Like so many others, I thought I’d do a personal year end wrap up of 2008. This year flew by and a ton happened in just 12 short months.
The Book
A good portion of my free time this year was consumed by the book Andy and I wrote, “Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0″. Writing a book is something I had always thought about writing, but never knew what about. The subject matter for the book became immediately apparent after giving a presentation at 360|Flex. Andy and I jumped in with both feet and are glad to see all the work we put into the book has paid off with good reviews coming in.
For those of you asking for a poster of the diagrams in the back of the book, we’re working on it.
ScaleNine
ScaleNine has been doing pretty well. I’ve been slacking on updates to the Showcase and Resources sections because of other things I’ve gotten involved with. I was able to put on a contest thanks to Adobe, specifically Andrew Shorten and Mike Potter, and EffectiveUI. Not only did Patrick Hansen whip together an awesome logo, but we got a great response with 20+ themes added to ScaleNine.
Stats for the site have definitely grown, which is probably in part to the interest in Flex/AIR growing. Here’s some numbers:
124,470 Unique Visitors
533,319 Page Views
197,399 Visits
Last year stats were 145,427 visits, 323,763 page views and 90,446 visitors. Sounds like I need to start getting some ads on there to generate some revenue for the long hours managing the site
Degrafa
This year has been an exciting one for Degrafa. Working with Adobe to find a happy medium with Degrafa and FXG was great to see and I think some of the full benefits of that are still to come. What’s really been amazing is the number of downloads, the amount of community support (like tutorials, screencasts and samples) and seeing some big name companies using the framework. We get emails from people all the time saying that the reason they looked at Flex was because of Degrafa. It’s stuff like that that keeps the team going.
I think this year is going to be awesome for Degrafa. We have several things in the works that are going to blow people’s minds. We’re on our way to Degrafa 1.0, but we’re also looking at things that will compliment the framework and make it a very approachable solution for designer’s and developers.
Effective UI
In February of 2008 I started at EffectiveUI as an Experience Architect. The first project I got to work on was awesome. I got to architect, design and develop a fun AIR application that I hope to share more information about soon.
Since that first project I’ve been able to work with technologies beyond Flex (iPhone, Android, etc.) and across different types of devices. It’s been fun, as each device/technology/app offers it’s own set of problems.
I’ve also been able to hone my design skills at a rapid pace. The design team at EffectiveUI is awesome. It’s the reason I moved to Denver, so I could sit right in the middle of it. The conversations that fly around just amaze me and I couldn’t imagine not going into the “office” every day.
I’m excited to see what we do this next year as a company. If it’s anything like what we’ve talked about, it’s going to rock!
The Industry
I’m excited to see where things go in the industry in 2009. 2008 almost felt like a transitionary state that will take new paths in 2009 with things like Flash Catalyst, Android, 3D and more. Sitting right in the middle of it all is definitely inspiring.
Other Stuffs
Beyond all the work stuff, my fiancé and I have settled into Denver (oh yeah, I’m engaged). It’s a great city. Granted it is colder than Southern California, it’s what I wanted. A change.
This year also saw me go out and present a bit more. I was excited to make it out to MAX Europe to present on “Prototyping AIR Applications with Fireworks CS4″. Maybe next year I can hit a trifecta for MAX (North America, Europe & Japan).
Future Stuffs
Another things I’ve always wanted to do is start my own successful business. Whether by myself or with others. There’s nothing to report on that yet, but I’ve got ideas and several seeds have been planted. I’m excited to see if any of them take in 2009.
One of my goals for 2009 is to crank out more screencasts. I can make them much more quickly than tutorial blog posts, but that’s probably cause I don’t do any editing.
The End
So, this post turned out to be much longer than I expected and I’m sure I forgot to mention some stuff. Anyway, I look forward to seeing everyone in 2009. See you next year!