Review of 2007
add your comment posted on 1 January 2008
Well 2007 has been an interesting year both professionally and personally so without further distraction here are my highlights of 2007 in no particular order:
Adobe Max Europe
Having never attended a proper web development conference before things changed during 2007. Thanks to Adobe and Andrew Shorten I won a ticket to Barcelona and the first Adobe Max Europe event. I must say that I had the best time, learnt lots of good valuable information and met some really cool people. It was well organised with three very full days of presentations and after-event meet ups. The only thing that let it down was the catering, quite poor and for someone who does not eat fish I was somewhat forced to seek alternative cuisine elsewhere.
The keynote theatre was a huge impressive widescreen affair with great audio and presentations to match. Peter Elst and Grant Skinner’s ActionScript 3 presentations stood out as well as some of the sneak peaks sessions from the likes of Effective UI and Adobe Consulting. Due to the great british postal strike, I never received my Moo cards before Max which as not the best for networking without any cards to give out.
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Flash on the beach
So off to the second conference of the year down in sunny Brighton, UK. I love visiting Brighton and combined with some cool Flash presentations what could be better? This time it was a work paid for conference so there were a few of us that headed down including Mark, Jon and Jodie.
While not as polished as Max and the focus seemed to be more on the creating patterns and playing with Flash rather than any RIAs it was still interesting. Ted Patrick’s presentation on Flex provided some useful tips while Hos Gifford (ThirdEyeDesign), Jared Tarbell and Joshua Davies provided some inspirational relief.
Travel to Australia
2007 saw our second trip to Australia. We visited Fremantle near Perth then drove down through the wine regions of Margaret River sampling some of the local goodies on offer and seeing the most fantastic countryside there is to see. From there we flew to Melbourne which just blew me away, then we drove the Great Ocean Road past the twelve apostles. As we were in winter the roads were empty but the weather rather inclement, having covered rain, hail, sunshine, galeforce winds in just a few days it was an experience!
From Melbourne we flew across to Sydney and spent some quality time learning to surf at Manley beach. Surfing has to be one of the best thing you can do in the sea, Rachel loved it despite being hit in the mouth with a surf board. Finally spending a few days in the city of Sydney and climbing the harbor bridge at night. As a second visit to Sydney we were less impressed this time around and if I were to move here it would definitely be to Melbourne. Melbourne seems more relaxed and friendly, but to be honest I would not say no to moving to either, anyone got any jobs over there?
I have over 1000 pictures in RAW format that i’m ashamed to say I’m still processing, so soon there will be some photos on my Flickr stream.
iPod Touch
The iPhone seems nice but without 3G and GPS it seems very expensive compared to my current phone on the Three network. That said I’m like a magpie when it comes to nice shiny things from Apple and my 6 month old 80gb iPod was soon placed on ebay to be replaced with a lovely 16gb iTouch.
I can truly say that this device is fantastic, so much more that just an MP3 or MPEG 4 player. After jailbreaking it I now have my email, weather and complete (yes minus the Flash player) web browser in my pocket. No need to open the laptop to quickly check your mail or find a route on Google maps, a quick tap on the iTouch is all that is needed. Yes it has some short comings but when compared to everything else this is a joy to use and look at.
So until the iPhone gets GPS and 3G my iPod touch is my tool of choice, Steve just one request, can we have bluetooth on the iPod please?
Forward into 2008
Gadgets – Well we have the new Apple notebook and 3G iPhone to look forward to and I will be hopefully upgrading my Macbook Pro to the new 45nm Penryn powered Macbook pro when they get released in the first quarter of this year. Oh and a Playstation 3 might make an appearance by the time the words ‘Gran Turismo’ and PS3 are muttered in teh same sentence.
Travel – Rachel and I have yet to decide what our travel plans will be this year, I would like to visit San Francisco and possibly Canada, we will have to spend some time investigating.
Career – well I’m always looking for that fantastic opportunity and hopefully 2008 will be the year.
Happy New Year all !
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