After many thoughts, and some less successful attempts, I managed to put together an extract of my first 10 years of research in Interactive Media. I hope you will enjoy: http://riape.com
Note: This is not a curriculum website. It does contain only some personal projects/experiments I’ve been doing over the years on my spare time. It does not contain any of the several projects I’ve worked on at my work place.
I just finished to read a post on one of the very few RIA blogs I read. Yet another post related to Flash and Silverlight and their implicit competition, which in many cases is more like a religious war. If you know me, or follow this blog, you would know how I tried hard in my career not to be platform dependent and always trying to use the best solution for the needs. If Silverlight will have different features than Flash, and be as stable and as spread, it’s obvious that could be a better choice in some cases despite they are still very similar, so does it really make sense for a company to offer both (AND)? What Microsoft (Scott Barnes) says, is that companies shouldn’t decide which one to go with (OR), they should be able to offer both (AND). My opinion is that who thinks so, doesn’t have so much idea of the daily challenges that an company/agency faces everyday.
In these last years I’ve been lucky enough to be manager of teams of RIA Developers for big and ambitious agencies, in the UK, which in theory should be the perfect candidates to offer both platforms (AND). My managers definitely agreed with that, we are big, we should offer solutions at 360º. In reality the factor which determines how the theory differs from the practice is the quality of the work that you want to offer. To offer top quality solutions, like any top agency would like, you need to master in the chosen platform. To master means that all the team involved, from Technical Architect and User Experience Designer during the planning to Graphic Designer and Developer during the production, should know the platform potentialities/limits inside out. The reality is that there are so many people in the process which don’t actually know the differences between Ajax and Flash, a part of course the developers. This is also one of the reasons why hybrid people, which can apply creativity to technology potentialities/limits, are more likely to be able to push the boundaries and create something innovative. But of course in big organizations there is not so much space for hybrids.
Obviously it would be much easier for a company to use both if they don’t have to push the limits, but if you end up doing the same things with both the platforms, why not using only one in the first place? Or why don’t you try to find a more cost-effective way to develop with Ajax and rid of the plugins?
Sorry if after such a long silence I would try to keep this short… few months ago I joined Conchango to help them building non Microsoft RIA (Rich Internet Application) expertise. It is definitely quite a challenge, even more now that EMC bought us, and challenges are of course what we need in life. By the way, my position there is pretty technical indeed and, considering I always tried to keep this blog less practical, I took the opportunity to open there a blog about my day to day technical challenges (with a bit of thinking as well). Nowadays iPhone is keeping me busy. Check it out!
This monday I started as Senior Rich Internet Application (I always hated this definition) Developer at Framfab London. Due to the merge with LBI, they will become one whole company soon. I will have the opportunity to focus more on Flash development working for medium to big scale projects and collaborating on the organization of the internal framework.
I’m sorry to leave some nice people at Lateral but I’m sure I’ll see them soon, hopefully before one of their crazy parties 
Wow, these last three weeks flow literally away. It was a pleasure and honor discuss about very interesting topics with so bright minds like John, Peter, Martin and not last Ben. I can’t avoid to mention also about the very friendly camp mates I found.
It was a very inspiring experience directed in a very nice way by Mr. Maeda. Thx John, and of corse my company that is going to pay it 
I can proudly announce my next internship of my master course at RandomMedia in London starting from the 5th of July.
