I just got back from the Elysian Fields where Adobe kicked off it’s onAIR Bus tour for 2007. The sessions that I saw were all pretty good. There was a bit of disorganization and the typical tech issues. All in all they put on a good show.

If the onAIR tour is coming anywhere near you then I highly suggest attending. Even if the sessions are of no interest to you it’s always great to meet developers of the same ilk. Plus you’ll have the opportunity to go right to the source and have conversations with Adobe employees who can make a difference in what the products we use.

I listened in while a developer friend of mine from SmileBox got to ask very pointed questions about the AIR runtime. They would love to use AIR but they require functionality that isn’t going to be supported, at least for version 1.0. His conversation really helps Adobe see what users need and it helps him in making long term plans for their business.

If you think AIR might be something you could use then by all means show up, get someone like Ted Patrick, Mike Chambers, Kevin Hoyt, Daniel Dura, Ryan Stewart, etc, in a corner and ask all the questions you need. They won’t beat around the bus, I mean bush. :-) They’ll answer everything they can.

Speaking of answering questions

Kevin Lynch gave the keynote and one of the questions at the end was, “When is Apple going to support AIR.” His answer was, “You’ll have to ask Apple that question.”

Now this is just me reading into it but the tone that he used didn’t sound like someone who is frustrated with Apple. It was more like the tone someone uses when they know the answer. They want to tell you the answer. But they can’t disclose, yet. It sounded to me like AIR was on the table and it was just a matter of time.

We’ll just have to wait and see. I might even get one if I can write my own AIR apps to put on it.

By the way, I just want to point out that Apple releases the iPhone without support for Flash content and it causes the Earth to wobble a on it’s axis. But the Zune doesn’t support Flash content either, not even FLVs, and no one even notices. I’m not sure but I think that means something.

I got to meet John Dowdel. He saw my name tag and yelled, “polyGeek” and then gave me a high five. That was a real treat. We had lunch together with a few others and had a great conversation. He’s just like his blog: a guy who listens to the conversation around him and then has either a trenchant comment or insightful question.

For me the highlight of the day was the ignight session. Not because I spoke - about video.Maru - but because there were a number of other presentations that really got my attention:

Andre Charland has a really cool product RobotReplay.com. You sign up for an account, drop a line of Javascript in your page, and then you can watch how users move their mouse around on your page. It’s if you want to do usability testing on your actual users as they are using your website.  I’m going to try it out and then write more about it.

I didn’t get to talk to Brian Dorsey after his presentation but maybe we’ll have lunch sometime. His website is Noonhat.com. The idea is to match people up for lunch so that they can have great conversations. He is just in the beginning stages and it only works in Seattle, for now.

Buzz Bruggeman demoed his software ActiveWords. A very intriguing idea. I’m going to test it and write more about it later.

If you can get to one of the onAIR events then I highly recommend you do so. It’s an invaluable experience.