Here's whats happening in your world..(Rant)

[Rupert]

The forums contain a reasonable cross-section of Flash-savvy people from different countries and I thought it might be interesting to get some kind of idea what everyone felt the state of the "multimedia" industry was around the world right now. What is the current demand like?

Personally I feel here in Australia its been up and down like a yo yo over the last couple of years with demand ranging from non-existant to rediculously busy. Sometimes it seems to me like there are far too many people getting pumped out of multimedia courses at various educational instituions with no real prospect for employment but I guess thats another story.

Do you guys think that government support for new technology plays any part in demand? Is it affected by access to broadband? Perhaps the full moon or cashew prices are the major factors in whether people want CDs, Websites etc...

Anybody want to let me know how things currently are in England, India, USA, South America, Asia, Europe etc?

"Here's Tom with the weather...."

[Jesse]

My experience has been that Australian companies want either (a) crap flash intros which they're not willing to pay for and which kill usability, leading to reports like "99% Bad" OR; (b) cool flash stuff for which they turn to some huge design team and thus us little guys never get a chance to show our stuff.
I still think 95% of people have no idea how powerful Flash is and use it for entirely the wrong purposes. Then again I've never liked flashy intros or 5 second techno loops.

[vilehelm]

One trend I see developing is companies spending internet dollars on marketing initiatives rather than application development. These initiatives can take all sorts of forms: banners, ezines, pop-ups, shostacles, interstitials etc...

The real weird thing about the internet crash was that initially companies shied from ANYTHING with the .com or "web" attached to it. But lately it seems that companies have come to realize that as a marketing tool the internet actually IS a great way to retain close contact with consumers. It's a very trackable tool, you can provide very exact data on response and create a pretty accurate ROI model. TV can't do that. And as dollars have become tight TV and other modes of advertising have been shown to be very scattershot and expensive.

SO! this, in my opinion bodes good and bad for flash developers.

I think there will be work out there for peeps just maybe not the most exciting. Probably lots of short animation and quick marketing tools like that MX sign-up banner that was running a while back. Also I see the intergration of small flash apps as a possibility within larger html sites.

I think the full flash based site for large companies is going to be a real rarity.

[tg]

flash has a great future for large companies who want to create applications on their intranets. i know the company i work for, has two major flash apps already, and i'm building a third. with a fourth in the planning stages... i wish they'd get me some help.
heh.

[Artie Effem]

most of the work I seem to be getting at the moment is lots of small flash components of bigger projects - the big Flash only website stuff is drying up.

[vilehelm]

Well tg if what you say is true, that's a good thing. I would love to see flash replace the Java applett as a web component. Don't know if that's a really valid idea but it seems to be stabler from platform to platform and browser to browser.

[Ricod]

I also found that the market is a bit 'crowded' and that companies usually want the wrong things from Flash, like Jesse illustrated. Most people in the field know that those intro's (and the useage of Flashy spheres) are like the Photoshop lens flare :), but when companies think of Flash, they think of just that !

And ofcourse the whole IT crash didn't really help ... and the current economy in general (dunno about other parts, but in Europe things went downhill with the introduction of the euro). Demands will probably keep on fluctuating, so historically speaking, things oughta go up again ... ofcourse there's no saying when this will happen :(.

They way things are right now, is that most companies are usually content with their Office extensions and their Access databases with their MS Graphs, but I'm hoping more companies will go in the direction tg's employers went.

*jumps off his crate, letting people who know what they're talking about speak again*

[snapple]

There's one major problem in the U.K. And that is, that the idea of paying for good design is not really a valid or recognised one.

Abroad, quality design, and careful thought in presentation and idents/branding are all taken a lot more seriously. You only have to look at all the BBC idents and the heavy criticism they came under (and do every time the are changed) to see that the British public as a whole, do not appreciate good design. Any company over here that re-brands, ALWAYS has more coverage with regards, to how much the re-branding/designing costs, rather than how successful it's launch was.

Relevance ? - Well, it means that visual/graphical based media services struggle to keep quality, they're priorities are under-cutting other companies etc. Flash will struggle more and more in the future :

. Probably lots of short animation and quick marketing tools

So true, not good news. I'd like to think that Flash can still hold its own, with regards, to music, educational, design sites - maybe ?

The web is predominately about speed, efficiency , purchasing, not great news for Flash, although with better and better back end integration and higher broadband usage, there could be a case for a come-back.

I think the future of flash is……well probably in writing books about it, rather than implementing ground breaking interactivity.
I don't agree with that, just something to think about.

Regards, snapple

[farafiro]

ok, guys I know this is a very Important thread and It's gonna be one of the most interesting one.
But the reason I'm here is that I just want to know or as a very comman question that everyone ask when starting Flash lessons:
"What do I need beside FLASH to start my career or to become a Flash developer"??
So, I wanted to put this in a seperat thread by I think it's very linked to here, so after I can make a poll for the results to get the most benfit for it.

As for flash market here in Egypt, I can say it's still in the first phase of it, so rare ppl who knows flash well, but so many who says I can work with flash, and this kills the market as those who says so, can grab these cool open sources from the web and offer it with a very cheap pruces over the web. So there is no creativity yest here (or a very little), but in this year I've seen a lotta ppl asks for advanced Flash courses (as I do teach some here)and also some demand for Action Scripters, but there is still a long road to go.

[sfa]

As Vile suggested, I think flash will eventually replace Java applets. All it need is for the program to get a little bit more powerful. I am personally more into the design aspect even though I have worked on a couple of applets in flash which went down really well.

http://europa.fixedoddsgroup.com/flash-charts/flashgraph800x600.html

It looks to me that flash is the future of internet, the problem is how much money people are ready to spend on branding.

SFA

[tg]

Originally posted by vilehelm
Well tg if what you say is true, that's a good thing. I would love to see flash replace the Java applett as a web component. Don't know if that's a really valid idea but it seems to be stabler from platform to platform and browser to browser.

well, don't know how true it is, most folks probably don't even know what can be done with it (flash)... but where i work, i hear folks mention a project/emplementation they need, but don't know how to do it... so of course, i say... 'sheez, no problem... i can do that with flash'... now i gotta learn how to keep my mouth shut until i clean out the back log.

[Mortimer Jazz]

Development speed/maintainability seems to be the issue now, so IMHO MM have gone the right way with components (even if they are bulky as f.c.u.k.).

It's the C/java programmers that cost the real big money, so hopefully (due to MX's capabilities) employers will soon realise that we flashers can take on some of the work previously done by them whilst they get on with the hardcore stuff.

I went to a flash seminar recently and they ploughed through a few case studies like etrade (who are saving $100,000 a month on bandwidth charges because they replaced an html search with a flash widget). When stuff like this starts to filter through I truely believe the flash side will start to pick up. Money talks louder than anything else.

For those of you who've seen Flashcom in action (the new flash server that allows realtime chat, webcam interaction and loads of other goodies at tiny filesizes) it looks like there's a speck of hope on the horizon. I know MM are making every effort to change the perceived image of what Flash is about. I think we have a duty too. I mean look at how most people use animation in flash. If you're clever then you may use animation as a tool to hide the fact that something big is loading in the background - not to do a 2 minute flash movie with a techno loop that no-one wants to see or hear. Where's the CONTENT! :D