I've been home for a few hours now from MAX09 and - let me just say - as much as I loved it, nothing beats being tackled by my little mini-army of children running to give me a hug. To be home with them, with my wife, and in my big ass comfy chair is just about as close to heaven as it gets. Before I talk more about my experience with MAX, I need to say thank you.

  • Thank you Adobe for allowing me to run the Unconference again this year. It was an honor, and I truly hope I lived up to it and provided value to the conference. Thank you for allowing me to bring in additional help and support (without them having to buy their own tickets!)
  • Thank you Ezra Parker and Charlie Griefer. Guys - together I think we pulled off the best Unconference yet.
  • Thank you to my speakers: Dan Wilson, Scott Stroz, Mike Brunt, Terry Ryan, Kevin Schmidt, Laura Arguello, Kurt Wiersma, Josh Adams, Luis Majano. Also thank you to Adobe again. I asked if a "few" of them could show up and I got a small army. Nice
  • Thank you toTed Patrick. Because of him I got to meet Mark Hamill. I will never forget that.
  • Thank you to Chris Hayes, Kevin Schmidt, Andy Allan (Fuzzy Orange), and Mark Phillips (Verabase) for sponsoring the Unconference and allowing us to feed the hungry geeks.
  • And finally, thanks to everyone who came up to me and said they read my blog. It's nice to know people actually do that. ;)

And if I forgot anyone, I blame American Airlines for keeping me waiting in Dallas an extra hour or so. Ok, so what about the conference itself? I've blogged about MAX the last few days so I'll just keep this at a high level.

  • Facility: The convention center was a good location. Huge - but the layout worked well. I could get from the Unconference to my session within a minute or two. I do wish the hotels had been closer, but Adobe had buses running very regularly.
  • Keynotes: Probably the best yet. The Omniture portion was a bit... awkward at times, but I feel like I finally got a good idea about why bothered to buy them. Also, there was no "Hey everyone, Mobile is really huge and it's going to be huge here any day now" rah rah portion, and that made me very happy. Oh - and seeing Kevin Lynch look down on John Mayer in the AR demo was incredibly creepy... in a good way.
  • Food: I'll probably be in the minority here, but I loved the box lunches. I much prefer simple food for lunch, and hot meals/fancy junk at night.
  • Special Event: I hated it. Completely. Ok, I lie. I'm just ticked that my bowling score was so darn low. I think it was pretty cool that we had so many different venues to choose from.
  • Speaker Support: Adobe does a great job supporting their speakers. They paid for the hotel, flight, and the ticket of course. They made the submission process (slides, notes, etc) nicely automated and efficient.

Ok - so didn't I forget one of the more important aspects - sessions? Well, I can't really comment on that. When I wasn't giving my session I spent as much of time in the Unconference as possible. I'd love to know what other attendees thought.

That's it. I hope to see everyone again, back in LA, for MAX 2009.