Product Manager for Developer Relations for the Flash Platform
I wanted to let everyone know that I am working in a new role at Macromedia now. My new title is "Product Manager for Developer Relations for the Flash Platform" (is that title long enough for you?). Basically, I am in charge of developer relations for Flash Authoring, Central and the Flash Player.
This is a new position and has two primary goals:
- Ensure that designer and developer concerns are heard, represented and fought for to the internal product teams.
- Communicate the team's goals, tasks, thoughts, ideas and plans to users.
This position, as well as the new Technical Product manager position on the Flash team (congrats to Mike Downey), are new positions created to institutionalize communication and contact with users. We want to ensure that we don't loose touch with our users, and that future releases of our tools and platforms are of the quality that you expect of Macromedia (something we didn't really deliver on with our current release of Flash Authoring).
These are just a few of the many changes that have occurred around how we build Flash. There are a ton of other new things, which we will be posting about in the coming weeks.
You will see the first fruits of these changes with the upcoming Ellipsis update. As Kevin Lynch discussed at the FlashForward SF and FlashInTheCan keynotes, Ellipsis is a significant update to Flash MX 2004 (due out later this summer). It won't fix every problem / annoyance in Flash, but it is the first step in re-making Flash as a super solid, resource friendly tool for creating great experiences. What you will find in Ellipsis are tons of bug fixes, significant resource and performance improvements, and a huge update to the documentation. Expect a lot more information on this update in the coming days and weeks.
I will also be doing a lot more traveling and speaking, talking to designers and developers, and communicating how we see the Flash platform and ecosystem evolving. I actually did a short user group tour in Northern Europe a couple of weeks ago, talking about our vision for the Flash platform and ecosystem. I will be doing more tours later this year.
Over the next couple of days and weeks, we will be posting more information on Ellipsis, our vision for Flash, and additional steps we are taking to ensure that we build the tool that designers and developers want.
Questions? Thoughts? Suggestions? Post them in the comments, or email me directly at mesh@macromedia.com.
Comments
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Congrats Mike! It's very good to hear about such news. I've noticed a lot of change recently with the way Macromedia is adapting and news like this is wonderful! Now where do I send my wish list :)
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congrats mike! you shd be happy the player is xplatform... you'd be looking at a title like Product Manager for Developer Relations for the Flash Platform for (Linux | Mac | Windows) ;) eokyere
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Great Mike! It's good to see MACR bringing more momentum to the Flash platform!
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Congrats Mike! I hope I'll be there in the future :p
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Patrick WhittinghamCongrats Mike. Good to hear you will be an advocate for Flash. I'm sure that your customers will be well served.
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Congratulations - this couldn't have happend to a nicer guy. You consistently knock 'em out of the park.
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BazardCongratulations, As now you are the guy in charge of developer relations for the Flash Player, it would be nice if you could let know to the developement team that worked on the MAC OS X player that it really needs a lots of improvement about the animations speed (ie: animations with lots of alpha changes). I suspect that the browser plugin is using the CPU at 100% and not at all the video card. So using the player is fine but using the plugin for IE or Safari it is a real nightmare. A smooth and fast animation on my old PC looks terrible on my new Mac. I guess it is something known anyway, but if you could communicate it again it will be great. There is no reason why it would be slow on a Mac and fast on a PC as long as the video cards and the CPU power are the same. Thanks & Congrats again
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William UkohHey. Mike congratulations. Just keep us posted when those Ellipsis updates come.
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Mike KlepperCongrats!!
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Congrats! I hope that the community can continually influence the way MM does business! Mike, keep looking out for us.
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Congrats! Best regards, Burak
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Congrats man! Sounds like MM is on top of things!
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Congrats Mike - sounds like the best job around. Does that come with a plush corner office and personal assistant?
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mike chambers> it would be nice if you could let know to the developement team that worked on the MAC OS X player that it really needs a lots of improvement about the animations speed Hehe. I was actually jsut talking with the Flash Player team about this yesterday. Performance is one of the top priorities for the next version of the Flash player. We have always spent a lot of time in the past focusing on performance, but it has always been in very specific areas (i.e. datahandling, arrays, etc...). We are aiming to make fundamental improvements across the board in performance. More details in the coming months. mike chambers mesh@macromedia.com
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mike chambers>Does that come with a plush corner office and personal assistant? Well, I have a corner cube! As far as a pesonal assistant, maybe they will buy me a copy of Microsoft Bob. mike chambers mesh@macromedia.com
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Congrats Mike! I think this is a big step in making all of the Flash Player "spin-offs" a closer knit family. Great news.
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mark winterhalderCongratulations, I hope you will enjoy your new position! And right away those good news with general performance being a top priority... Now, with FlashLite availabe for the devices, I dream about harware acceleration for the graphics in the normal player. Pardon me if I won't memorize your title...
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Bazard> it would be nice if you could let know to the developement team that worked on the MAC OS X player that it really needs a lots of improvement about the animations speed >> We are aiming to make fundamental improvements across the board in performance. More details in the coming months. THANKS :)
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if you can get native 3d into the flash player, you will be a god!
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While I appreciate all of the focus that has gone into making Flash a great development tool--we do a ton of coding--I would like to suggest that some focus be directed at the drawing tools, timeline and animation, areas which have been, for all practical purposes, at a standstill for 4 versions now. I could provide you with a list, but it's clear where the shortcomings are if you have used freehand, after fx, or any other pro level anim / drawing tool. While many applications offer swf export, this is niether as convenient or as efficient as working in Flash directly. And can snap to pixels actually snap to pixels? My last request for Flash, in any future revision or versions, is to please put back the Flash 6 style undo, or at least make it an option. This new way of undoing things, in a word, stinks. Congratulations on your new position. I can't wait to see how Flash will improve.
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mike chambers>I would like to suggest that some focus be directed at the drawing tools, timeline and animation, We hear you loud and clear. I think that designers are going to be very happy with the direction and focus of the next full version of flash. More details in the coming months. mike chambers mesh@macromedia.com
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// chall3ng3r //congrates, i've very disappointed for long time, but i think this time i'll send my wishlists to the write guys... :D // chall3ng3r //
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Sam ThorneCongratulations Mike, from me and on behalf of the fk mods! I've been dreaming (er, i mean thinking briefly) about precision animation control ala After Effects (and pretty much any video edit suite) key frame tweening. Timeline effects are nice, but a little clunky to put together (though maybe I haven't used them enough).
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iSPlease release a flash player for Symbian 7, Symbian 8 and PocketPC. There are some great PDA and smart phones out there, but Flash is nowhere to be seen, so we have to use Java instead... And while we're at it, Eclipse 3 will be here on June the 30th, an AS2 plugin would make a lot of people happy. We need a professional coding environnement. Nobody can code seriously in the Flash IDE and Sepy doesn't have all the needed features yet. Can't comment on Brady, but DW doesn't compare to Eclipse.
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PeteIt's good to hear Flash may get back on track yet. Wait and see I guess. It's a shame that Macromedia went out of their way to alienate the users who were Flash's bread and butter in years past, the designers. Then followed up by messing the tool up for developers. So how bout giving Flash back to designers, and if Macromedia is serious about the whole RIA thing they've been harping on for the last few years, get serious about releasing a dedicated tool that is made explicitly for that purpose - creating RIA's quickly and easily (or at least comparable to coding CF apps etc)... and one that developers who don't work in enterprise companies can afford.. make sense? my 2c.
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Good News.. Mike and flash will be our future !!! Congratulations
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CaduCongratulations Mike.... Hope you and macromedia guys achieve your objects!!! Nice Job.....Keep this way!!! Cadu.
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Carl.mccollumGood Luck and welcome to the family Carl
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Congrats and all the best for new position. cheers, Abdul
