July 11, 2024
Washington DC
Maybe you write scripts for the Adobe Creative Cloud
Maybe you build web sites
Maybe you provide I.T. support to graphics designers
Maybe you automate catalog building
Maybe you’re just beginning and don’t know where to start
…
You need to attend this year’s Creative Developers Summit in Washington DC, and below is why.
If you work with someone who fits the above profile: help them out and let them know to attend!
How to Register
Contact me for a special discount code. The use of this code will give you a 50% discount on the normal CreativeProWeek rates, and will enrol you for the Creative Developers Summit. You can reach me at email ‘kris at rorohiko.com’. Introduce yourself and tell me you need the discount code.
Then head to
https://creativeproweek.com/dc-2024/register/
and enrol for a one- or two-day ticket, using the discount code (important!).
Why You Need to Attend
So, here’s why you need to attend the Creative Developers Summit:
- In order to get Adobe to take notice of us third party developers, we need to band together, independently from Adobe itself. We need the numbers!
Since 2017, Adobe has started to take us seriously, and Adobe is now actively supporting and sponsoring the Creative Developers Summit. - Nothing beats face-to-face. The attendees of the Creative Developers Summits are the ‘sharing type’. We help each other out. There is a lot of trust and friendship.
- You get to meet end-users. Oftentimes, I.T. and and software development remain removed from the end-users. Here is your chance to meet end-users face to face in a friendly, relaxed environment.
- The conference is top-notch! As a loose bunch of developers, we don’t have the time nor the skills to organize an event like this.
We’re all busy building stuff, running our companies, consulting, making ends meet,…
The logistics of setting up a Creative Developers Summit are quite daunting.
Being able to ‘tag along’ with CreativeProWeek allows us to not have to worry about any of the logistics.
Over the years, David has brought together an amazing team to manage CreativeProWeek, and the conferences they organize are top-notch.
Many good ideas for new third-party tools came after rubbing shoulders with end-users.
As a solver of technical problems, you should always listen out for people uttering the phrase ‘wouldn’t it be great if you could…’. That happens a lot at CreativeProWeek.
Note: the summit is also open to all attendees of CreativeProWeek.
There are quite a few closet scripters in there, and the more the merrier!
Slack
We need help organizing the summit! If you have ideas for sessions you’d like to see, or for some initiative, please come forward and let us know!
Since the 2017 CreativeProWeek we have started an invite-only Slack group.
It is pretty much the ‘who is who’ of the Creative Developers in our technical area.
The group is open and helpful and has some correlation to the attendee list of the Creative Developers Summit.
If you are a developer, scripter, IT support person,… and you are working with graphics designers or in automating printing and publishing workflows, you need to become a member.
Send me an email (krisⓐrorohiko.com), introducing yourself, and I can send you an invite.
Full Circle – How it All Started
Once upon a time, around 2010, Adobe Inc. had a thriving support program for third party developers. SDK documentation was plentiful.
Over the course of the next few years, this gradually disappeared, and for a while, things looked fairly bleak for third party developers.
Luckily, since about 2017, things came full circle. In the recent years, there is a renewed impetus from Adobe to support third party developers.
Between 2010 and 2017, a slightly unruly bunch of third party developers and conference organizers took the baton and helped keep the third party developer community alive.
Up to about 2010, Adobe had a dedicated ‘developer evangelist’, Mark Niemann-Ross (also known as MNR).
In those early days, MNR ran a yearly Adobe CSBU Developer Summit in Seattle. Third-party developers flocked there and were able to interact with colleagues and with the Adobe developer teams.
You got to rub shoulders with Ole Kvern, Douglas Waterfall, Michael Daumling, Jonathan Brown, Bernd Paradies… the list went on and on.
The very last Adobe CSBU Developer Summit happened in 2010, in the week before the very first PePcon conference (now called CreativeProWeek), both at the same Adobe premises in Seattle.
After the CSBU Summit, many third party developers stuck around for another few days, and stayed for PePcon 2010, where they mingled with graphic designers, ebook creators…
And that’s where it all started.
Note: CreativeProWeek remains unrelated to the original Adobe CSBU Developer Summit where it all started.
The premises used, and the network of people involved were the only common factor between that first PePcon conference and the Adobe CSBU Developer Summit.
It’s all about people and networks!
Taking The Baton
After that final Adobe CSBU Developer Summit, Adobe support for third-party developers started to wane, and third-party developers became gradually more and more insulated.
However, some embers were still glowing. Many developers had developed close friendships during those early Adobe CSBU days, and the friendships kept going.
We kept in touch. Helped each other out. Passed on business opportunities. Provided unofficial developer support.
An unofficial collective of third party developers from all over the globe took the baton from Adobe after the CSBU Developer Summit vanished.
Many of us run software companies large and small.
We continued to visit the PePcon/CreativeProWeek conferences, where we could meet up with our colleagues.
Some of us would sponsor the conference, and sit at tables to demo our ‘wares to the attendees of the conference.
As a result, PePcon/CreativeProWeek became something of an unofficial yearly pilgrimage for creative developers, to hang out and meet up.
A key figure in this story is David Blatner, who organizes PePcon/CreativeProWeek together with Anne-Marie Concepción. He has a large network of people and many connections. David has often managed to get members of the Adobe technical and developer teams to agree to take time out and come to PePcon/CreativeProWeek.
Over time, a symbiotic relationship emerged: because the conference was happening anyway, a group of technical geeks started brainstorming with David, and we started a cooperative relationship on a handshake.
It’s Not A Charity
On the one hand there is a commercial venture called CreativeProWeek. On the other hand, there is a loose swarm of software/I.T. geeks looking for a time and place to meet.
As technical geeks, we simply ‘tag along’ with CreativeProWeek, and manage to convene in a large room equipped with the necessary facilities. There we can run some a day-long session to discuss whatever we want.
As a group, we don’t remunerate David for helping us organize the developer summit.
But there are real costs involved: there is food, premises, audio-visuals,…
Hence, there is a fee for anyone who wants to attend the Creative Developers Summit.
One underpinning principle is that David at should at the very least break even in hosting the Creative Developers Summit; he’s not running CreativeProWeek as a charity event.
So, go and register! What are you waiting for?