Once again, It is the time of the year when designers, developers and business folks who are interested in great digital experiences journey to the annual Adobe MAX conference to share ideas, learn and partake in the always over-the-top festivities put on by our friends at Adobe.

This year’s conference kicks off this Sunday in Los Angeles – The best information on the conference itself can be found on the Adobe MAX Web site.

This year, Roundarch will be sending a small army of designers and developers to the conference to participate in sessions, answer questions at our booth, and participate in discussions with our partners at Adobe as well as our clients around the next-generation solutions we are working on related to the myriad of Adobe technologies.

For this year’s event, Roundarch has partnered with Tesla Motors, one of our most interesting new clients who is clearly not afraid to push the envelope in terms of customer experience, design and technology. It is an exciting time for the team at Tesla, and there has been a lot of buzz around their latest announcement that, in addition to the planned release of the Tesla Model S sedan, they will also bring a family of other vehicles to market in the next several years.

Needless to say, I was thrilled when Adobe invited our team to MAX to present on the design and the technology behind the Tesla vehicles, specifically the prototyping process and the ongoing effort to develop the truly innovative infotainment system that will be the cornerstone of user experience in the future vehicles.

It isn’t as simple as designing an online application using Adobe’s technologies and tools. In fact, the entire process of starting from scratch and designing a full system from the ground up is one monumental design challenge.

We thought it might be interesting to share what we’ve learned, and where Tesla is headed with the attendees at Adobe MAX, and have two different sessions planned at the conference:

Reinventing the Driving Experience
Join Franz von Holzhausen and members of the Roundarch team for an interactive discussion about the many challenges related to automobile design, from form factor and industrial design to onscreen user experiences. The team will discuss process and share what it took to produce the Tesla Model S show car.

• Time: Tuesday, Oct. 6 – 1:30 p.m.
• Location: Room: 406A

Behind the Technology of the Tesla Model S
Join Roundarch’s Adam Flater and Dave Meeker, along with Brian Finn and Evan Small from Tesla Motors, for a lively discussion on the process of developing the technology that powers the user experience (software and hardware) in the Tesla Model S infotainment system. They will discuss the challenges of creating a web-enabled vehicle, and how Adobe technologies have made it possible to bring concept to reality in the Tesla Model S prototype.

• Time: Tuesday, Oct. 3:00 p.m.
• Location: Room: 406A

We hope to make the most of the conference, and have structured these sessions to be focused on crowd participation. Neither the team at Tesla or our Roundarch folks find much use in formality for conference talks, so we hope to present some interesting “behind the scenes” information related to the design and technology of the prototyping process and have a healthy group discussion with those in attendance. Our goal is to have the audience members ask questions and allow the team to provide answers. It should be very interesting, and will provide a pretty deep look into the world of Tesla Motors.

If you will be in attendance at the conference, I encourage you to attend these sessions and also stop by our booth on the main conference floor (Booth 435). It shouldn’t be hard to find… Just look for the Tesla Roadster parked out front!

See you at Adobe MAX!

These are certainly interesting times. And if you make a living driving innovative web projects like Roundarch, then things just got a whole lot tougher. In the past week, three of my most senior clients cited the Sequoia presentation as an indication of their bearish outlook for the future. Everyone seems to be preparing for the nuclear winter which in many companies will include spending and hiring freezes, layoffs, and a tendency to play it safe rather than make bold strategic moves. At Roundarch, we have believed for quite some time in the transformational nature of rich internet applications, and our clients who have deployed them across the enterprise have achieved outsized gains vis a vis their competitors. Is it still possible to create competitive differentiation using rich internet applications in these difficult times? We think so. Two quick facts: the iPod was launched shortly after 9/11 and Fortune Magazine was launched in 1932. We believe that turbulent economic times are the perfect time to launch transformational technologies. Several of our clients are using this time to build rich applications that should revolutionize their marketplaces. But even if you can’t convince your management to make bold moves, there are many ways to keep innovating using the rich internet as a tool of differentiation. Uris and I are looking forward to discussing how AVIS, A&E, Motorola and others are doing just that in our talk on Tuesday (Nov. 18, 9:00 am – 10:00 am). For example, AVIS and Roundarch have created transactional banner ads (in Adobe Flex) that allow AVIS customers to complete a full reservation without even visiting AVIS.com. This innovation completely changes the traditional strategy of pushing everyone to your URL. They also have a full page version that they are deploying on affiliate sites. In both cases, AVIS is using rich technologies to completely challenge the status quo and doing it without breaking the bank.

The title of the talk is “Building Successful RIAs for the Enterprise in a Climate of Financial Uncertainty.” It is a mouthful. Perhaps a better title should have been “Thrive vs. Survive” which is core to our message. We strongly believe that those companies that use this economic downturn to push even more innovation will take significant share from those who just try to survive.

AdobeMAX