Dale Rankine

I’ve often thought about the day that I would write this blog post, wondered what I would be feeling and how to sum up 5 eventful years in a single entry. Now that it’s here, I’m feeling relieved, excited, sad, anxious, privileged, and relaxed … what a combination!

In January 2010 I’ll be winding up the daily activity of my company Moket, after accepting an offer to take up a new position as Experience Architect at Vodafone Hutchison Australia.

The decision to re-enter the workforce after 9 years of running my own businesses (Moket + DRD Interactive) was of course not taken lightly. There were many contributing factors, and I won’t bore you with all of them, but instead pick out some of the more important ones.

Firstly, running your own business is hard, hard work. Especially if you’re out on the bleeding edge of something new, as Flash Lite was in 2004 when I started Moket. As many of you will appreciate, I’ve invested a huge amount of time, effort, cash and emotion into Moket and the various business models we pursued to try and monetize Flash Lite development in those early years. Working in a start-up takes a toll on you and also your family, and mine certainly rode the roller-coaster with me the whole way.

Trying to create a mobile ecosystem around an early technology like Flash Lite certainly had its challenges. Whether it was device penetration, industry support (or lack thereof in the pre-app-store days), player features or lack of synchronicity with the rest of the Flash Platform, there was always a hurdle that needed to be jumped. And of course we jumped over many of them, only to find more on the other side. This is true though of many start-up ventures and nothing to complain about really (cause it’s what you expect), but it was particularly true of Flash Lite. I look back on it now with Flash Player 10.1 on our doorstep, and wonder if I wasn’t 4-5 years too early – but hey, you always need early adopters!

While the Flash Lite train chugged along, my life also started to move into a new phase. My youngest daughter is starting school next year, making 3 kids at school and needing all the things that school-kids need. The time had come to re-evaluate the idea that Moket was started on (Flash mobile development), to see if the business still had something to offer, and to see if I was personally ready (along with my wife) to continue to commit to the burden of owning a business based on a platform that had not delivered what we had hoped. The answer, most importantly to the last question, was no. The time had come to look to see what I could achieve with a larger company, and using the experiences, skills, knowledge and contacts that I had developed throughout the life of Moket.

As you’ll appreciate, 2009 has not been a stellar year for switching jobs (losing them, yes, but starting new ones, no), especially when you’re coming out of running your own company for so long. After a fair amount of searching, praying, phone calls and emails, I’ve been able to secure a fantastic position that really takes advantage of (nearly) everything I’ve done with Moket, and pushes me into new directions as well.

My official title is Experience Architect at the newly merged Australian telco, Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA). The role however is a lot broader than the title suggests. I will be leading and managing a team of designers and developers, focused on creating and delivering innovative smartphone applications to customers. We will be focused initially on the iPhone, with Android, Blackberry and other platforms into the future. I’ll have the task of setting the vision and applications roadmap, strategic initiatives and performance measures.It’s like a small start-up venture inside of a corporate (however VHA feels like a start-up itself in many ways, only bigger!), so I’m very excited to be taking a senior role in the context of this new aspect of their business.

The position is also based in Sydney, so my family will be relocating in time for the kids to start at a new school. Quite the adventure for us all!

“But where is Flash?”, I hear you ask? Good question! I see Flash (FP10.1, Flex Mobile Framework, AIR) as playing a role with my new team – exactly what that role is I’m yet to determine! It could be with exploring the various ways in which we can use the unified Flash Platform to extend the reach of certain applications, or perhaps using it as a rapid prototyping tool for apps that will ultimately be built using native SDK’s … like I said, I’m not sure yet With that in mind though, I’ll certainly be staying “inside” the Flash mobile community and won’t be disappearing completely into the App Store just yet!

There are too may people to thank here, but I’ll be reaching out personally to those of you who have played a major role in Moket and my work in the Flash mobile community. My Moket email will remain active for some time, and I’m still on LinkedIn and Twitter for keeping in touch. I’ll also continue blogging and hopefully conference speaking where possible and appropriate, so not much will change from that perspective.

And finally … I wish all of you a very happy and safe Christmas, and all the best for the new year!