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May 2009


Events& Flash - General& Web Technology20 May 2009 12:39 pm

This year at the Flashbelt conference, I’m doing a brand new workshop specifically geared to the economic climate that is currently surrounding the multimedia and online industry. Here it is:

Save Yourself Now: What Your Boss Won’t Tell You

In this full-day workshop, Robert Reinhardt teaches you how to build up your self-defense skills as an independent contractor for multimedia/web design and development. If you’re considering venturing out on your own or don’t expect your current employer to watch your back much longer, this workshop is for you. Learn the do’s and don’ts of running your own consulting business without breaking the bank or jeopardizing your future options. This workshop is geared to experienced web design or development professionals who are confident in their skills and yearn to expand their current prospects.

By luck or circumstance, Robert has preserved his career autonomy over twelve years of varied job roles and responsibilities, including teaching, writing and consulting. Robert’s experience with both small and large projects has helped him develop strategies that reduce frustration and anxiety—for clients and production teams.

In addition to his freelance work and evolving his own company, Robert has experience working in-house for companies of various sizes. In one five-year stint, he built a team of just two Flash developers in a small start-up to a full-blown department for a multinational agency. Pulling from personal experience and specific case studies of real world projects, here’s a brief overview of topics Robert covers in the workshop:

  • Picking a legal entity for your business, from sole proprietorship to S-corp
  • Determining hourly rates or project rates, and when to call in for backup
  • Managing your projects on the fly, including open source tools for version control, report tracking, and time tracking
  • Setting up production for Flash CS4, Flex Builder, and FDT
  • Tapping third party Flash resources, from open source libraries to licensed components
  • Improving your own brand through writing skills, from maximizing your tweets to writing published works
  • Leveraging the potential of social networking to further your business and career goals.

If you think this is the workshop for you, register and sign up for the “Freelancing Workshop” (not my preferred choice of words) at the Flashbelt site. If you’d be interested in attending an online version of this workshop, post a comment.

Tonight, I’ll be giving a 15 minute sneak peek at some of the material I’ll be covering at the Flashbelt workshop.

Watch the recorded event here:

http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p33706601/

I presented this session to the FlashMN user group in Minneapolis. Hope to see you there!

Articles & tutorials& Books& Publications& Flash Video& Flash - General& Web Technology09 May 2009 08:41 am

The update to my original Adobe Press book on video and Flash is finally available in bookstores! The new edition has a different title too: Video with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Studio Techniques. I’ve updated this book to cover the Flash CS4 IDE, as well as adding important updates that weren’t released when the last edition went to print:

  • AVC/H.264 encoding tips, including coverage of CABAC, B-frames, and Main/High profiles
  • Discussion of my new Web Video Bitrate Starter application, which helps you get started with the right video and audio bitrate for your preferred video dimensions, frame rate, video codec, and audio codec.
  • Updates to chapters covering real-time streaming (via RTMP) and Flash Media Server (FMS) 3.5 dynamic streaming

I also created a video encoding tutorial covering Flash-compatible output for DesignProVideo.com. If you’d rather learn by watching step-by-step how to create high quality video, or you want to augment the coverage of my book with more hands-on examples, then you’ll like this video training. But don’t take my word on it–just read this review on the forums at DesignProVideo.

Gotta get back to a client job–it’s a pretty sweet AIR app. More details when the product has been launched this summer.