Sandman

Hello Lee,

We’ve never met. I know you because you’ve been an active member of the Flash community for years. I’ve seen you a few times at Adobe events, heard your talks, watched your Flash tutorials for years. I wasn’t sure how I felt when you took up the role of Adobe Platform Evangelist 3 years ago, but was happy to discover you never changed into a propaganda machine, keeping an objective point-of-view for as much as possible. If anything, your career move has given you more time to educate and inspire developers, sharing knowledge and information.

I feel compelled to write you, sensing that your tone-of-voice has changed as of late. An occasional bitterness has crawled up on your blog and Twitter stream. I think I understand why. You’re communicating about a large company and a product that’s changed continuously since it was conceived. With change comes friction. Software occasionally becomes unstable, the path to get from A to B within an application changes. My feelings towards this process haven’t changed since I upgraded from Flash 4 to Flash 5 ten years ago.

What has changed is that the internet has given users a new way to communicate their feelings. We’re encouraged to be vocal in comments, reply-tweets and blog posts. Hell, I’m writing you publicly in a blog post. Many users disliked changes to Flash 5, but few of them sent paper letters to document their griefs. These new ways of communicating have also brought people such as yourself close to the end users. In less than 2 minutes I can reply to your tweets and comment on your blog posts, I would never have faxed Adobe spokesperson 10 years ago.

Flash technology is facing stiff competition. Its webvideo stronghold is compared to HTML5 video, mobile devices have a tough time displaying emotive flash websites that use gorgeous graphics and interaction, Search engine indexing of an interactive experience is per definition very hard. There have always been challenges. Flash technology has found new ways to stay relevant since its birth, faster than any other technology I know.

This constant and essential change needs people like you, demystifying technical evolutions for end users focussed on projects with too little time to read manuals. The Flash Platform has gotten huge. I used to claim I knew every corner of Flash. My new attitude is to stay informed about what’s possible and read tutorials such as yours to implement features when clients need them.

I’m saying: don’t be discouraged when you open your inbox on a monday morning. For every developer complaining directly to you, there’s one like me who wouldn’t easily write to congratulate a software company. Who visits the doctor to say that everything is fine and that they’re healthy? Pragmatic developers work around bugs and quirks. We always find a way to create. I’ve seen some very welcome changes to the Flash CS5 interface in your screencast. And I say: bravo! Your work is much appreciated.

Sander.