If you’re attending the Adobe MAX conference in Las Vegas this week, make sure you attend the Day 1 keynote address by Adobe’s Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch. We have a whole bunch of surprises planned. You don’t want to miss this.

Tuesday morning at the Venetian conference center in Hall D at 8:30am. Don’t be late – the cool stuff starts right away.

This is big news. We just announced that Adobe has acquired software company Serious Magic, makers of DV Rack, Visual Communicator, Vlog It, Ultra, and other cool products and technologies.

These are great products, and even more exciting to me, there are really talented engineers behind them. Oh, and it’s not just about video. These guys know graphics really, really well.

Very exciting…

Read the press release.

I just found this site via a banner ad. I’ve always been impressed by the quality of the interactive work commissioned by the US Air Force. The US Navy also does a good job on interactive, but I can’t rate them as highly until they improve the site for the Blue Angels. If you take a look at my Flickr account, you’ll see that I’m a big fan of the Blue Angels and I would love to see the Navy put together a site that actually gets potential recruits excited about flying for the Navy (something I came very close to doing myself).

Since military recruiting is a form of extreme marketing, it’s interesting to examine what marketing tactics could make the site more effective. What could the Navy do to improve the effectiveness of one of (if not *the*) most expensive recruiting programs they have, the Blue Angels? In this marketer’s opinion:
1) Add an interactive experience that walks visitors through the performance (see Red Bull Copilot for inspiration). This gets the visitor (potential recruit, or “prospect”) more engaged with the subject, and invested at an emotional level. The more a prospect understands about a product, and the more eager they are to seek out more information, the more likely they are to buy/sign-up.
2) Allow visitors to listen to comm traffic (radio communications between the pilots) and explain what it means. The benefits of this are the same as number 1.
3) Feature interviews with pilots and crew talking about what it’s like to be a Blue Angel. This helps make the prospect of becoming a Navy flyer more real for the potential recruit. Show real people that look and sound just like them, talking about how they were able to realize their dreams.
4) Provide more high-res images. I’m happy to donate mine.
5) Provide downloadable videos in iPod and PSP format. This lets the potential recruit take the experience with them and share it with others. I have no idea if this is the case, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the viral influence of friends and family were one of the biggest contributors to people deciding to join the military. Why would the military be any different than consumer marketing?
6) Sell souvenirs and donate the profits to charity. As Joseph Pine points out in The Experience Economy, providing souvenirs makes the experience more personal. Allowing those souvenirs to be personalized is even more effective. How many military pilots do you think had toy models, posters, pictures, etc when they were growing up?
7) Add a community forum that allows visitors to ask questions about the Blue Angels and Naval aviation.
8) Connect to fans. Allow people to contribute their own content. Add links to Flickr groups full of Blue Angels photos taken by fans like me. Allow people to connect with each other and share their tips on the best places to stand during the show.

In any case, check out the new Air Force site and enjoy the collection of videos.

http://www.dosomethingamazing.com