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Subject:	FLASH: Deja Vu All Over Again
From:	Tom Green
Date:	Sat, 29 May 1999 16:00:17 +0100

J wrote:

> Indeed, It will be interesting to see what happens.
>
> A tool that was traditionally used by people who were mainly talented in
> graphic design is now limited only by the programming ability of the user.
>
> <snip>
>
> I was at UCON and was constantly amazed by the number of people I talked to
> who were sent by the "Boss" to learn about Flash so they could come back and
> make a cool site. The majority were very techie MIS types and a few others
> worked exclusively in the print industry until now. A little scary. Any
> thoughts?

Actually the Boss thing makes me smile. Back in the good old days, 1983- 87, a
lot of "Bosses" would see a demo of a product, buy the product and wonder why
they couldn't make it work because the demo made it look so easy. So here we go
again.

The MIS types should come as no surprise. Though the trend may be spooky I make
it clear to my classes that letting those boys loose with this technology
(Director included) is like letting a crazy man loose with a gun. Consider the
fact they think Power Point is just the greatest ,and having seen some of their
ransom notes, they can now let the whole world see how dumb they are because
their ransom notes will walk and talk.

It's a lot like the early days of DTP. There will be a huge amount of crap
foisted on corporations because they have no basis for quality or pricing
comparison. Once they start seeing much of the neat stuff out there, the
Submarine comes to mind, they will be hauling in their MIS boys, asking them
why they can't have that too and suddenly the quality bar is raised.

As for the print guys, this isn't scary. Remember these are the people who know
how to design a page. Show a print guy a web site and he or she will see the
underlying frame structure not as HTML but as a "grid". Just a slightly
different way of looking at the same thing.These are also the guys who
understand they can't do it all themselves and are quite comfortable working in
a team environment where everyone deals to strengths.

It's the MIS guys who are really scary and we will have to wait about a year or
two before they get it through their "button-down minds" that maybe they are
out of their depth.

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