Adobe really knows how to party!

Adobe's bosses transported the crowd from Moscone West over to the de Young Memorial Museum at Golden Gate Park for the company’s largest MAX event party to date. When San Francisco's de Young Museum reopened in 2005, it was hailed as an architectural triumph. Some of the Adobe party goers walked next door to the California Academy of Sciences and saw their aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum, and a 4-story rainforest all under one roof.

As we wandered around both facilities there were at least seven different styles of food. We found many open bars, along with amazing in-your-face, San Francisco-style street artists. There were live musical groups playing jazz and contemporary. We stopped and listened to a traditional Chinese-string-instrument musician teamed up with a pair of keyboard players.

The arcade and video games magically transported themselves from MAX's Moscone West Second floor lobby to the de Young Museum. Those poor space aliens never had a chance against Adobe's partying crowd and those air guitarist numbers were clear off the charts.


As we left our first food stop, we were greeted by two space alien looking street artists with an almost non-stop comedy patter operating a video venue. The results of their video wizardry was shown in the next room on a giant inflated vinyl head which had your face projected onto it from the inside. The big nose was a crowd pleaser. The space alien's high tech artistry created some great laughs for partiers walking between food courts and the arcade games.

 

We walked right into a pair of cartoonists who were drawing caricature likenesses of the brave ones who stood in the long lines for their turn. One of the caricature creators reminded us of Ming the Merciless from the 1930's Flash Gordon Saturday afternoon matinées.  



 

Caricature creator, Doug Shannon, should be given an Honorary Professorship for his Adobe Flash artistry. Shannon's Flash palette allowed him to create caricature art likenesses directly on his computer screen. Also on his high tech easel was a color photo printer for our caricature drawings. One of the brave Adobe party goers agreed to show how his caricature drawing matched the real deal.

Of course, this intrepid reporter volunteered to scare everybody and have a caricature rendering done.

 

We strolled through the de Young Museum collections which have over 82,000 images for your online viewing. Everyone really should check them out. One of the more interesting collections was of Native California Indian basketry. We also saw, at no-charge, an exhibit of Yves Saint Laurent clothes from the early 1960's on. It is the only US venue for this exhibit, which runs through April, 2009.

Have you ever seen a group of women on roller skates electrically lighted in multiple flashing colors? They had an amazing effect on the Adobe party goers, especially those who had drunk a bit too much before seeing them for the first time.

The women wore an outer garment with hundreds of multicolored LCD lights and a battery back pack to power the system. They created quite an illusion with their light sabers, head gear, and constant color changes in the low lighting of the museum's multiple floors. They were literally magical as they glided quietly by. As we were leaving, we spotted a pair of them catching a ride on a security guard's cart. One of them said they were going into their tech support room to exchange their battery packs for another flashing lights run past the crowd.

During the week, we accompanied another Examiner staffer to the Intel Core i7 introduction. This article will give you a look at Intel's version of big time entertainment.

The bosses at Adobe put on quite a party. We hope next year's MAX 2009 in Los Angeles, will be as much fun. X