A little more than six years ago I was working at Fujitsu as well as contracting with Macromedia doing work on the DRKs and other Macromedia projects with my brother Josh. I was then made an offer I couldn’t refuse (thanks to Mike): to move out to San Francisco and join the Macromedia Central team and kick off six amazing years of ‘work.’
What I thought might last a year or two, has ended up being one of the greatest experiences of my life. And as you can probably tell by the tone, it will be coming to an end very soon. I recently submitted my resignation to Adobe and this will be my last week at the company.
I have worked for what I believe is one of the most amazing and innovative groups of engineers, product managers and management in the world. I have worked on great projects; some that have been immensely successful, some not so much. I have had the privilege of working on projects with some of the largest and most influential companies in the valley such as AOL, Yahoo! and Facebook, as well as many other smaller ones. By bus, train, or airplane, I have travelled hundreds of thousands of miles to more countries, cities and conferences than I care to count visiting with thousands upon thousands of developers, customers and partners. All of my closest friends are people I have met while fulfilling my role as evangelist while at Adobe or Adobe employees themselves. I seriously have my dream job. All of this made the decision to leave that much more difficult.
But recently I was presented with the opportunity to help start a new company here in Dallas that will be focused on creating both hardware and software for large interactive multi-touch and mixed reality display systems. I will be running day-to-day operations for the company, along with two other partners and a team of stellar engineers and developers. We are going to be pushing the envelope of what is possible in Flash on some cutting edge hardware, so I won’t be leaving the community to far behind.
This was an opportunity that my time at Adobe has adequately prepared me for. Adobe has afforded me the opportunities and freedom to fill many different roles and have provided all the support necessary. So I would just like to publicly say ‘thank you’ to the company for bringing me to this point and opening so many doors for me.
But more importantly I want to thank the community. It is the Flash community that made my job so enjoyable and made me so successful. We have the most amazing and open community. We have our spats now and then, but we all seem to be able to sit down and have drink together and put that behind us. How cool is that? And while I won’t be an ‘official’ Adobe representative any more, I look forward to seeing you at conferences and events in the future in my new role and showing off some of the cool projects we will be working on.
PS. While my Adobe email address will not work after this week, you can still reach me at daniel.dura@gmail.com.
Daniel Dura 
Best of luck Danial!
Sounds like fun Daniel – good luck at the new gig!
Sorry I mean Daniel!
🙂
Likewise, all the best. Sounds like a great opportunity, and well done for taking it. Keep us posted on those multi touch displays!
The startup you’re working for must be onto some *amazing* things to leave a job like the one you have with Adobe. I can’t wait to see what you guys come out with. Best of luck.
All the best in what sounds like an amazing opportunity.
Derek
Congrats Daniel on your new role with the new company – sounds exciting. It was great working with you while you were at Adobe. Hope to see you around at a conference in the future.
Best of luck with all that lies ahead!
All the best
Congrats on the move and best of luck!
Good luck Danny – sounds like a very cool opportunity!
Thanks for all your hard work, and hope you are leaving Flash in some good hands.
J
Looking forward to hearing more about what you’ll be working on.
All the Best to you.
I have learnt a lot from your blogs, whether it was learning bout CVS and flash back in the day, or trying to migrate from as2 to as3, or learning how to build custom components in AIR, your blogs helped me become a better Flash developer.
Thanks,
Tehsin
Good luck, Danny!
It was really nice to meet you, especially in Europe 🙂 Wish you all the best with your new project which sounds pretty exciting! Happy to read that you won’t leave the Flash Community too 🙂
Good luck at the new place!
PS: you may want remove your Adobe email address from this: http://code.google.com/p/facebook-actionscript-api/
Congrats Danny. That is stellar. Don’t be a stranger around town. Oh, and you were right about the Dollhouse. It got way better towards the end of the season.
I’ve been following your blog and have learned so much. Thanks for all your effort to Community. We’ll wait for another knowledge sharing from you.
Best of luck for you and your new company.
Congratulations Danny.
I am sure that we will meet again.
Awesome, Danny! Congrats. Please ping me when you’re up and running at the new gig so I can hear more about it.
Congrats and best wishes for the new explorations. Will be keeping an eye on your tweets.
All the best Danny! Great job at Adobe and I look forward to seeing you again jumping out of a boat, be ready for #flashcampbrasil 2011. Good luck and keep us all posted.