I’m Joining Lynda.com

I’m happy to announce that in February, I’ll be joining the amazing team at Lynda.com as Senior Content Manager for Web and Interactive courses and programs. I’m extremely excited about the role, and look forward to working with great folks like Mordy Golding, James Williamson, David Gassner, Ray Villalobos and all of their amazing staff and community authors.

While my time at Adobe was cut short, it came after a change I wanted to take my career. I was a product manager for some of their great web, interactive and developer products, but when I took a step back and looked at what I was really passionate about, it was in working with the community and trying to educate them as best as I could. Whether it was through the half million people that viewed my ActionScript 1:1 series, my books, my blog, or in person at conferences and in the classroom at San Francisco State University, I wanted to educate, excite and help people in their careers or in finding new opportunities for growth in the amazing web, interactive and mobile worlds.

In addition, as the community is embroiled in a huge shift technologically through changes to the Flash Platform, the growth of HTML5, and the growing dominance of mobile development using a wide array of native development languages or cross-platform frameworks, I needed to decide with my heart what was the best way forward. I strongly considered going back to product management at another company to make tools to help customers, or to help agencies navigate through the technology rapids, but ultimately, I wanted to do what I always love doing–help people, and make cool shit.

With this new role that I will begin in February, I’ll be working with the community to find emerging technology areas, workflow gaps, or new products and provide the education and guidance that people need to make great things. With Lynda.com, I also have an opportunity to work with products and technologies from all over the industry, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe and the numerous community-driven projects that have helped propel HTML5 and mobile design and development.

In addition to Lynda.com, I will continue teaching at San Francisco State University this semester and I have three courses this semester starting with my ActionScript 3.0 class which was recently retooled to focus on mobile application development, Advanced HTML5 which focuses on understanding how CSS3 and HTML5 Canvas works and then how to use tools like Adobe Edge to make the process easier, and a new seminar course on mobile content development covering the mobile ecosystem, design constraints and best practices for efficient design workflows. Outside of the classroom, I have recently formed a mobile application startup to help take some of the games that I have been prototyping for years and make them a reality, and I’m also starting to brainstorm on my third book which I hope to publish this year.

I want to extend my thanks to everyone that reached out after my departure from Adobe. Your wishes, words of encouragement, and offers to help were amazing and overwhelming. I’m glad to be in an industry and community that is so loving and supporting. With this new role, I look forward to continuing to help you challenge your assumptions, achieve the amazing…and maybe make a buck or two in the process.

Be amazing!