Today Macromedia kicks off a week-long celebration called Macromedia Community Week. Throughout the week, we'll be offering Macrochats, User Group Meetings, and interaction with the Macromedia Customer Support Team.

Macrochats

Community Week is peppered with free, hour-long, in-depth technical presentations called Macrochats. All of these presentations are being delivered via Macromedia Breeze Live by Macromedia product managers, engineers, and product evangelists as well as Macromedia Certified Instructors and Team Macromedia members. This is a great opportunity to chat directly with the Macromedia product managers who help determine the feature sets for the products you use everyday.

There will be several product-focused Macrochats, including two on Macromedia Flex and two on the recently acquired eHelp products (RoboHelp and RoboDemo). Plus, Dreamweaver evangelist Greg Rewis will present "CSS for Dreamweaver." If you have a stockpile of design-related questions, you should attend "Designing with Dreamweaver," a session designed for customers who would like to communicate directly with the Dreamweaver product team. The product team will be answering questions about layout for tables, layers, and Fireworks integration.

If you're curious about the new DVD features in Director, Tom Higgins will be presenting "Director MX 2004 New Features, Putting It All Together," in which he will discuss and demonstrate the new Director MX 2004 features that support DVD video control and playback. Tom's presentation will show customers how they can quickly incorporate the new DVD features into Director projects.

Essentially, the Community Week Macrochats are designed to further educate Macromedia customers on a myriad of products. All of the sessions are free, but to attend, you must pre-register on the Community Week website.

User Group Meetings

A crucial element for a successful customer community is networking. While the Macrochats provide an opportunity for online networking, Macromedia has teamed up with our User Group Community to host the second Worldwide User Group Meeting on May 19, 2004. User Groups all over the world are participating in this meeting. So, while there may be 250 customers together at a User Group in San Francisco , another 100 may be participating in Australia , another 100 in Germany , and another 100 in Turkey (I think you get the point. At the end of the Worldwide User Group meeting, over 8,000 customers will have come together face to face using Macromedia technology.

For one night, leave your computer at home and head out to your local User Group. Macromedia is offering User Groups a special opportunity to step inside the Macromedia development labs and marvel at the future technology that the Macromedia product and engineering teams have been creating based on research and customer feedback. Be one of the first to see some of the new features that may (or may not) make it into future product releases. Macromedia is broadcasting this presentation live from our San Francisco office to User Groups worldwide. To find a local User Group near you, visit the Community Week page.

Macromedia Community Support Team

In addition to participating in special week-long customer celebrations like Community Week, the Macromedia Community Support Team reaches out daily to our customer community in many ways. A portion of this team is made of folks we call Community Managers. The role of the Community Managers is to disseminate loads of information to the community and to provide the voice of the Community back to the Macromedia executive and product management teams. All of the Macromedia Community Managers have blogs. Let me introduce them:

• Scott Fegette: http://www.markme.com/sfegette/
• Christian Cantrell: http://www.markme.com/cantrell/
• John Dowdell: http://www.markme.com/jd/

Two vital facets of the Community Support Team include Macromedia User Groups and Team Macromedia members. The Macromedia User Group program currently recognizes and works with more than 300 worldwide User Groups (MMUGs). The MMUGs meet monthly to provide a forum of support and technology to Macromedia customers of all levels and professions. MMUGs represent the core of the Macromedia customer community, and they always have fun activities teamed with technical information. A full list of Macromedia User Groups worldwide can be found on the User Groups site.

Most Macromedia customers have met at least one Team Macromedia member at an industry conference or user group, as they are frequently chosen to demonstrate Macromedia products. Or, you may have read a technical book they authored on Macromedia products. Most likely, however, you have interacted with Team Macromedia members in an online community or read one of their blogs or forum posts. Who exactly are Team Macromedia members, you may ask? Team Macromedia members are not Macromedia employees; they are technically savvy customers who enjoy sharing their product expertise with the world-wide Macromedia community. You can find most Team Macromedia members in the Macromedia Online Forums where they answer thousands of questions each week. See all of the Macromedia forums (scroll down the page to see pictures of Team Macromedia members).

Team Macromedia members are located all over the world. Wherever there is a vibrant Macromedia customer community, you will find a Team Macromedia member as it is their mission to facilitate high caliber peer-to-peer communication, educating and improving the product skills and knowledge of Macromedia customers worldwide. Learn more about Team Macromedia.

Please take some time to enjoy at least one aspect of Community Week. In addition, Macromedia looks forward to seeing you at one of our next great experiences, Macromedia MAX 2004 in New Orleans, LA, on November 1, 2004.

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