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Everybody needs a hobby- So what’s yours ? Resurrection !!

By Himanshu Mody on 22 Comments / 2384 views

Awarded the

“Rodinstar” Post 

of the week!!

Above is the screenshot of what you see when you mouse-over on the Products link on Adobe website. Did you notice something unusual ?

I see something I never expected to see in my lifetime. Flash is missing. Well, it is there listed somewhere on the products page itself. But It is no longer part of the Main-course at Adobe.

As an Entrepreneur who has built his career around Flash Platform this probably means end of story.
Time and again in my career I was asked this question that ‘What if Flash ends’ and I would mostly just laugh it off.

Well it is happening. Although Flash is not dead , from being an answer to all problems – multiple screens , different browsers, different devices, front end for Enterprise Applications [flex ,Nothing yet anywhere close to what Flex can deliver] to it being limited to a platform to deliver engaging Games. Ironically I started my career with flash 12 years ago launching a Game development course 🙂 

I might not agree to the why and what behind what Adobe did. But I can certainly relate to it as an Entrepreneur. The company is answerable to its investors , to its shareholders and to its users itself. They gave Flash Platform everything they had , it probably did not bring the numbers and someone decided to change the Game.

The announcement of making flex open-source in November 2011 sent shockwaves throughout the community. As a company in short span of time I lost over 25 employees and suddenly from being proud of my ability to retain talent , I was facing a resignation mail every other day at work. Of course cannot blame everything to the announcement. I did not have answers or explanations to people who were leaving. 

It was time to face the reality. I stopped living in denial and started looking at things as is. Although in terms of assignment there has never been shortage of work in flash or flex But that was not enough for me to maintain the status quo. 

With the team that is left – we open our mind to new opportunities in front of us. Adobe had started focusing on new products and new segments. Once again as an entrepreneur I put everything on table and invested heavily on building skill-sets around these new opportunities.

After all every other institute taught flash, what made the difference is how we did it at Tekno Point. And customers continued to believe in us , HTML 5 became the most popular course that Tekno Point offers.  This gave me lot of confidence.  

So here I am ,starting yet again.  Today we launched our new website – www.teknopoint.in . You will find many new offerings. Specially one of the course that I have personally started delivering – CompTIA CTT+ certifcation course. It is a train the trainer course which will help me to generate more trainers in the ecosystem – my biggest limitation to scale Tekno Point. 

Rodinhoods is the place I first wanted to share this announcement of new website with. For rest of the world it is going to be just new look , new navigation etc. But my friends here will know and understand – Its a Resurrection. 

Reminds me of what Daniel Craig says in Skyfall when asked ” Whats your hobby” and he replies “Resurrection”. 

I will Survive. 

Addendum [ Copy paste of my comment  as I think it is important ]

Folks at Adobe have been extremely helpful and supportive  in taking us through the transition. Do not feel abandoned 🙂  Happy to continue my journey with them. 

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22 Comments

  1. you know himanshu…. resurrection says it all! totally loved the way you’ve portrayed your story.  i had goosebumps as a re-lived your survival in your words. great attitude – our young members have lots to learn from this post.

    so proud of you for penning this down and sharing it with us….

    you will more than survive. and we all know that!

    all the very best!

  2. thank you asha 🙂 

  3. You will definitely rise to bigger heights than before.
    Your attitude shows it Himanshu.
    I lesson I learned from “The Dark Knight Rises” movie:
    “Even if you lose faith in yourself, don’t lose faith in what you stand for, the cause. Resurrection then is just a matter of time.”

  4. Inspirational for me and for the all new youngsters taking place in market, Well hope never ends what it needs is efforts. Nice to know about your story and success, by the way congrats and good luck!

  5. Thank u Siddhartha ! Resurrection has to happen first in our mind….. Rest is just incidental….. 🙂

  6. Thank u Surabhi.

  7. My comment from a previous article of yours: 

    Adobe has a vested interest in propping up a dead horse but deep inside their planning chambers they have seen the writing on the wall.  That’s why they are providing Flash to iPad ports.  It is only a matter of time.  In the meanwhile they don’t want to kill their developer community with shock.  Watch the announcements over the next few years – eventually they’ll kill flash.  Silverlight is already on death row.  

    Best of luck with the reinvention.  Not just survive.  Thrive!! :))

  8. They actually shocked the community 🙂 Even the community could see the writing on the wall. And everyone was taking steps towards embracing new opportunities.  I think they should have announced drop of flash on mobile and stopped at it.  To open source Flex was so unnecessary. There is no alternative to what flex can do for enterprise apps.  Anyways it is all behind us now. 

    My company has adopted to 3 focus areas – Adobe Marketing Cloud, Creative Cloud and WEM in last 15 months and now its matter of time that all cylinders fire, propelling us to next orbit. ( Thriving )

  9. Reminds of one line from Alok’s ET piece about the Italians.  “Never trust the government”.  In this case its a case of “never trust big biz”.  The only reason they won’t screw the community is it helps the bottom line.  Otherwise its a toss up to whichever way the wind is blowing.  🙂  Google is a great example of community screwing. :))

    Plan sounds good but putting everything into the Adobe basket is risky you may want to look at diversifying in the future.

  10. Folks at Adobe have been extremely helpful and supportive  in taking us through the transition. Do not feel abandoned 🙂  Happy to continue my journey with them. 

  11. That’s good but to beat the ‘independence’ drum here’s where I see the problem:  Your offering is more supplier driven and less market driven.  And the inbuilt assumption is that Adobe’s assessment of market opportunity will cascade down profitably and usually it does.  But that means you will be left scrambling to change direction every time Adobe makes a move like they did with Flash.  Not that Adobe is going to evaporate overnight but I just feel uneasy being at the mercy of a single supplier especially a behemoth like Adobe who will sympathetically cluck and offer a shoulder to cry on due to the shitstorm you have to wade through without the insulation of a lot of money.  Of course the flip side is to become such a great Adobe partner that they can’t do anything but merge you into their fold.  :))

  12. Hey Himanshu,

    You’re one of the youngest entrepreneur I’ve come across. You’re also one of the guys I looked up to when I was just starting off (and still do 🙂 ). Remember iWeekend?

    Just keep going strong. But as Abey said, see if you can diversify. BTW, HTML5 does help you do that, right?

    Just saw the site. Looks good overall. The home page looks little imbalanced, especially because of the empty section below the courses. May be you can reduce one of the tabs from the right column. All in all, good stuff. All the best

    Ronak

  13. Thank you Ronak , very nice feedback 🙂  I will revise the sizing to remove the imbalance. 

  14. Hey Ronak, 

    Took care of the empty section. 

  15. Nice. Just saw it.

  16. himanshu,

    pls look at the top of your post!

    your die-hard spirit of true entrepreneurship needs to be saluted…

  17. Thank you Asha 🙂 was so overwhelmed with all that is going on….. and this message of yours just helped me to tell my self…… Go on….. So happy to be part of this amazing community. 

  18. I know how it feels. I also know it feels better to get up, and get going; makes stronger and better.

    I still write code in ActionScript, and use Flash because I love it. 

    At the same time, I have started loving open-source and standards; there is no company which can kill a technology, and leave us the way Adobe have to. I understand, they had their reasons. 

    All the best with new courses, I know you would do great, whatever you do.

    -abdul

  19. 🙂 Asha has her finger on the community’s pulse.  🙂

  20. Himanshu great post 🙂 ..  

    One thing important in Business (and I have learned partly from you), is that never have all your eggs in one basket.. At CloudThat we try to be as vendor neutral as possible. 

  21. Thanks a lot Abdul.  

  22. Yup , CloudThat is the new basket 🙂 

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