Mariam Dholkawala's Blog

The year gone by, the year to come

2007 has gone by leaving a lot to reminisce about, but has made a promise of a 2008 with unexpected yet interesting learning experiences.

The last year started on a good note with the launch of IndiMAD (The Mobiles and Devices User Group in India). The intention was to get all the Indian Flash mobile developers on one platform to know each other and interact. I also organised 2 UG meetings in Mumbai and Bangalore. I was also selected to be an Adobe Community Expert last year.

Attended a couple of events like the Adobe MAX conference in Chicago where I was also the speaker, visited the initRIA in Bangalore, and of course was a part of the CS3 launch in Mumbai, where I participated in an on-the-spot content creation contest (although I didn't win, I liked the idea of participation).

I also wrote a couple of articles beginning with the first on the Adobe Developer Connection on Porting a J2ME game to Flash Lite, contributed to an article in a leading newspaper in India on mobile gaming and finally was in the Spotlight for Flash Lite game development on the GoToAndPlay.it portal.

Last but not the least, I left my job of 6 years at Indiagames for better reasons. Today I see myself exploring and learning a lot more about mobile content development.

On the personal front, I fulfilled my passion of traveling by going to northern India, couple of cities in the west coast of USA and Mexico. I made new friends through my User Group and realized what a great Flash mobile developer team I had in Indiagames. Although we are all now fulfilling different goals outside the company, I know I can always rely on them and they on me!

So what do I expect in 2008...
Definitely the launch of my game development studio called IGameStudio (the portal is yet to launch). Some more articles and speaking engagements. I am already on the roll for speaking at a BarCamp in Pune about "Flash Lite - past, present and the future". I also want my catalogue at IGameStudio to contain exceptionally different content which I will blog about as they launch.

Hopefully lot of traveling to newer countries for personal and professional reasons, participation in many more marathons outside Mumbai, and finally find more reasons to meet people and learn more :)

So thats summing up the year gone by and analysing a year thats yet to pass! Setting goals is only what I can do, because I know life will spring up events that will be so unexpected...

Wishing everyone a great New Year!

Labels: General

posted by Mariam Dholkawala @ 12:04:00 PM