AIR, Flex, India, RIA, initRIA

Vivek started a very interesting discussion on his blog where he’s questioning Adobe’s decision to not have a MAX in India this year. His post is full of sentiment and disappointment and I totally share the disappointment with him, I was very excited when Ted Patrick hinted that Bangalore was being considered but when the final locations were announced it was a bummer

The discussion in the comments of Vivek’s post has been quite interesting … Abdul expressed that it might not be very practical from an organizers perspective, given that the Adobe community in India is still quite nascent and I kinda agree with him having had the experience of organizing initRIA and several local FUG meets. That said I also feel that its quite a tough judgement call and I hope that Adobe would have given Bangalore due diligence before rejecting it.

Peter Elst also joined the discussion and expressed a very important point that I totally agree with …

Adobe has an opportunity and needs to step up to the plate, failing that it takes little for Microsoft to start actively pushing out their technology to developers and tip the balance of the current ‘outsourcing ecosystem’.

Its just a matter of time for Microsoft to push more money into it and start promoting Silverlight. I firmly believe Adobe needs to be ahead of the curve here.

Yes, Adobe needs to step up and stay ahead of the curve here in India, before it becomes economically more practical for organizations to build RIAs using Microsoft’s technologies, even though the Flash Platform is a better option technologically.

Now is organizing MAX in India the way to stay ahead of this curve? I don’t think so …. events in general is definitely one area but there are several other things that Adobe needs to spend time and money on, as far events are concerned, we have gone from no events in 2007 to some events in 2008 .. thats not too bad.

So here are the things that Adobe needs to do to stay ahead of the curve and MAX is not what we really need at this point ..

Thus in my opinion Adobe’s time and resources are better spent in the above areas rather than in a big event like MAX . I’m not saying that events are not important, I would totally love it if we had a MAX in India .. but right now that is not my biggest demand from Adobe. read more

AIR, AJAX, Flex, India, RIA, initRIA

Last year, many of us RIA enthusiasts in India were kinda disappointed with the lack of RIA related events in India, so very close to the end of last year I with some other members from BangaloreFX helped organize the very first RIA focused event in the country initRIA and it was a big success.

Things are very different this year, from the very beginning of the year I started to feel that RIAs were getting a lot of traction in the local circles and we have a lot of fun in store for India this year. In February all the Flex user groups in the county celebrated the launch of Flex 3 and AIR 1.0 and we now have some excellent events lined up already … here’s a list of events that have already been announced …

• Adobe RIA Architects Summit 2008 – April 3rd

  Notable Attendees:

  • Naresh Gupta, MD, Adobe India
  • David Wadhwani, VP of the Platform BU, Adobe
  • James Ward, RIA Cowboy
  • Ben Forta, the Coldfusion Guru

 

• Colin Moock’s ActionScript 3.0: From The Ground Up Tour – April 29th

  Colin Moock is the author of the best ActionScript 3 book there is, Essential ActionScript 3 and a very well renowned expert in the AS3 world.

 

• Great Indian Developer Summit – May 19th to 23rd

  Although this is a broader event and is not free like the above two events, there are two speakers on its speaker list that i would love to listen to:

  • Jesse James Garrett, he coined the term AJAX
  • Yakov Fain, a renowned name in the Flex and Java worlds and I love reading his blog

 
These are the events that have already been announced, I know there are many others that are being planned … there’s word that we might even have an Adobe MAX in Bangalore this year..
 
So lets get ready to party !!  read more

General, India, RIA, SilverLight, initRIA

I spent today evening at IndiBlogger’s Bangalore blogger meet hosted at Microsoft’s Bangalore Office and the meeting surpassed all my expectations… read more

Flex, General, India, RIA, Usability, initRIA

Every Java developer I know has read her books and visited the Java Community Site she started. My first encounter with Kathy Sierra’s writing was when I started reading Head First Java a few years back, the book completely mesmerized me, It was unlike any other technical book I had ever read. I was not reading this book because I needed to know something but instead I was reading it because it was a lot of fun .. this is very unlike me and its very unlike technical books.

Later, I was introduced to her blog Creating Passionate Users and I was totally hooked … well technically the blog wasn’t just her’s but I was passionate about it mostly because of Kathy’s posts … her captivating style of writing and extensive knowledge on the subject was an excellent combination and the cleverly chosen supporting images were the icing. I was so passionate about her blog that every time I noticed a new post on it, I got goose bumps (Seriously !!).

About 10 months back, in early April of 2007, due to a very sad and alarming incident Kathy decided to discontinue writing her blog … I felt her pain and was very sad, I hope she has recovered from that incident and is enjoying life. I miss her blog a lot and even today I spend a good amount of time in its archives, there’s tons of knowledge in there and anyone who is in the business of creating stuff, software or otherwise, should read her articles. read more

AIR, Flex, India, RIA, SilverLight, initRIA

Last sunday, we from the bangalore flex user group organized initRIA, a conference for Rich Internet Application developers. This was the first RIA focused event in India aimed at giving the RIA community an opportunity to interact and learn. 65 RIA enthusiasts from various parts of the country came (we had registered a 115 people, but I guess many changed their minds, given it was a Sunday morning and the event was free )

My day looked something like this ….

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