There has been a lot of talk about Adobe's Integrated Runtime since it's initial release. Much of this talk has been filled with excitement over the promise that Web developers having the ability to port their Flex, HTML, Flash, etc applications to the desktop.

We all know that AIR has been accepted as a legitimate platform for these "Rich Connected" desktop applications, but there is still a concern among many would-be adopters that AIR is not quite up to par with other technologies available for the creation of desktop software applications.

As a member of the team responsible for The Merapi Project, I've had more conversations around this topic than I care to mention! The reason that we created Merapi in the first place was to beef up the capabilities of AIR by extending it a bit further and integrating it with just about any client-side functionality that can be developed in Java.

A lot of people have been curious as to what this really means, including how they can leverage Merapi and Adobe AIR to build sophisticated desktop software while still utilizing AIR, and taking advantage of all the things that make Flex, Flash, and AIR so great.

Well, if you are headed to Adobe MAX in San Francisco, you can get a first-hand look at how Merapi (and other technologies) are making this possible.

Enter Greg Wilson at Adobe

Greg Wilson, one of the brilliant minds in Adobe's Evangelism organization is going to be hosting a new type of event at this year's MAX conference. This event, "AIR Gone Wild", is intended to show off all of the fringe thinking that is taking place in the development community, and will show off just exactly how far you can push your application development efforts using Adobe AIR as the backbone of your project.

"AIR Gone Wild" will take place at MAX outside of the Adobe Birds of a Feather session rooms. This isn't a session, it isn't a meeting... Instead, it is a showcase of how to push the limits of what you thought possible with Adobe AIR.

Greg and the Adobe team are going to be setting up a series of high-top tables outside the Birds of a Feather area at the conference where attendees will be able to check out some of the more extreme uses of Adobe AIR, including examples from Adobe and from participants of The Merapi Project alpha program.

One of the most exciting things we've see is Adobe's own efforts to use Merapi to connect AIR application to an Eclipse plugin. Other things that are on the table (excuse the pun) will be AIR integration with a Lego Mindstorm Robot over bluetooth, hooking up GPS hardware that feeds data to AIR, and integration with Microsoft Outlook directly from an AIR application.

As part of the Merapi Project team, I've made the request to everyone using our code to submit other sample applications that they think will really show off how far you can go with AIR as your development platform.

If you want to participate, get in touch with me, or check out http://www.tinyurl.com/airgonewild where you can fill out the form to submit your ideas to Greg Wilson. Once you do, he will be in touch shortly!

A prize will be awarded to the most interesting application as voted on by the Adobe AIR team and other folks at Adobe and the development community.

See you at MAX! Let's get wild!

Read more from Dave Meeker.