Speaking at Adobe MAX 2013

In less than a month I’ll be packing up a huge amount of wires, plug adapters, extension leads and devices (plus some clothes and stuff I guess), and flying on a giant time travelling silver bird to a land across the sea. Once there I’m very excited that I’m going to be attending Adobe MAX, but not only that, I will also be speaking.

Me, me, me!

My session is on “Effective technical strategy and planning for websites and mobile apps“, and I’ll be going through a process for getting to grips with a project before your fingertips start churning out code. We’ll look at the kind of questions you might want to ask in order to make sure that your solutions are appropriate, and to get as much information confirmed up-front to save time once you dive in. I’m a big believer that technology doesn’t just have to be an end result, and techies can actually be a valuable part of the creative process when ideas are being defined, as they provide yet another way of thinking. Far too often the perception is that the developers are the moaners, the limiters, the ones who say no to everything, but instead we’ll look at how some of your initial planning can actually feed into project concepts and take them to the next level. All this and an extremely tenuous Battlestar Galactica theme throughout… what more could you want?!

Slides will go up to coincide with the talk, and I’m also hopefully intending to provide a couple of extra resources which may be useful even if you’re not able to attend, time permitting.

Everything else

This is only my second trip to MAX, my first being in October 2011, so I’m very much looking forward to the event as a whole. There are some great “big name” speakers including people like Jeffrey Zeldman and Paul Irish, obviously a large Adobe contingent, but it’s great to see that so many of the wider community members are also offering up their expertise. Outside of the sessions and workshops I’m really looking forward to the MAX Bash, which this year has The Black Keys as the resident band. I have brilliant memories of last year’s Bash. It’s not often you get to see Weezer outside in a California parking lot whilst eating from a crazy assortment of food trucks, watching fire shows and bumping into old colleagues from the other side of the world, and although I’m not personally that keen on The Black Keys I’m sure this year’s will be a great night.

If anyone is thinking of coming but hasn’t yet bought a ticket, you can use the discount code MXSM13 to get $300 off full price, plus you get a year’s free subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. MAX is held from the 4th-8th May, in Los Angeles, California. Hit up max.adobe.com for any other information you may need.

I will be travelling on my own this year in my new freelance guise and therefore not surrounded by the company of colleagues, so if anyone want to arrange any meetings/dinner plans/late night Xbox sessions please let me know – using this site or get in touch on twitter using @sjenkinson.