Dinner at Adobe Headquarters

Last night were invited to an "executive" dinner at Adobe headquarters in San Jose. Adobe recently acquired Scene 7 a company that has specializes in rich media content for the web, email & print. Specifically we were interested in the work they had done in the custom product configuration and ecatalog space.

As we pulled up to Adobe we noticed the building was really impressive, however we couldn’t both help feeling a little unnerved by being buzzed by a airplane landing at San Jose airport. It seems their headquarters are right in the flight path! After parking in the building we entered the lobby and passed a guy who looked like one of the Doobie brothers, I mentioned to Chris he was probably the lead Photoshop programmer, and then we made our way to their reception area. I was really impressed by their facility branding. They have strategically placed big plasma and LCD touch screen to let you experience their brand and showcase their work.

After getting our badges we went to the patio for drinks, and then entered the Adobe Café to use one of the 4 laptops they supplied to experience the Scene 7 product. The first site we looked allowed us to customize the theme of a room, including paint on the walls right down to the rug on the floor. Scene 7’s tool is built on Flash so one of the things you notice how quickly the interface updates itself with no reload of the interface, other than the element you select. We also checked out some of the sites they had done for Nike and Behr Paint which were really impressive.

At dinner we sat right across the table from the former CEO of Scene 7 now Vice President of Creative Solution Services Doug Mack. As well one of their customers National Pen, who were one of their top ten customers and a huge advocate for their product. It was amazing to hear about all the level of customization this product offers, including the costs it saved National Pen in their marketing and order customization and fulfillment process.

Unfortunately we only managed to see what they had done on the display side, so I handed my card to Doug Mack and he promised to have one of team members now all Adobe employees call me. We are excited to learn more about this product and see how it will fit our clients at Hanson Dodge Creative.