So I’m on the red-eye flight back to Atlanta now, and I’m telling myself to write something, before I go into zombie mode and watch Castlevania or the Mandalorian on my iPad, because once I start, I’ll probably until we touch down.
So Adobe MAX is now in the past, and I can say that it was a pretty good trip, overall. Adobe really put on a flashy and fairly informative conference, and from what I could hear from those who have been to prior years, it was run smoother and had fixed a lot of issues.
Traveling with some work colleagues was enjoyable and I feel like we’ve gotten a little bit of opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better. The hotel was nice, and I was the tryhard who brought some gym gear and managed to get in two maintenance workouts while out there.
Best of all, it was all covered by work, so all of my food and the airport transport are expensed, and they naturally picked up the tab on the show admission and the hotel.
Despite being there for some work purposes, I still made a point of carving out some me-time, in the form of wandering around the city and eating some abominations of Mexican food that the internet has been teasing me of their existence for the last year. Of course, they fell into the parameters of my daily food per diem amount, which only sweetened the pot that I could expense things that I would’ve gladly paid for out of pocket to begin with.
First, I tracked down the quesarito-burrito that I first saw on some rando-Instagram reel that was fed to me for some reason despite being all the fuck away in DTLA. The best part was going in there and explaining that I wanted something that wasn’t on the menu and that it was something I saw on the internet; and I had to show them their own reel to jog their memory, but it was good enough for them to get me the burrito I had been covering for months.
And it was basically everything I hoped it would be, a California-style burrito, but wrapped in a quesarito instead of an ordinary tortilla. I could’ve finished it, but in doing so, I could’ve really derailed a large part of my trip, plus I was getting the meat sweats something fierce from just how rich it was, or maybe it was the Reaper sauce that added to it or maybe both, so I tapped when I was like 75% finished.
Next, came the trash can nachos that I had heard about, and became enamored with. Ordinarily, I’d have tried to go there for dinner, but upon learning that being in DTLA, they operated at downtown hours, so I kind of had to pivot and hit them up for lunch instead.
They were located in what google called the fashion district, but seemed like a giant shopping district for quinceñeras or something. Regardless, it took a little bit of walking around but I found the place in this quirky small food court loaded with nothing but Mexican and Asian foods. Again, I had to ask for the trash can nachos as they’re not on the menu, and once again I felt like some secret agent or something asking for some illicit.
Ten minutes later, it was brought out to me in what looked like a coffee can. Just like I had seen on the internet, the can was pulled up, and pouring out onto the plate was a mountain of chips, guacamole, beans, jalapeños, sauces, more chips, more cheese, and carne asada. Naturally, it was as good as it looked, and much like with the quesarito-burrito, I opted to throw in the towel instead of forcing myself to finish it.
Between the two internet-found foods, I’m hard pressed to decide on what was better. The quesarito-burrito is a true novelty item, but the nachos had some insane presentation value. Frankly, nachos really should only be made and served trashcan style, and if I had to really pick one of the two, I think I’m going with the nachos.
But I suppose I should say something about the conference seeing as how it was what brought me out to the left coast in the first place; again, it was a fun show in the sense of production value, and shine and presentation that went into it.
However, I’d begun calling the event AIdobe MAX because pretty much the whole entire event revolves around the sheer advancement of AI, and then numerous incredible things that have been unlocked or are in the pipeline for all of their software now and in the future. I’m serious, just about every workshop I went to that was claimed to be about a specific program or app, quickly devolved into these giant AI love-fests, and although I don’t disagree that there’s some amazing capabilities that possible because of the advancements in AI, it’s happening very quickly and I fear that there’s a high possibility of things going tits up on account of it, sooner rather than later.
The programming I enjoyed the most were all from the “celebrity” speakers who did more informative TED-style talks rather than talk about software, because as long as the topic steered away from software, there was any chance of it turning into something about AI.
Frankly, I’m very curious to what the hell Adobe talked about in previous years, because AI had really only been blowing up in the last year or two. I can’t imagine Adobe people or attendees were losing their shit over batch processing, CR2 support, the magnetic lasso tool or adjustment layers.
Anyway, AI-spooging aside, it was still an enjoyable event, and it was fun being around hundreds and thousands of other creative types who have converged from all over the place. It was nice to be around people who were as excited or loved InDesign as much as I did, and there’s a level of comfort knowing you’re around people who might understand design-centric references or technical jargon without any explanation needed.
An interesting observation I realized was that in all the years of having attended anime, comic book or any other geeky convention, the general vibe didn’t feel different when it came to AIdobe MAX. The event had a base itinerary, but there were lots of industry events, networking mixers and opportunities for after parties all over the place. Being an employee of a big company, my colleagues and I were invited to several, but personally, I had very little interest in pretending like I was interested in listening to any sales pitches, even if there were free food and booze. So I didn’t. It was then in which I left the conference premises outright to go hunt down my own dinner, which I look forward to expensing and getting reimbursed for.
One of the only things that I didn’t like was really the fault of nobody; I was sick the entire time in the form a cold, that kept me masked up the entire fucking time, and caused me to have an obnoxious and unpleasant cough at times, and I felt that it was an annoying handicap on my entire experience at inhibiting from conversing more with my colleagues as well as bantering and networking more with other attendees.
Overall, it’s quite easy to say that the trip was a good one. Barring having the nagging cold the entire time, I got to experience a fancy work trip, attend a conference very relevant to my career, hear some inspirational things, satiate my own need for travel and exploration, and of course, eat like a pig.
If AIdobe MAX is proposed to me again in the future, I definitely wouldn’t refuse it, and I hope the opportunity comes again next year, and I can hopefully go while not sick, and really get the experience of interacting with other human beings.
