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A bit of a follow up on a question asked last week about if Adobe would be at
the STC conference.
Well, they were - but they weren't.
Now I'm not here to bash adobe (Frame is my favorite software of all time). I
just thought I would share my experience with them at the conference.
The booth was the worst booth (by far) at the conference. No spectaculars, no
"goodies", just a computer and a few press releases. That's fine, except it
really stood out as being odd to have such a poor exhibit (especially for a
company that's as big a player in our industry as Adobe).
The exhibitor (while being very cute) knew little about her own product. Turns
out she's in Marketing. I wanted some info on Frame-XML. Adobe obviously taught
her a few "buzz-words" like well-formed, validation, DTD, etc. However, when I
asked to see the source code for the XSL style sheet, her wheels shot off. I had
to get on the computer and start using it myself (and it was nice of her to let
me do it). I don't fault her, I fault Adobe. Don't send a Marketer by herself.
At least send along a Sales Engineer. I went to ArborText's booth and when the
sales rep couldn't answer my question, he introduced me to someone at the booth
who could. This woman knew more about XML than anyone I've ever met. She was
telling me how someone at her company wrote the DOM spec for XML, etc.
The worst part is that on Monday (I wanted to show my boss Frame 6.0) I went to
the Adobe exhibit, the girl was gone. The setup (if you want to call it that)
was still there, although the computer was turned off. I asked someone in the
booth next to her if he had seen her and he hadn't.
So all in all, I was *very* disappointed in their "presence" at the conference.
It's a good thing that I am already a big fan of Frame, because I don't see how
they picked up any new customers at the conference.
To Sarah O'Keefe, I saw your note on the bulletin board and I'm sorry I couldn't
hook up with other Framers that evening. However, I'm glad to see my fellow FUN
members were able to get together and discuss the greatness of FrameMaker.
-jp
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