What economic crisis? Surely not for RIA developers!

To say I’ve been busy is an understatement. Where to start? They tell me there’s an economic meltdown going on. My question is, where? If you’re an RIA developer, especially a Flex developer, I can’t imagine you’re having a tough time finding gigs. Unless there’s just so many of us now that there’s actually competition?

My thorough lack of writing on my FUN blog parallels my thorough lack of sleep. It’s tough running a company on your own, especially when it’s a teeny tiny RIA firm and you’re completely lost when keeping records in QuickBooks. So what have I been up to? For starters, I updated a bunch of stuff on MezzyShredder.com. Added tons of videos of him playing with his band Wicked Society ( signed on a B & G Music label ) and YouTube. So if you’re into Black Label Society-style music, go check out Mezzy shredding like none other!

So far this year, I’ve reconnected with some very cool clients from the past, lost some projects, won others, wrote articles on the Adobe Dev center about Flex and Ant, part II is in review right now, coming soon.

I had the chance to team up with Tour de Flex developer Holly Schinsky to get Attest 1.5 out the door. Holly’s completely awesome to work with, and we plan on teaming up on some more killer projects in the near future. There’s also a ton of things planned for new versions of Attest, and some of it will be a lot of fun. You’ll see…

Just like 2008, not one of the projects I’ve worked on so far this year were ones that I pitched for, but rather, they just keep finding me. Who needs a sales department when you’re a Flex developer? I’ve actually passed a bunch of projects off to others in the community when I can, and was thinking about creating another job site type deal purely for Flex. Everyday my inbox is filled with projects I won’t be working on, and it would be great to find a way to post them for the community, for those who are located closer, or a better match for the position in general. It seems to me that the Washington, DC – Richmond, VA area is loaded with projects for Flexers, but there are definitely larger communities out there in other states. So if you’re a Flexer around there, give me a yell. I’d like to hear from others in the area.

I often have to turn down projects and on top of that there were others I lost, like a Microsoft Silverlight project where the MS guys came inches away from going with Flex rather than Silverlight. When the big guys made the decision it had to be Silverlight, there went that project. By the way, call me when your RIA falls apart 🙂 Other projects were shipped overseas, but still the fact remains that there’s always work for Flex developers – knock on wood.

Now for some reason, a Google search for the name “flatley” puts me on page two. Considering the competition with Michael Flatley, the Lord of the Dance, that’s not too shabby. So it doesn’t hurt to get your name out there. I’m coming after your title Mr. Lord of the Dance, and I’m River dancing all the way to the first results page! 🙂 The point is, I’ve watched the Flex community grow from the beginning, and it’s growing fast, which is awesome! If you’re in the DC – Richmond area, I think we can eventually make this another hot spot for crazy RIA projects with a large community of developers to match. Especially the ones that pay you in government cheese, like Mr. Jones says, but Flexers will never have to worry about their kids eating all the food in the fridge

Many other awesome projects are in the works currently at PXL Designs, some I’ll keep on the down low because they’re top secret for the time being. Others are supposed to debut soon. Whenever you see the Capital One Card Lab commercials on TV, think of all the late nights and countless ramblings I had to pull to get that one out the door. I was the architect on this project, consulting through an agency, and worked with a great team, pulled countless weekends and late nights to get it finished.

I found time to add a mini shopping cart to Peekaboopaperie.com for quick orders where a customer may not want to customize their own baby announcement. PeekabooPaperie Mini Shopping Cart

This year, I think I’m even going to have time to venture out to CF United in Leesburg, VA, so I might see you there. If you’re from the area, give me a holler if you’re going and make sure to download the Bump app for the iPhone, this is extra cool and lazy 🙂

These are a handful of the reasons I’ve been missing my blog duties, but I’m going to make a concerted effort to get back into it…even if it has to be late night ramblings 😛

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2 Comments

  1. Peter

    Hi, thanks for this article, I have to write some comment :-P, I am mainly Java developer long time, but I redomly get to one project which is in Flex for one financial group. I work only five months with Flex, but it is amazing and like it more and more and experience with that. Now I am finishing it I like new things and make web design and Flex is really great framework to help many problems, so thanks for this article. I am from Europe so if I see in USA Flex developers can find job easily, so Id like to work there some times, so if it is possible I will email you sometimes, maybe you can help me 😀 thaks a lot

  2. Dave (Post author)

    Hey Peter,
    I didn’t delete your comment, just took a while to approve it from the spam filter.

    Java + Flex are excellent skills to have and combine. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding RIA work with those skills 😉

    Extra comments deleted – ha! Spam free 😛

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