May 18th, 2007
Disclosure: I work for Adobe
I’m joining Adobe as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist on the Platform Team. One of the things I get a lot of feedback on is that everyone appreciates me being “neutral” and covering all angles of the rich internet application space. None of that is going to change. In fact, with Adobe, I’ll have even more access and also more resources so that I can do a better job of talking about how important rich internet applications are and how important these great experiences are.
I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing and tracking the Rich Internet Application space and watched as it grew and gained momentum. I’ve also been fortunate enough to be a visible part of the space and had a lot of customers and developers seek me out. I wanted to make that a part of my day job, and at Adobe, I’ll be talking to customers a lot, flying around the world presenting at conferences, and interfacing with developers to find out what they want. Blogging will be a big part of my job and I’ll also be able to do a lot of interviews with people at Adobe in the hopes of showing off the cool stuff they’re working on and facilitating a conversation between the people at Adobe building products and the people that are using the products.
I had been doing Flex development as my day job and then going to conferences and blogging on my own time and money. It was kind of stressful for me to do two full time jobs, and my heart wasn’t in development full time. Adobe gave me an opportunity to do the things that I love; talking to developers and customers, travelling to conferences, and blogging.
Another reason for the move is that “Apollo” falls under the Platform Team and Apollo is a technology that I really, really believe in. Getting a chance to talk to customers and developers about Apollo while the product is still growing was too good to pass up. I also get to work with a top notch team. Danny Dura and Kevin Hoyt are my fellow evangelists, two guys that know a lot about what developers are looking for and what Adobe’s strengths are. Mike Downey is my boss, and if you’ve ever met Mike you know how cool that is. I also get to work with Mike Chambers on a daily basis, so the team that I’ll be working with is absolutely awesome.
I’m excited about everything RIA, even it isn’t from Adobe. I’ll be following and digging into other technologies. You’re still going to see me talk about Silverlight, OpenLaszlo and anything else that is related to the RIA space. I tend to be a very positive guy and I think any big moves in the rich internet application space benefit Adobe. As the space grows, Adobe will do well, so it will be fun to cover the ever expanding realm of RIAs.
