I appreciate Adobe’s technologies and their successes, and I feel bad about having this post on top of my blog so long. I still feel they could handle some of their dealings with the development community more tactfully.

My blog space is your blog space, thank you for the contribution.

I also run a development and design house, and obviously care about who is winning what contract. But, I strongly believe Adobe SHOULD be pitching for them along with everyone else.

I care about Adobe’s tools. Adobe’s tools will only be heading in truly useful directions if they understand their clients and their clients clients needs.

Adobe is first and only a business they’re not a fairy ‘dev tool’ godmothers. we are all running businesses here aren’t we, I wouldn’t think twice about grabbing a contract if offered it that maybe some team at Adobe would love to work on, of course I wouldn’t, who would. And neither should Adobe, I dont want some crazy positive discrimination because I don’t have a 100 strong team and I dont make my own tooling. There is space in this market for companies of every size. I for one and the company as a whole have done very nicely thank you very much out of using Adobe products and macromedia as was. thanks god for them I say.

I also get very twitchy when people start to talk about large companies ‘hurting the little man’ as if they have some kind of moral duty not to wet their beak, I dont know it always kinds of ending up sounding a little sour somehow.

At the end of the day Adobe is a large successful corporate money making machine, and long may they remain so. While they continue to make heaps of cash they’ll also continue to make wicked software.

we could, after all, all get together in some happy open-source way and start writing our own free version of everything they do, but really, why bother. Being a successful corporation seems tantamount to evil the way i hear some people talk.

If people think they are losing out because Adobe also has an in house UX team and are getting contracts they ‘should’ have won then I say maybe those people should start to ask themselves how they can compete, and not start shout ‘unfair’

please note, this was not aimed at you, just my comments on the growing ‘bash a business’ attitude that seems so rife in the dev world.

just always remember the richest, most successful people in IT these days all started out just the same way as Adobe did, just a couple of guys with some great game changing ideas. Todays crazy punk kid with a head full of new visions and the drive to follow them through is just tomorrows corporate giant who’ll also be questioned for having too much power.

oh and 1 last thing while i have this space to talk. regarding all the “man i have CS4 and it’s no better than CS3, oh man they ripped me off’ Please stop it! who made you buy the upgrade. if you dont want it, if you think its not different or upgraded enough, then dont spend your money.

thanks for giving me the space on your blog to say these things, nice one mate.

glenn williams
a little man quite happy to swim with the big boys
tinylion development and design.
25 years writing bespoke software and still enjoying every minute.

Also, just take a look around the flash community. Any time that anyone gets a good business OP going or starts to get recognized, Adobe is all over them just looking for a cause to squash them. Flashden is a perfect example. WHY.. after 3 years ( I think ) would you suddenly attack them for their domain name? There is only one reason – these people were making good money creating components customizable and independent of an Adobe IDE. So basically, the big baby was crying because other people were generating a renewable source of income from their products and they werent, so like any big baby bully they threw a fit and tried to wedgie the object of their envy. There are other devs.. people that started getting a good following and did simple stuff like put AIR in their domain etc and Adobe was quick to bring the hammer down. Honestly… either we need to take Tamarin and develop a community version of flash player and flash tools or I think it might be time to check out other options all together. I especially love that I bought CS4 Master collection and I can count on 1 hand (maybe 2 max) how many useful features I gained from CS3 Master. I think Adobe is losing their edge and may even feel like they’re losing control of their own product, so they’re being babies.

I sincerely love Adobe’s tech teams, they do great work and look out for the community they serve. Adobe business however is about strategy and position, irregardless of the hurt they do in their own community.

Thank you for your response and clarification. I can see where you’re coming from, though it wasn’t made clear at the time. In fact after the session Ty made some comment about Adobe selling a product for $5 hundred while developers go on to make thousands using it; that it’s only logical for Adobe to move in this direction. It was opinion and speculation, not official policy.

I understand that the money from these few engagements is probably not a big deal considering Adobe’s size. However, as pure as intentions are (strategic or otherwise), it is still harmful to Adobe customers in varying degrees when this happens. Less dramatic is that some company has one less opportunity to establish a relationship with MTV. And then sometimes there are businesses or products like Huddle that may go under. Occasionally a win-win is possible, such as when a product like Buzzword can just be bought out. In the end it’s all business, sometimes Adobe has to make hard decisions, and everyone can’t always win. But it would be good to remember that it never hurts to address these strategies or previous works when their time comes.

Sorry about the suit comment, you must make a good impression in a polo shirt. In all fairness you and Ty were great to talk to, and some good relations came out of our conversations. I’m just pointing out that not all of Adobe’s strategic decisions are in favor of their primary customer, the designer/developer.

I was one of the “suits” you refer to. (although, I think I was actually wearing jeans a polo shirt that day, as you’ll never find me in a suit).

I’m sorry our answers were unsatisfactory for you, but you seem to have misinterpreted what both Ty and we said to you. I don’t remember Ty saying anything about “money to be had”… in fact, money is the last reason that Adobe gets involved in an engagement.

I believe what we said was that Adobe has a small team (the hundred plus on the XD team refers to those working on internal products… the Customer Engagements team is just a small handful) of XD and consulting designers and developers that will work on *strategic* engagements where we believe the customer’s success is vital to the success of the Flash and LiveCycle platform, and where a partner would not have the resources available to ensure success. Most everything else we pass off to partners.

Really, it may be hard to believe, but we’re not nearly as concerned about money off engagements as we are about ensuring key, strategic partners are successful in their implementations. And, if it’s only money to be had but no strategic reason to engage, we always pass off to a partner.

So the point that my colleague was trying to make by encouraging you to be a partner was that our mission in consulting is:

1) To Ensure Success of Key Customers (whether that be educating the customers’ designers and developers, lining them up with the best partners, or taking lead on projects where appropriate) and
2) To Support the Adobe Partner Community by providing them with strategic partnerships and opportunities.

I’m sorry you gained the impression that Adobe customer engagements had anything to do with making money, or trying to steal customers, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.