// Commented Out

2009 has been the best year of my professional career. In 2009, my name has become known within the Flash Platform community and I couldn’t be more humbled. This post is not a show piece by any means. This is merely a personal reflection and public thank you to all who have helped me this year.

Here are some of the highlights of this year.

• I started a blog, but not before consulting my first few articles with a few veterans who were awesome enough to help guide my viewpoint. You know who you are, and thank you. I have received some unexpectedly great feedback and am really grateful for the readership I have.
• I started writing for InsideRIA. I have had a few posts and featured content, all of which have had incredible responses from both readers and staff.
• I became a speaker/organizer for Flash and the City. My role has gone from last-minute addition to the speaker lineup, to a co-organizer of this spectacular community-driven event. I even got to promote it on RIARadio and other developer-centric sites. I am so proud and grateful to be a part of FATC. The work we do for this event is going to pay off ten-fold.
• I made some awesome new friends. It’s so surreal to become friends with people you look up to. I got to meet and hang out with some of the coolest people at RIAUnleashed and FlashPitt this year, as well as those of you I have been acquainted with through online communities.

2009 was, by far, the best year of my professional career, but the last 3 months have been the most stressful period of my entire existence (including my personal life). As busy as 2009 was, I am looking to spend my time more wisely and efficiently in 2010. As developers and people with families and lives, we don’t have a ton of time. I personally subscribe to Bruce Lee’s philosophy, which is often incorrectly thought to apply only to martial arts. Basically, Bruce’s mantra was to “absorb what is useful, discard what is useless.” So, I have been revisiting this recently and realizing how much discarding I have to do. I cut down on the people I follow on Twitter (almost half) as well as the blogs I read, and still have a lot m0re t0 g0. I invite you to do the same. It’s surprisingly liberating.

That brings us to now. The last day of 2009. How can I top this past year? Well, here’s how I like to think about it:

2009 was the year you learned my name. 2010 is the year you’ll remember it.

I have some HUGE surprises up my sleeve for 2010 and I really think the Flash Platform community is going to love them. I can’t talk about any of it unfortunately, but you’ll know when they hit. Until then, I will continue prepping for Flash and the City, as well as working on some fantastic side projects I hope see the light of day next year. Speaking of Flash and the City, today is the LAST day to get Early Bird pricing for Flash and the City! Be sure to get your obscenely inexpensive $99 tickets that include our Saturday night yacht cruise! Also, don’t forget the tremendous pre-conference workshops we’ve put together. You can get tickets for the workshop here. </shamelessplug>

As far as what to expect from Commented Out in 2010, you can expect a lot more activity here. That most likely means less noise on Twitter (a good thing), but for some reason, my brain tends to view blogs as being more reputable anyway. I have taken some time recently to re-evaluate my brand identity, and have gotten back to why I even got into interactive design in the first place. I am an artist. I am an artist in the realms of photography, audio, music, video, digital art, UI design, experience design, interaction design, data visualization, Processing, and Flash Platform technologies. These are the things I love to do, and am good at doing, (though the first 5 I really can’t expect to get paid for). You’re going to see a much more broad spectrum of topics here on Commented Out, but the focus will be “experience enhancement.” I’ve realized in 2009, that I am a UX junkie at heart, and always have been. I feel really good about not pigeon-holing myself in an already overflowing pool of talented Flash Platform bloggers, many of which are much more talented than me. So, I would love to cover the in-depth workings of dependency injection and test-driven development, but I don’t think I would enjoy it. Besides, there are some brilliant folks all over the web who are doing a solid job explaining this kind of nuts-and-bolts stuff already. I’m getting back to the core concepts of why I do what I do, and it feels fantastic.

I also want to take the time to thank you all for reading Commented Out, my InsideRIA posts, following me on Twitter, and for all of the honors and support. 2010 is going to be the best year ever. Stay tuned!