I like to say that I was employed at Adobe for thirteen years - through acquisition.

Most of the code in this repository will not even run anymore - after all, Flash is officially dead. I keep it around for inspiration, and to occasionally reference patterns of problems I have solved in the past.

That chapter started in 2000 when I signed on with Allaire - makers of an application server technology called, ColdFusion. Allaire acquired a JSP and Servlet container, JRun, in 2000 as well. I did Technical Sales at Allaire until 2001 when it was acquired by Macromedia.

At Macromedia, ColdFusion was being migrated from a native codebase to a Java EE application. JRun was also being positioned as a full J2EE server. Since I knew both Java and ColdFusion, I was quite busy as a Solutions Engineer. I earned several sales awards include WW SE of the Year in 2004.

Macromedia was known for Flash Player, a nearly ubiquitous web browser plugin that offered features it would take standards another decade to deliver. This presented a competitive advantage to many customers, but developers struggled to use the designer-oriented tooling. Macromedia Flex 1.0 was released to solve this problem - I was one of only two Product Specialists designated to sell the product.

In 2005, Macromedia was acquired by Adobe. In 2007, I joined a team of Platform Evangelists focused on AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). I filled the role of Web Standards champion. We traveled the world extensively promoting AIR. I presented at the very first jQuery conference (2008) on desktop development with web standards, among countless dozens of other web development conferences.

I made the move to Group Manager, Platform Evangelism in 2008, managing an international team. Developer Relations was becoming a more common role amongst technology vendors - though it was called by various titles. I like to think that we learned Developer Relations, as a team, first-hand, making up much of it as we went along, and eventually using data to drive activities and provide value to the broader company.

By 2012, IoT was becoming increasingly mainstream. I had been using an IoT "angle" on my evangelism for years. The Maker movement was also beginning to flourish, and Adobe was looking for maker-related technology partners. I picked up this work as a Principal Evangelist, and started building relationships (and integrations) with laser cutter, 3D printer, and CNC vendors. These are all still hobbies of mine today.

During this time I was also able to hold maker workshops for underprivileged primary school students in multiple cities including Chicago, New York, and Barcelona. For all the hundreds of presentations I have given professionally across the globe, these workshops were my most fulfilling experience.

My amazing journey with Adobe ended in 2013. It had been a wild thirteen years. From JSP and Servlets, to Java 2 EE, to just Java EE. From Flash to Web, and from desktop to mobile (the iPhone was introduced in 2007). From direct sales strategies, to Developer Relations, and the rise of Twitter and Facebook (2006).