Live User Group Berlin: Max for Live, barbecue, a Midsummer Night’s Dream

It took a while to find the place (ok, our fault, but the whole post-industrial and now super-clubby area is a microcosm on its own, worth exploring) but the Ableton Live User Group Berlin’s meeting, held at Suicide Circus yesterday, has proved to be a nice chance to meet a bunch of Live aficionados (as well as some potential users), enjoy a few musical performances (going from techno to electro-jazzy to superheavy “rock’n’bass”) and get a sneak preview of upcoming Live’s features, like Max for Live.

Ableton’s Sound Development Project Manager, Daniel Büttner, briefly showed a few devices created with Max for Live, and how to edit them, according to the user’s needs.
By the way, some of these devices seemed to be quite interesting and inspiring. There’s no release date for Max for Live yet, but it seems things are getting closer.
Daniel confirmed that Max for Live users will get a pack of ready-to-use devices, and that a patch-sharing platform should follow soon.
Props to Daniel for defining Max/Msp “a very easy to use software”, you don’t hear these words associated with Max so often! Definitely my hero of the day, together of course with Axel and Silvia (thanks for the pics), the party-loving couple who made the whole event possible (it’s worth mentioning that these meetings are indipendent, even if supported by Ableton).

Before and after Ableton’s presentation, the grill in the garden has been quite crowded as you would expect in a german summer, and the whole place offered a relaxing environment.
I think we should have more of these things: internet is great, but having the chance to get both devs and users in the same physical place is an invaluable resource to let concepts/projects/products grow in a “healthier” and simply better way.
Let’s celebrate more “weddings” like this. Definitely more software houses should take note of this…

p.s: as usual, if you need more info about the next User Group events, please join the ALUGB official topic on the Ableton Forum.