From: Mark Randall at Adobe
Back on May 5, 2002, I posted the first thread on this forum, entitled simply “Welcome.” My post tonight is the bookend to that inaugural thread because Adobe will soon have to shut down this forum. The light traffic here simply no longer warrants the cost of the server, which is external to Adobe. Some of us former Serious Magicians have been able to keep postponing the oft-discussed shutdown of these forums several times but decreasing traffic, increasing costs, and a tough economic environment have combined with the Adobe IT department's legitimate concerns about continuing to operate a non-standard legacy server outside Adobe's firewall security.
New data privacy laws as well as the Sarbannes Oxley act (believe it or not) increase the liability of running an insecure server substantially. Despite repeated investigations and Adobe's willingness to invest significant funds, there really is no way to port this legacy message forum into Adobe's IT environment where it could be supported on an ongoing basis alongside Adobe's existing user forums. So like all good things eventually must, this forum is coming to an end and this community will need to move over to the main Adobe user forums.
We hope you’ll see this as an opportunity to help build a new knowledge base at the Adobe forums:
OnLocation
Ultra
Visual Communicator.
Hosted on the same external legacy server is the old Serious Magic activation server which is also going away. Not to worry, though. Adobe is releasing a small software program that effectively bypasses web activation by allowing you to do an "over the phone" activation yourself. This is a very pro-user solution and one that all us former Serious Magicians pushed hard for. It puts activation completely in the user's control regardless of what Adobe does in the future. You'll now be able to manage your own installations onto your machines without having to call Adobe for additional activations. Of course, the existing license terms still stand but Adobe is trusting you to police your own usage of the software. I don’t have all the details on this, but the information will be posted to the product forums cited above as well as to the Adobe Knowledge Base shortly. Please be sure to spread word of the activation utility to all your friends from the old SM forums.
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Ok, now that the housekeeping is out of the way, I'd like to set aside my work hat for a moment if you'll indulge me one last time.
I remain so very proud of all that we accomplished at Serious Magic, particularly that we were able to earn the loyalty and enthusiasm of so many extraordinary users. These forums were undoubtedly the best evidence of the remarkable community that formed around our products.
I know that some of you have been less than thrilled with your experience after the acquisition. Even though it won't lessen the seriousness of those issues, I still want to let you know that I and other former Serious Magicians do feel badly if you've not felt as well-served as you were previously. That was certainly never our intention. As you all know, once a company is acquired the same people don't call the shots anymore. This is not to say that Adobe is a bad company or that Adobe's intentions were not for the best. By any measure Adobe is an outstanding software company, it's just that the scale of Serious Magic's business is small in the scope of the Adobe universe and there are many changing priorities competing for available resources.
You might ask, “Then why did you sell the company to Adobe?” Unfortunately, what I can say regarding that is necessarily limited but I imagine that some of you can fill in the blanks yourselves. Serious Magic was funded by a group of investors and I don't just mean venture capitalists, there were also regular folk who worked hard for every dollar they put at risk in an unproven new company headquartered in my spare bedroom. They believed in the magic when there was little rational reason to and with their savings made everything that happened possible. Our job was to reward that faith by generating a return on their investment. Startups are called "illiquid" investments because, even if it's Google, an investment can't be turned into money until the company either goes public or gets acquired. For a variety of reasons, after more than five years of growth it was time for Serious Magic's liquidity event. So the choice wasn't to sell or not sell but *which* sale to do (because, unlike startups today, we were fortunate enough then to have multiple suitors). Continuing on forever in what many remember as "the good old days" was never an option. Being acquired by Adobe was actually the best of the available acquisition opportunities; and not only for Serious Magic's shareholders but also our employees and customers. In fact, I can say with certainty that the outcome for our users, despite whatever shortcomings, has still been far better than the alternatives. For example, there were other suitors who would not have continued development or support of any of the products for any period of time while keeping only a small handful of the employees. While these facts don't change things for those who may view the present as worse than the past, I hope perhaps in some small way, understanding the context and real alternatives can help you feel a bit better about things going forward.
Signing off here for the last time is an emotional moment for me. Like so many others on the Serious Magic team, what I experienced wasn't just a company - it was a truly magical adventure. There's no doubt in my mind that the magic came from the creative spark and positive energy shared between us on the Serious Magic team and our remarkable user community. So I thought I’d close by sharing with you (as much as I'm able) what’s up with both the technology and the former Serious Magicians here at Adobe. Let’s start with the people. Adobe wisely kept nearly all of our brilliant engineering team. Most of the programmers (Tommy O., Joe H., Hank C., Peter B., and Matt T.) as well as Mark M. in QA are the OnLocation team. Three other developers, Benoit A., Alex C. and Sebastian M. are working on revolutionizing the world's most used software, the Flash Player. You've already enjoyed their contributions as Flash gained HDTV quality video last year and just in the last two weeks gained hardware acceleration and 3D capability with the release of Flash 10. So just remember every time you tune into YouTube, Hulu or just about any other video site in the world - there's a bit of that old magic there in every frame.
Stephan S., who was our legendary CTO, is on the Advanced Technology team (think Special Ops) where he is doing some remarkable things that sometimes dance on the edge of miraculous. From the Tech Support team, Karl S. moved into product evangelism where he travels the world (this week: Dubai!) demonstrating the power of creative tools and Ryan T. joined the OnLocation QA crew to make the best even better. Webmaster Kevin F. is on the cutting edge of web design for Adobe.com. Michelle G. is focusing her world class marketing talents on Production Studio. Adrian O., a utility infielder at Serious Magic, continues to tackle a diverse range of challenging projects, including advanced Flash productions. Kush A, the wizard behind much of Serious Magic's 3D imagery, is producing content for AdobeTV, including his own feature, "Ask the Adobe Ones". Karl M, too, can be seen on AdobeTV as his latest alter ego, Johnny Encore, and also as a demo monkey extraordinaire on Adobe’s main stage at the big trade shows. I'm continuing to craft future strategic directions as Chief Strategist for Adobe's Dynamic Media Organization.
And now, the technology. OnLocation, of course, is under active development. The first thing Adobe did was to rename the product from DV Rack so it would no longer be limited to just one format. They came up with the name that I would have given the product to start with - if only I'd thought of it. OnLocation CS4 is now available for both Mac and Windows, answering the single biggest public request we heard at Serious Magic. Porting such an advanced real-time application to the Mac required an enormous investment of time, energy and SM ingenuity. Many of you will recall us speculating on these forums several years ago that such a thing may not even be possible. Not only has it happened but the program also underwent a complete visual redesign at the same time. While many users enjoyed the "retro" look of the physical device interface, others were turned off by it's non-standard look and operation. Most importantly the rendered interface artwork couldn't scale dynamically to support today's ever-increasing display resolutions. This redesign was a major undertaking and is a showcase for the talents of Adobe's Experience Design team, a skill set a company the size of Serious Magic could never afford. Remarkably, the team accomplished all of this on the very aggressive CS4 schedule and even found time to add a new shot list with advanced metadata capabilities. None of this would have happened if another company had acquired Serious Magic.
Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to share with you what the future holds for Ultra and Visual Communicator. Adobe operates on a worldwide stage and competitors are sure to be reading this as well. But I can say that the technologies at the heart of those two applications are alive and well. In fact, Stephan has made tremendous progress pushing the performance and capabilities of Ultra’s keying engine to new heights. It would be hard to imagine Adobe acquiring one of the most innovative new chroma keying technologies invented in decades, investing in improving it and then never unleashing that magic...
Finally, I'd like to thank you, particularly those of you who were part of the adventure from early on. There are too many of you to name (but you know who you are) and too many fond memories to recount here but your presence and contributions made the adventure not only worthwhile but joyful.
Regards,
- Mark
Chief Magician
Serious Magic |
