MAX 2007 registration has been open for several days now. If you are planning on attending MAX (highly recommended) and you register for MAX through my Web site (click the link below) I would appreciate your mentioning my name during the registration process.

On step 3 there is a box that says: "Check here if you are a member of a community or user group." Checking that box will pop-up a text box that prompts you to enter the name of the community leader or user group manager's name. Enter my first and last name "Aaron West" so that I can be credited with your registration. If you do this, I would also appreciate you letting me know by commenting this blog entry or sending me an e-mail (aaron AT trajiklyhip DOT com).

Click here to register:
https://secure.adobemax2007.com/na/register/

It's been nothing short of a stellar week. So many kudos need to be given to all the folks that made this week possible. Ed Sullivan and Christine Lawson for their tireless efforts running the user group and Adobe Community Expert programs (and Ed for spearheading this entire event - I can't express the gratitude), James Talbot, for teaching two absolutely amazing days on Flex, Rob Rusher for helping out as a teaching assistant and Kevin Lynch, Ben Forta, Scott Fegette, Mike Chambers and all the other speakers, and all the UGM's and Adobe Community Experts for participating and making the socializing an event to remember.

I'm now packing up in the hotel at The Fairmont preparing for a few hours of sleep before a 6:30am flight back to Nash-vegas. I'm ultra-exhausted, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow to post a longer follow-up on the week. I hope all those that attended have safe travel back home and I can't wait to see you all again soon.

I'm sitting in the airport in Nashville waiting to depart for San Jose, CA to attend the Adobe Community Summit. The summit is a get-together between Adobe User Group Managers, Adobe Community Experts, and Adobe employees (mostly from Developer Relations). The two day event should be a lot of fun and very informative at the same time. I'm arriving a day early and staying a day late in order to participate in 2 full days of hands-on Flex training.

I've been doing a little bit of work with Flex 2 using the SDK on my Mac and compiling applications locally. I've been playing around with the sample Flex 2 applications and if I get a chance I will compile them and put them up here so people can see how they work. So, needless to say I'm excited to get the chance to dive into Flex more and get some official training from the hands that created the product.

As the week progresses, I'll report on the trip and disseminate any information I can.

There have been many changes recently as a result of Adobe acquiring Macromedia. The macromedia.com Web site is no more and the Adobe site has been completely redone. The Web forums have been moved as well as other community resources like the Team Macromedia (now Adobe Community Experts). With all this change you are bound to have an opinion on what's working and what isn't. Well, you can submit your praises, gripes, complaints, sentiments (and more) via the following Adobe Feedback Form.

I have finally confirmed that I will be attending CFUnited this year in Washington, D.C. I've booked my flight and hotel and will be finalizing the rest tomorrow. The night before CFUnited starts I will be speaking at MiniMAX as well. I have yet to decide on a presentation topic or a product demo, so we'll see. It's been a few months since I've traveled and with the conference kicking off in just a few weeks I'm getting pretty excited. I hope to see many of you D.C., as well as get the opportunity to meet some of you for the first time. If you're a user group manager or an Adobe Community Expert, I'll be participating in those events and can't wait to see you folks again!

Finally, after waiting a few months the Adobe swag for the Nashville ColdFusion User's Group has arrived. You can see from the pic that some new goodies arrived this time, all Adobe branded. Included the package are water bottles, hats, shirts, monitor mirrors, pens, bracelets, USB fans and some cool travel chargers for cell phones that connect to your computer with just about any supported attachments (provided).

I'd like to thank all the peeps at Adobe that manage the community programs, including Ed Sullivan, Sara Spalding, Christine Lawson, and Gabriela Barragan. The Adobe (and previous Macromedia) communities would be nothing without the undying efforts of these individuals. Thanks guys!!

I'm not quite sure what MAX will stand for now that there is no Macromedia, but Adobe has announced the conference will be taking place this year and in Las Vegas no less. Sweet, even if I do get to go (baby is due 2 weeks before MAX), I'll surely get nothing done in a party town like Vegas.

Before you go hitting up the Max info page, Adobe has not updated it to reflect the details for 2006. I only know about this through Ben Forta's blog and the Adobe Community Expert lists. The dates for the conference are October 22 - 26. I'll post more details as they are available.

Mike Chambers, over at Macromedia, has graciously set-up a Flash Web blog for all the members of Team Macromedia Flash. It is designed as a central location for all TMM-Flash designers and developers to post code hints, snippets, and anything related to Flash. It's just started up, but should soon be a great resource for all things Flash from the experts in the field.

I'm not "officially" a member of TMM-Flash as I serve with the TMM-ColdFusion group. However, I do so much with the Flash community at large that I participate in the group unofficially. You'll be seeing posts from me over at the TMM-Flash Web log shortly. Enjoy!