DevLearn was followed by the 1 1/2 day Adobe Learning Summit. Adobe’s Ellen Wagner, who coordinated the event, made it clear that Adobe intended to be a major player in eLearning.
A panel of Adobe executives described their commitment to eLearning, something I never heard from Macromedia.
That evening hundreds of us met up at Adobe’s headquarters to taste wine, devour snacks, network, and check out the latest Adobe products. Those are Adobe’s patents on the right below. These guys have so many patents that I fear Acrobat opens more slowly because you have to see the patents scroll by.
Here’s the product manager for Acrobat, trying to use 2D to explain 3D. Can’t win ‘em all.
The concluding event was "Stump the Experts." Members of the audience asked a panel questions about Adobe’s products and future intentions.
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As a long-time Authorware developer (which I’ve fairly much given away by now), now sunset, I remain sceptical of anything that Adobe says about its commitment to elearning. While Ellen may be supportive, I’m not sure the rest of the organisation is following her. Yes they have created an update to the Authorware Web Player, but this was only after intense lobbying by big airline clients who are resisting the forced and costly migration to Flash. Flash is only a useful tool for the creation of learning resources by highly skilled ICT practitioners. Certainly not instructional designers.
I appreciate Ron’s concern – actually am grateful for his concern, because he’s absolutely right, this can’t rest only on my shoulders!! This really is about all of us. Adobe is a software company that serves a huge range of customers. And as we all know, Adobe’s elearning DNA comes from our Macromedia roots. Even since Macromedia became a part of Adobe Systems I have been focused on making sure that the elearning communities have representation. While we have lots of work to do, I am happy (and relieved!!) to say that we are getting there. Frankly, as my execs have been hearing more voices than mine (in fairness, they do get a bit weary of my incessant beating of the elearning drum) – they have come to understand just how big and multivariate this community really is. From developers – and designers – to enterprise learning professionals – even we mere mortals who simply have to do a better job producing learning, education and training assets in spite of the fact that we can’t make the ball bounce in Flash. I do thank the community for that.