Ted Patrick - Demos & MAX @ Adobe Systems
Note: This is the personal blog of Ted Patrick. The opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
Growth in Community and Events
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Published
Sunday, December 07, 2008
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9:52 AM
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Despite the recent changes at Adobe, we remain very focused on the long term growth for community and events globally. Having just finished record setting events in MAX NA, MAX EU and soon MAX Japan, we are planning to expand events and community programs in 2009. I wanted to talk openly about plans headed into 2009 and provide some insight on our direction and things to come. Our team has been working on making everything we do more scalable. As a team of 5, we manage 600+ user groups (growing rapidly now with Adobe Groups), the community experts program (growing soon), and events (MAX & Camps). The programs we start/maintain must be easy to manage, sustainable globally, and bring about measurable returns for the community/ecosystem. Recent projects, Adobe Groups and event recording (MAX, 360Flex, Ajax Experience), are good examples of scalable projects but we plan to do more in 2009.
Community
We will be focusing on new community growth in 2009 leveraging Adobe Groups, Connect, and online events to foster new types of community programs around the globe. Adobe Groups is really an enabler for our team as it allows community members to manage community directly and work in parallel to our team's effort. We need to get community members more involved in managing community at the local, regional, country levels and we are very open to creating new community roles to support this. Given we added 176 user groups in the weeks following the launch of Adobe Groups, we are projecting 1000+ Adobe User Groups by mid-2009. With this level of growth, we need to change the way we work and get more community members involved in the process. I am looking forward to working with the community to build this new open governance around the globe. It will be challenging but when we get it right the Adobe community programs will be more resilient, larger, and better at ever corner of the globe.
Over the past 2 days I have seen a lot of disappointment in the community regarding people departing Adobe, clearly this is understandable. What I find troubling is that some of the disappointment is related to loosing a "connection" or "contact" at Adobe. We need to change this and share information, contacts, and programs more openly and more transparently with the community at large. Ideally everyone should feel connected and no community member should ever feel cut off when someone departs Adobe. We need to do more to foster stronger bonds between the ecosystem and make sure that everyone has access to great programs and contacts.
Events
We need to reach more people at a lower price point with our events. MAX is targeted at customers who have invested and adopted Adobe's platform but we lack an event that drives adoption at a lower price point (AKA FREE). We are going to add a new event in 2009 that will be free online and will be paired with Adobe User Group meetings around the global. We are also going to scale up MAX even larger in Los Angeles, Europe, and other parts of the globe. We will also be building MAX in the open in 2009 on the MAX Open Working Group on Adobe Groups. Gone are the days of building MAX behind closed doors and not getting the community deeply involved.
We will be growing events and community in 2009 like never before. I look forward to working with you.
Cheers,
Ted :)
7 Responses to “Growth in Community and Events”
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Ted this sounds great.
I'm sure having more community involvement in events like Max will only make them better.
As for events to grow the community to developers not currently using Adobe Tools / Products this sounds great especially if we can crack a few of the hardcore non adobe groups here in Europe.
Thanks for all your hard work.
And as you have mentioned thanks to all the guys / gals of the Developer Relations team past and present.
Ted, there is nothing more I would like than to stengthen my ties, and my community's ties with Adobe but I've found myself becoming less sympathetic to the community managers.
I know there were 600 employees that were "let go", "sacked", "given the pink slip", etc... but to say they simply "departed" is an excessive amount of PR spin for a blog that I expected would be less corporate. (At least for a blog that ends each post with a smiley emoticon.) I realize you have to filter what you report, but I think in this case the filter was too high; the blogosphere shows the disparity in language.
What areas were cut and why they were selected over other products? Any Adobe Labs products being halted? Any tech that had no one let go from because Adobe believes it has a strong value? Does this affect the Flex SDK('s releases)? etc...
Additionally, I run a local chapter of the International Game Developer's Association (IGDA) with 5+ AAA studios whom attend. All the studios use a variety of Adobe products, and I know specifically of 2 that use Flash in their pipeline (and a 3rd evaluating Flash for similar use.) Yet 2 of my e-mails to an Adobe representative about bringing someone to Baltimore to stengthen this connection have gone unanswered. Do I keep trying the same representative and hopes he responds or forwards it to someone whom is more suited for contact?
I wish Adobe (and the community managers) good luck in the reorganization, and hope all those whom were let go are able to find new opportunities that utilize their skills.
I agree that, ideally, people should look beyond the individual contacts at a company--but that too is a totally understandable feeling. I think that's what you (Adobe) get when you layoff public facing employees that you've invested in. Taking an extreme example, if Steve Jobs left Apple there would be some who would cry.
(One more negative thing before I get to the future) ... I'm not in the position to say what's really best for Adobe--but, I think forgoing any booth at Macworld sends a gloomy message. Sure, there are reasons behind it, but even though I haven't even gone to Macworld since 1991 (jeez I'm old) this move makes me pause. I guess my point here is that even a rinky dink tiny booth would have been enough.
Anyway, on with the future! I think it makes sense to grow the free events. However, my limited experience with such events has nearly always felt like nothing more than a hard sell. Watch the CS4 announcement event for example. You could make that miles better if information of real value were presented. Maybe insider tips from users--not individual use cases for the new features. People want to know what's new, but that only takes a few quick demos. The local user group meetings that I value the most are those where someone just shared how they did a real project. If they happen to use Adobe products (which, really, who doesn't?) then that should be interesting to Adobe. I'm not saying you don't do this kind of thing already--but some "events" are just way too "sales-y".
Another thing is to just associate Adobe with networking events. The main reason (almost the only reason) I attend MAX is to see people I know. This is another reason I attend local user group meetings. I'm not sure what my concrete advice is here... but you get my point. Look at influxis's mode of operation: they sponsor tons of parties at Flash events. Some might question whether people only know them as the free-beer suppliers, but even that might be okay.
Finally, I think making connect meetings (conducted by users outside Adobe) is a huge thing you're doing right--people want to stay educated. Similarly, Adobe TV has the POTENTIAL to be great. Just give me a way to find the educational material (and make a UI that's not horrid) and people will be all over that.
The connection MM had with its community has definitely been lost since Adobe's take over.
Obviously I'd like to see Adobe, promote, support and recognize parts of the community that aren't officially Adobe.
Just because we aren't officially Adobe, we do a great job spreading the word and promoting Adobes products.
Stop working against us!
http://www.lfpug.com
Just curious...
How long should one expect the approval process at groups.adobe.com to take for starting a user group?
- The Saj
Ted - This sounds great! But one question -- "Is MAX going to come to India?" I think, last year there was a discussion about it, but could only reach Japan!
Ted, this sounds great!
I think in this case Adobe should be like Microsoft, with a lot of support to users group.
Here in Brazil, we donīt have any contact with Adobe. We are alone. :)