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Let me talk about different aspects of the conference, so that you can get a feel for how great this was. From the hospitality side, there were helpful guides everywhere you went. People with signs and clipboards and smiles, so that you could easily find your way to the proper place for the next great thing. I had many conversations with these docents over the week, and they were as pleasant at 7:00 am as they were at 10:00 pm. Yes, it's LA and everyone's in show biz, but great job with the staffing.

We were well fed, and not with piles of junk food and beef jerky like I've seen at previous MAX conferences. Fruit, beverages, and sweets in moderation for snacks, pizza and beer when appropriate, and great party food for the mixers. The Grab and Go breakfast of coffee and donuts was the only thing I found lacking, and opted for Starbuck's breakfast. No strikes against MAX, though, since I wasn't expecting breakfast anyway.

As for venue, the LA Convention Center is a huge facility with a tremendous number of classrooms, meeting rooms and exhibit spaces. Every room had ample seating, clear views of the presenters, and good audio support. I had the privilege of working with Patti Sokol as a TA for some of her classes, and the classes went very smoothly with help from the event technical staff.

As an Adobe Community Professional, I was treated like a king. We had access to the front of the general sessions, so I got to sit in the third row and be close enough to the speakers to hear them without amplification. 

Now. About the content of the show...

Wow.

Just that.

Wow.

The general sessions revealed technology for mobile, video and web that will keep Adobe ahead of the pack for years to come, despite the buzz over HTML5 and CSS3. When the dust settles, businesses will continue to require proven, protected delivery methods that can help them make money, not just stream videos for free. We saw content displayed on tablets from Apple, RIM, Samsung, and others. In fact, it was almost like a pharmaceutical convention with all the tablets!Kevin Lynch, with the help of Martha Stewart (whom I met and with whom I had a very nice conversation in the lobby of the JW Marriott after the general session) demonstrated new publishing technologies for those tablets as well. Seeing the InDesign logo on stage during the General Session was a big boost for my confidence in Adobe's plans for traditional design and print.

Of course, the fact that they gave everyone a Droid 2 and a Logitech Google TV unit helped to keep enthusiasm levels high.

You can review many of the sessions athttp://tv.adobe.com/channel/max/max-2010/ Adobe TV's MAX 2010 Channel. You can learn more than you'll ever want to know about the Flash platform, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, and Flash on mobile and television. You'll also learn about what's coming in the next year or two, and get a sense of what Adobe's partners like RIM, Google, Motorola, and others are doing with these technologies to raise their devices to a whole new level of astonishing.

I went to many sessions and labs over the week, and was most impressed by two distinctly different technologies: AIR for TV and a preview of a possible new web design tool.

I was fortunate enough to get into one of the Make Your First AIR for TV application sessions, and spent an hour creating a quick Flash movie, exporting to AIR, and getting it to play on a Television set top box. We got to keep the developer set top box as an incentive to go and create some apps, so I just may have to do that. I also went to a Samsung talk about the future of AIR on their televisions and Blu-Ray players. I firmly believe that having Flash and AIR on these set top boxes and Blu-Ray devices will make Televisions the next iPhones when it comes to apps. Adobe also unveiled its InMarket service, which helps developers get their apps into a broad array of app stores. I plan to take advantage of this myself, and while I don't expect to get rich with a TV app, it might just pay the cable bill.

I saw a preview of a new web design tool for graphic designers. I am not sure how much I can say about it, so I won't say much. I will say that it is definitely a game changer for helping traditional designers transition to designing for the Web. I overheard more than one "oh... my... God!" and "Can I have this NOW??" and "Where has this been all my life?" comments during the session. Keep your eyes open for something wonderful from Adobe for Designers.

After the show, I felt more than inspired to be in this business. I felt uplifted and reinvigorated. The bickering over Flash and HTML5 has been draining all around. To see how exciting technology can be and how wonderful the results of innovation can be when great tools are put to work by smart people makes the trip to LA and MAX 2010 the best conference I have ever attended. Period.

Adobe Drive CS4 enabled desktop connections to Version Cue and other Content Management Systems (CMS), but there were few CMS connectors other than the built-in Version Cue connector that ever saw the light of day. It also included connectors that allowed CS4 apps to display and manage versions within the application. In addition, it allowed checkin and checkout of files as well as version inspection from the desktop. Drive promised further integration with a broader range of content management systems, but when Adobe announced the demise of Version Cue, we all assumed the worst for Drive.

Adobe Drive 2 is software in Adobe Labs, so please be sure to back up your work frequently. Adobe calls it a Technology Preview, so consider yourself warned.

Adobe Drive 2 is the next iteration of Drive, and it does offer desktop access to both Version Cue and to other Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems through connectors. According to the CMIS for Adobe Drive Tech Note, 

Installing Drive 2 is done through the Adobe Application Manager. It installs the Adobe Drive application and infrastructure for Finder/Explorer, adds Version Cue and Adobe Drive support to Bridge CS5, and enables version control support in point products. InDesign, InCopy, Photohop and Illustrator all can talk directly to projects connected through Drive 2.

To connect to a CMS, start Drive 2 and click Add Drive. While Drive CS4 would automatically sniff out Version Cue servers, you need to tell Drive 2 the address and protocol for the connection. For a Version Cue server, enter: "versioncue://servername.com" without the quotes, and click Connect. 

You may want Version Cue to remember you to make future login faster. You can also choose to automatically mount the Version Cue server when your computer starts.

Once connected, you can browse existing projects in your file browser (Finder, Explorer) or Bridge CS5. You will need to login to the VC server from its web console to create new projects. While many people understand using Bridge to access Version Cue servers, let's talk about using the Finder (or Explorer).

To check out a file, select it in Finder or Explorer, then right click. Choose Adobe Drive... or Services... (Snow Leopard) then Adobe Drive... to see your Version Cue options. Choose Check Out to check out the file.

Once you have it checked out, any changes you make will be local until you check the file back in to the project. 

Also, while you have the file checked out, other people who have access to the project will not be able to check it out. They need to check out a file to make changes, so you're the only one who can make changes while you have it checked out. Once you have saved your changes, check it back in to the Version Cue project. Right click on the file again to get the Drive menu, and choose Check In... If you choose Cancel Check out..., then any changes you have made to the file since you checked it out will be abandoned.

You will be asked to add version comments. This is important later when you are trying to find a specific previous version of the file. Comments will be visible when you choose Show Versions, or when users look at versions in either Bridge or CS5 applications.

You can view versions at a later date by right clicking on the file and choosing Show Versions... from the contextual menu.

While many people think that Version Cue is only useful when used with Creative Suite apps, from Finder or Explorer, you can use any file type. This means that you can manage your Word or Powerpoint files as well as your QuarkXPress and Google Sketchup files. The important thing to remember is that the workflow requires that you check out and check in files when you want to make changes. If you double click on a file from Finder, it will open without checking it out. You've then removed it from the workflow.

So, what happens when I remove a file from the workflow by opening it without checking it out? You can still make changes, but the file is read only. If you want to keep the changes in the Version Cue project, you will simply need to check it out, then save it. Easy! When you're done editing, save it and check it in, remembering to add your version comments.

You can also promote previous versions to the current version as well as open previous versions on their own. Right click on the file, then choose Show Versions... from the Drive menu. From here, you can select a version and either promote it to the current version or open that previous version without promoting it. This is very handy when there's some content in a previous version that you want to use, but you don't want the entire file. You can open the previous version, then copy and paste that older version's content to the current version.

I encourage you to try out Drive 2, particularly if you used to use Version Cue with your CS4 or even CS3 projects. Having access to your Version Cue projects in CS5 is huge for those of us with legacy content in those servers, and also for those of us who don't want to have to learn a new CMS workflow.

For those of you who want to explore other CMS, Drive 2 also includes a content transfer function that lets you move files from your Version Cue projects to another project in a different CMS or to a folder. From Drive 2, choose Admin and then enter your credentials.

It is important to remember that this is software out of Labs and that it's not considered Released software. That having been said, it is certainly useful to try Drive to regain Version Cue functionality in your Creative Suite 5 apps. Using Drive as a connector to VC for other applications is functionality that existed in Drive CS4, but not many people used it. Perhaps we can change that with Drive 2.

While it's Windows only for now, it shows that Adobe is committed to DAM and Versioning, despite its decision not to continue development of Version Cue. When CS5 was announced, I got a lot of negative feedback from my customers who depend on Version Cue for project versioning and PDF review management. The killing of VC left them wondering where to turn for version control in the creative space as they transitioned to CS5.

While tools like Subversion and Git are popular in the software development arenas, there aren't integrated solutions for the graphics community to those repositories. Other DAMs and VC platforms exist, but their interfaces are often clunky and require several steps to check parts of a project in and out.

Version Cue provided in-app support for version inspection and reordering, allowing the user to promote a previous version to the current one without losing the current version. This would send a signal to everyone working on the project that the asset had changed, and that they needed to update it. VC also prevented simultaneous editing of graphics (Illustrator and Photoshop) and documents (InDesign and InCopy).

This quiet revelation has me itching to see the released product. I am eager to see whether it will include Git and/or Subversion connectors as well. 

I wonder whether the acquisition of Day Software has anything to do with this.

It's now available as part of their growing CS5 offerings. I am also nearing completion of a CS5 Design Workflow series featuring Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. I begin an InDesign Interactivity series shortly. I also have Acrobat 9 and InDesign CS4 titles there. Check them out online or as DVD-based training for your office or home!