I went to the Venture All Stars event here in Seattle yesterday. The event itself was kind of lame, but I got a chance to finally meet Robert Scoble. I tried to ask him about future Adobe topics on his Scoble Show, but he misunderstood my question and then we got off on a tangent. So I’ve got nothing for you.But I did meet up with Hans and Craig and we talked a lot about Flash adoption. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but talking to them and other people in the community prompted me to actually write about it.

I’m seeing tremendous adoption of the Flash Platform recently. I think business of all sizes are really excited about Flex 2 and extending Flash. 3 months after the release of Flash Player 9, it’s fantastic to see this much excitement. People are finally starting to take Flash seriously as a development platform and are chomping at the bit to get started. But after they buy into the platform, they’re finding that there just aren’t people who can help them on their projects. There is a HUGE lack of Flash talent out there, and it seems to be starting to affect platform adoption.

Adobe has done a great job getting designers to learn and invest time in the Flash platform. If you wanted to do creative things on the web, Flash was your only choice, and so the cost-benefit of training and learning Flash was worth the effort. But developers are a different story. They have a TON of options for building web applications, and convincing them to invest time and energy learning a new platform is a tougher sell. I think Adobe realized this, and you saw them try and get their ColdFusion user base to start building Flex 2 applications. That seems to have had mixed results, and now we’re seeing a talent crunch.

Companies who see how great Flash can be are excited, but very timid about jumping head first into a platform without a large number of developers. Small shops who are starting out and using Flash are having a tough time finding talented people that can make the dream a reality. For existing Flash developers, this means you get to pick your spots and make a ton of money. But in the long run, this isn’t sustainable and it will start having an even bigger impact on how quickly Flash is adopted.

Frankly, I’ve got a lot of faith that Adobe can pull more developers in. I talked to a lot of people while I was there two weeks ago, and they all seem to get it. And there is no lack of enthusiasm. The hard part will be translating that enthusiasm into a concentrated developer strategy. Adobe wants 1 million Flex 2 developers, and I think that’s more than attainable, but developers are harder to convince than businesses. You have to convince them that Flash is a good career move. For a lot of developers, that idea is still very foreign.

[tags]Adobe, Flash Platform, Flex[/tags]