Adobe Summit Day 2: Where it's at

After all, this is Vegas, and did you read the Day 1 blog? Did you SEE what we were up to last night? Suffice it to say, we’re a little slow to get moving this morning although not everyone was a train wreck. Spotted: DD marketing team members at the gym at 6:30 a.m. werkin’ off that back that baby got.

We’re hustling over to this morning’s General Session to see Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA and Shantanu Narayen start off the day with a great conversation on Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. Together they explored a virtual world that can be shaped by experience makers in real-time, interacted with by customers, then relevant interaction + DX data captured in real-time for analytics. Said Huang, “VR is our way of communicating with the future of AI. You create experiences with tools you have to allow people to create these numerous realities." Did you know? An NVIDIA monthly survey found that 70% of GenZ embraces the future of AI. And while not ALL of us are Gen Z over here (ahem) we are fully on board with AI because it’s cool even if you’re no spring chicken. (Realizing now that was such a grandma thing to say.)

There was also a curious segment in which nipple rings were discussed, Jensen showed his NVIDIA logo tattoo, and the audience roared approval when asked if Shantanu should get a tattoo, to which he looked rightly alarmed. But it’s all good, we love ShanJen for being besties – Jensen even skipped his own conference to be here. #squadgoals
 

Cue ENTIRE audience fanboying and fangirling over the next guest to take the stage, Houston Texans JJ Watt, who for some reason thought that Jensen Huang was going to take off his shirt, so then asked if he had to, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 audience members pre-emptively fainted. He did not, much to the great relief of sports reporter Colin Resch, and the great disappointment of the aforementioned audience members.

But JJ is more than just a giant well-muscled human with suspiciously low body fat. He is also an incredibly selfless, giving, and altruistic human who uses his fame and social media platforms to drive awareness of those in need and to give back to those who need it most. He used his tremendous social media following to try to raise $200,000 to give to victims of Hurricane Harvey. In just 19 days he raised $37,000,000. You read that right – THIRTY. SEVEN. MILLION. DOLLARS—far surpassing his goal. JJ had wise words for us on goal setting - take the goal and work it back to what you have to do TODAY. The more we can shine the light on positivity and spread the word about doing good, the more other people will start doing good, as well. This was such an inspiring talk and we are spending the day trying to reconcile our feelings of being inspired to do better with our feelings of guilt for cutting the coffee line this morning because we thought caffeine was an emergency situation. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.
 

Heck yeah, we should because this is quite the spicy topic right now. Picture this: a keynote panel with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn moderated by our #girlcrush Adobe CMO Ann Lewnes. She took the stage with execs from all three social media powerhouses to talk about their role on privacy, and how they help brands with advertising and measuring business outcomes. Talk about timely, Ann! Two fast facts: By 2025, 75% of the workforce is going to be millennial, and 83% of digital natives sleep with their smartphones. If by ‘smartphone’, you mean ‘Cubby the Bear that we’ve had since we were kids’ then yes, we most definitely have that covered.

Did you know that if you get knighted by the queen you get to be called ‘sir’ and it only happens to people who have made long-term contributions in a major activity? Think Paul McCartney, Anthony Hopkins, and Mick Jagger. See also: Sir Richard Branson. WHO IS HERE. AT ADOBE SUMMIT. AS WE TYPE.

:: hyperventilating ::

We stopped freaking out and trying to take pictures that looked like we were much closer than we really were so that we could listen to what the man had to say. When he opened his mouth, a beam of light-illuminating, softly singing birds came flowing out. Okay, not really, but that is what we want to believe so we shall. What else came out was a strong encouragement for everyone at Summit not to rest on their laurels when it comes to continuously creating the experiences that matter. Sir Richard encouraged other entrepreneurs to have the goal to solve problems for others and re-imagine how you can create experiences that matter. Also, to be a good listener. Said he: “As a business we not only have a responsibility to create a better experience for ourselves and our customers, but we can’t forget to protect our communities and planet too.”

Because rushing the stage is frowned upon heavily at Summit, we left quietly on still-shaking knees vowing to be better listeners and to basically do whatever he just told us to do.  

Over in the breakout sessions, Runal Trivedi, specialist master, Deloitte Digital, joined Adobe’s Carmen Sutter, senior product manager and Sarah Xu, developer evangelist, to talk about how to accelerate your mobile and web experiences using Adobe I/O. The group covered the type of experiences you can build with I/O, key features, use cases and AEM events in action. Who knew there were so many experiences to build and ways to do it? We did not. Now we do and it looks like we need to maybe sign up for a class or something or at least hit up Runal, Carmen and Sarah for some lessons in exchange for tacos.

Our people like to talk a lot (if you haven’t noticed) but that’s okay because they’re super smart and everyone should benefit from the knowledge that they drop. And now, they can!! This year we introduced Bar Talks, a series of happy-hour chats in our booth covering everything from DigitalMIX to the Modern CMO to Adobe Sensei, featuring a host of DD execs and Adobe’s CMO, Ann Lewnes! She’s a star and we were star-struck having her over and picking her brain on all things marketing. Also, we had music and adult beverages, because it’s HAPPY hour not sad hour.

HOLLA…Leslie Jones of SNL and Ghostbusters was the surprise star (WE LOVE YOU LESLIE) during Adobe Sneaks, a fan fave where Adobe tech geniuses take the stage in short demos that provide an entertaining, fast-paced glimpse into the latest marketing technology at Adobe. This year we got sneak peeks at Experience Analytics, which uses the power of Adobe Analytics Analysis Workspace to analyze all aspects of experiences including websites or apps not owned by a marketer or organization; Master Plan, which enables brands to plan and coordinate multi-channel campaigns and initiatives like never before; Perfect Path, which helps marketers adapt and scale consumer journeys, or paths, via real-time orchestration of a personalized experience; See and Shop, a metadata-based service that makes every image shop-able and enables brands to connect with shoppers in the moment; Video Ad AI, which gives video advertisers the power of Adobe Sensei to improve their video ad performance through predictive performance modeling and recommendations; and finally, Launch, a tag management of website content that enables marketers to organize their content and measure its effectiveness. We can’t wait to see where these are heading!

And that would be the Summit Bash, this year featuring Grammy-award winning artist Beck. Now if you don’t love Beck, we’re very disappointed in you because his lyrics are legen… (wait for it) …dary. We dusted off our sensible (not dancing shoes because are you crazy? Everything in Vegas is like a ten-mile walk) and danced our faces off to Beck in the beautiful Las Vegas night. What an epic way to end our final Summit evening!

That’s a wrap on Day 2! We’ll see you tomorrow for a wrap-up of Adobe Summit, and leave you with this video...