The Twenty Ten
I always go back and forth on whether or not to do a yearly recap. In fact, I wrote a previous post, sent it to Posterous and then deleted it. Not sure why. I’ve come back to the post, made some revisions and it’s become more of a few outlooks mixed in with some recaps.
This year went by so quickly for me. A lot happened under the radar in both my personal life as well as professional. I’ll mention some personal strides at the end of this post, but it’ll primarily all be shop.
The end of 2009 marked close to the end of my second year at EffectiveUI. The clients are bigger, as well as the challenges, complexity and reach that each project has. I’ve learned a lot and continue to push for the best that I can do to improve user experiences in software and beyond. I’ve had the opportunity of being exposed to a lot of new technologies, devices and ideas, which further helped me grow.
As I have been working at EffectiveUI I have been thinking about something I’ve been calling the “experience ecosystem”. Basically, how a variety of technologies can be used together to create a seamless and complimentary series of experiences across mobile, browser, desktop, kiosk, in-store, whatever, etc. It may not be a new thought, but I think understanding how this might work for projects in an efficient manner is a huge key to success for engaging an audience (and a ton of other reasons I’m not going to outline right now).
This year I focussed almost exclusively on design and did a lot more HTML/CSS/JS for both professional and personal projects. As a result, I did a lot less Flash/Flex/AIR. While I still naturally gravitate towards using Flex, I spend a lot more time these days considering the alternatives and looking at Flash/Flex as another tool in my toolbox.
Last year I mentioned starting a business and trying to appease my entrepreneurial spirit. Which I did… twice. One is simply ScaleNine LLC and the other is one still under the radar. I’m working with some other folks to kick start something. It’s a simple idea, but we’re using the project as a test run to learn about creating a product, working with “customers” and enjoying just iterating on something. It’s been really fun so far and I’m hoping to participate in more projects like it.
As a result in this shifted focus to design, technology and entrepreneurship I decided to make some changes in how I interact through various social networks. You may (or may not) have noticed I added a Twitter account. I’m known by a lot of people in the Flash community as @scalenine, but I’m switching over to using @juansanchez as my primary Twitter account. I’ll probably also start using my name, or variation of it, for other social stuff.
Why did I do this? Well, it has to do with a lot of things I have going on and my push to break out beyond Flex/Flash. ScaleNine became way more popular than I had hoped and it eventually began to be known as who I am and what I do. A lot has changed, so ScaleNine will now be treated more like a project that I’m working on, Iike Degrafa (and other things). The Twitter account (@scalenine) will still be used, but specifically for ScaleNine as a project.
It’s interesting, this whole thing reminded me of a discussion that happened during a presentation @dougmccune and I did at 360|Flex a while back about personal promotion. One side said use a unique handle (like @scalenine) and the other side said use your name. These days I’m definitely leaning more towards using my name and having the things I work on be “entities” underneath that. For the past couple years I’ve been focussed on promoting ScaleNine, so that worked fine, but should ScaleNine be acquired or opened up to more of a community involvement, I don’t want myself as an individual to get caught up in that and have signals get mixed. Same with any other project I might be involved with.
Last year I also cut way back on presenting and going to conferences. I’m not sure how this year will go, but I’m definitely going to try to diversify. I’ll probably check out more conferences that deal with design, technologies I’m interested in (including Flex) and entrepreneurship. As far as speaking goes, as of now I’m only speaking at Flash and the City in May.
On the personal side, I got married, got to see my wife start her first semester towards her master’s degree and bought a house. We’ve made a lot of great friends and look forward to having more fun in 2010.
So there you go. 2009 was great, but I’m definitely excited to see what 2010 does to up the ante.