out. One presenter wrote an Atlas app in front of everyone in a keynote. That was quite sweet.
# SOFTWARE! They gave us Visual Studio 2005 Standard, Windows Vista Beta Build 5308 (which is sweet), Expression, IE 7 Beta (which is public anyway), and several other goodies. It was absolutely sweet to get software in our registration package. :-)
# The Sandbox was very nice. Instead of trying to round up product team members (IE, Windows, etc) they were located in the Sandbox which had PC’s, mobile devices, and a projector for testing Microsoft products. While testing you could do labs, created by Microsoft, which would give you more insight into the products, etc. They had Windows Vista, Office 12, IE 7 Compatibility, WPF & WCF, Smart Phones, and Ultra Mobile PC’s. Hopefully I didn’t leave anything out but it was awefully nice for us to be able to sit down with the team members and discuss likes, dislikes, and suggest improvements.
# Lunch was provided as part of your package. The first day had a terrible lunch, in my opinion. It just wasn’t food I like to sink my teeth into. The second day was better and I didn’t take part in the 3rd day meal although I heard the conversation was great (it was a talk lunch).
# Conference containment was nice. Maybe it was just the location (The Venetian) but they had like 2 or 3 floors blocked off to nothing but the conference. It really seemed liked you were away from all of the hustle and bustle the hotel naturally provides.
So, both were great conferences. Katapult has decided to mark Mix and Max as the two conferences we will always attend. Max is in Vegas this year as well so I guess we’ll see how Adobe does things in Vegas. Since Adobe has bigger pockets than Macromedia did and Macromedia put on a great conference I almost can’t imagine what Max will be like this year.
Either way…we’ll be there (Max) without a doubt and we’re looking forward to making it to Mix next year. See you there. :-)
Posted by John C. Bland II on March 26, 2006 9:37 PM | Permalink
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