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So, we'll assume that the audio is working.

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Yes, even with the loud music.

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I'm pretty sure it is, but so we're here, you know,

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there's this little special edition of RA Weekly video, obviously.

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And we're here at Adobe Engage.

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It's like February 25th, I think?

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Yes, it is.

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Yep, and so this is like the second Engage you guys have had.

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This is the second one.

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It's very different from the first Engage, too.

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Right.

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But you were in both of them, in fact.

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I sat next to you.

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That's where we first, I think, met.

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That's right, you were sitting next to Anne.

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Yeah, oh, that's right, exactly.

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Yeah, you were behind us.

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And she kept being like, "It's Ryan Stewart."

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And I was like, "Who is that guy?"

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They're trying to get things started up.

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So, why don't you tell us what you thought of the first morning?

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Your unbiased opinion has meant to be interesting.

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I thought it was good.

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I thought we had a lot of interesting tech, you know, a lot of interesting companies.

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The FedEx app is going to be great.

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Hopefully, the next half is more air-centric stuff.

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So, we'll see what happens instead of just purely playing.

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And NASDAQ should be good.

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All right, well, we'll check it out.

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So, I am here with Carnet, the CEO and founder of Sprout Builder.

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So, by the way, we're at Engage.

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We're at Adobe Engage 2008.

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And Carnet was one of the presenters of Sprout Builder,

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his flex application that outputs Flash content.

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Do you want to give us a quick run-through as to what it is?

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Yeah, it's basically a web-based interface for building sophisticated Flash content.

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So, we wanted to take the programming out of building Flash, but also to still provide a lot of powerful features.

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So, it's basically, imagine a Photoshop interface via a web browser that outputs basically a Flash file.

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But we've added a couple of twists.

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We add concept card components.

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You can add a lot of powerful features like RSS feed, Amiibo chat room, Ribbit phone without doing any programming.

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And then when you publish it, you can also get a lot of analytics via Google Gadget ads, Giga,

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ClearSpring or Spring Widget.

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So, sort of a lot packaged into something that doesn't actually take a single line of code.

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So, now did you guys choose Flex because, you know, you want to output Flash content?

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Is that sort of the reason?

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And then what was the experience actually building an application like that in Flex?

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It's one of the more compelling reasons I've seen to actually do Flex, you know, one of the more complex Flex applications that I've seen, I think, in a long time.

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Yeah, actually, Flex was very compelling.

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We actually started in ActionScript 2, doing a lot of HTML and JavaScript.

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And that's actually how we built our proof of concept, which was late 2006, early 2007.

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And we're the classic company.

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We actually had to wait for Flex to catch up to what we wanted to do.

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And as soon as they did, we converted it into a production environment in Flex.

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And obviously, you know, our long-term goal is to actually have it as an AIR application.

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We actually, right now, have a Flex application.

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We're actually putting complicated HTML layered on top.

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So, a lot of the trades that you see falling down are still in HTML and JQuery.

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But we're going to convert that onto Flex as soon as we can.

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So, now, obviously, you're kind of a unique position because you built a rich internet application that helps people build rich internet applications.

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So, you kind of bought into the Kool-Aid.

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Yeah.

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But what do you think, like, why is it so exciting for people to actually create the kind of content that you enabled them to create?

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Like, what makes that compelling?

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Well, I think, as I mentioned a lot of folks, I think we have a generational shift coming along.

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The era of self-expression, maybe the last four or five years, has really exploded.

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If you look at the long tail, you know, we went from 45 million unique domains to over 700 million unique pages.

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And that was about self-expression.

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I'm sharing a video.

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I'm sharing a slideshow.

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Well, I think we're seeing the pendulum swing back where these people now are saying, I need more.

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I don't want to just do self-expression.

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I want to actually do self-promotion.

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I'm a blogger.

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I'm a musician.

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I'm an artist.

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I want to put together much richer content that actually is for a purpose.

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It's bringing you to my site.

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It's having you buy my album, whatever it might be.

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And so we're seeing the pendulum swing back.

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And that's actually why we built Sprout.

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Is to really address this new self-promotion group that's coming online that needs tools more than what's available.

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So it's that group between, you know, using a simple bling widget creator and those who can design and flash.

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There's a huge middle section that we're hoping to address.

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Yes.

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So how hard was it to build it?

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I mean, how do you feel about Flex and Flash after having gone through the entire project?

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We love Flex.

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I think the biggest accolade you could have is that a bunch of our engineers are ex-Java developers.

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And they said, this is how Java should have been built.

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In a way, they told me.

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And these are hardcore Java guys, so I didn't put these words in their mouths.

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They're like, they finally got it right.

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This is like Java version 2.

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It's Flex.

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And so I have to tell you, my guys, we train them all in-house.

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I think a lot of people said, oh, there's not a lot of good Flex developers out there.

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But I think with sort of the way it was designed, we've got two really good types of sort of channels.

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If you're a really good web developer, you understand web development.

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So jQuery, JavaScript, PHP, you can actually learn Flex very well.

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You'd be very good at the front-end Flex development.

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If you're a Java developer, a lot of the way Flex is built is also very familiar to you.

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So we've been able to retrain our Java developers to build in Flex.

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And retrain our web developers who are all sort of JavaScript, you know, jockeys to build in-place.

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So it's been a great sort of synergy where our engineering teams actually met in the middle.

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Because before the Java guys would never talk to the front-end guys.

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Now they're actually building the same environment.

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It's been really exciting to watch.

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That's cool.

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Well, thanks a lot, man.

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Yeah, that's great.

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Would you like to introduce yourself?

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I'm Peter Humphrey.

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I work for BA Systems.

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I do developer marketing.

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We recently introduced a bundle of our developer tool BA Workshop Studio with Flex Builder 2.

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They're SDK 2 and the sharding component.

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Oh, that's right.

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Which is why we're here for the show to kind of promote the job of Flex Connection.

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You know, I'm sort of an old enterprise hand, if you will, right?

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Yeah.

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So we're finally in my wheelhouse.

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We've got a lot of videos and DJs and stuff going on here.

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Yep.

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So it seems like a lot of, like, early flex usage and RA usage in the enterprise.

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It's basically a really nice front end for business and tech for BI stuff.

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And is that--

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BI is a primary use case.

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Yeah.

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Reporting with their--the charting components are actually really great.

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Right.

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And I think you find a lot of Ajax programmers within the Java community who are--do not quite

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have the expertise to do it.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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So they want to leverage the component libraries from Flex.

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Right.

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That's what I'm seeing drive a lot of the Flex adoption within the Java community.

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And are you seeing it just bleed to general UI stuff?

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Or is it mostly, like, are people isolating it to parts of their--their BEA stack?

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Uh, yeah.

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There's--there's--there's people--I think 'cause there's a lot of--sometimes there's

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hesitance to go full guns with their proprietary stack.

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Right, right, right.

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So they usually want to do a POC where they dabble with it, you know, one port--let in a portal,

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or try one reporting application that's internal before they try rolling it out to some sort

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of larger audience.

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And--and so, I mean, obviously, like you're saying, you guys have Flex Builder and Flex,

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so you're--you're all mixed up into that.

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But do you see, like, some opportunity for air, say, air use scenarios as far as offline

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and desktop and drag and drop access?

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Absolutely.

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Um, you know, I think that the offline case is pretty good because you can't really--you

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can't buy that from too many other vendors.

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Yeah.

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You're really in a do-it-yourself scenario.

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Right.

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And, you know, we're all a pretty mobile workforce these days.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So that's one of the things that got me excited about it, as well as the sort of back-end

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integration.

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Adobe has one of their products called Live Cycle Data Services, which you can use to plug

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into the back-end service.

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And you guys sort of OEM or partner or ship that or something, right?

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Actually, no.

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We only partner along the Flex Builder lines.

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But, you know, if I could wave a magic wand, maybe we'd do something there.

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That's right.

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I think there's some good synergy, but not yet.

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Well, you know, like, I forget if I was talking to you about it, but I'm always thinking

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people that I'm telling Adobe they need more back-end stuff.

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Yeah.

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I mean, they've got the filing cabinet of PDF stuff going on.

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Absolutely.

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It's kind of like all these jobs.

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Well, thanks.

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I appreciate you taking the time.

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Fote, nice to talk to you again.

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We'll see everyone later.

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Take care.