Where are you from?
Our studio is in downtown San Francisco, close to the water. I'm fortunate enough to live in the same building as our studio. I'm quite lucky because I can breath recycled air all day and literally never go outside (there's a subway station under the building so I've been known to go for weeks without ever being contaminated with "nature").

Where did you grow up?
I'm a Midwestern boy. Born and raised in Marion, a little town in the heart of Ohio. Marion is a great place to growup. It's right out of "Our Town": peaceful, open, safe. I have great memories growing up there… playing flashlight tag, creating robots in our garage, being dressed up as a girl by my sister…

What are your pastimes and interests?
I love to read. I try to squeeze reading in as much as possible. I recently purchased a PocketPC and now read eBooks on the subway and train. Reading is such a joy and a mind opener. I find that when I read, I am more creative. I'm more plugged into the world around me. Our collective history, people, events, achievements, dreams and hopes - the entire human experience. I just finished reading Shakespear's "Titus Andronicus" and "Julius Caesar". I read those as background support for my current project: Edward Gibson's 8 volume set on the "Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire". It's a tome, but I'm hooked.

I also enjoy history. I love ancient history especially. The further back that I can go, the better. I'm fascinated by the unending human link. The Roman Empire sits on the foundation of the Greeks. The Greeks on the foundation of the Mesopotamians and Babylonians. The Babylonians on even more ancient cultures. You can trace the human experience and basics of our cultures back along the coasts of the world and end up in the central plains of Africa over 100,000 years ago. 100,000 years ago our ancestors were very much like ourselves. They created and appreciated art, music, friendships, told stories, entertained one another, educated their children. They had culture and they passed that culture in an unending link down to us. What we have today, what we appreciate, our concepts of what is pleasing and distasteful, what is entertaining, mystifying, valuable, frightening, beautiful - it can all be traced back in an unending link to our ancient ancestors who, either out of need or boredom or because they learned it from their parents taught their children the things that have given root to who we are today. It's fascinating and humbling. And, we're all a part of that unending chain.

What's your favorite saying or cliché?
"No matter where you go in life, there you are." Buckaroo Banzai. There's a strange, deep trivialness to this saying…

What's your favorite movie?
That's a tough one … It would have to either be "Citizen Kane", "Schindler's List", "My Dinner with Andre" or as a documentary Bill Moyer's interview with Joseph Campbell entitled "The Power of Myth". "Citizen Kane" of course was just an incredible, groundbreaking movie in so many ways. It certainly deserves the recognition it receives. "Schindler's List" is simply a powerfully, emotional movie. Any movie that can move someone that much is high in my book. "My Dinner with Andre" - I have only seen it once years ago, but I remember it. I like its concept - an entire movie that eavesdrops on a benign dinner conversation. No fancy camera work. No expensive locales. Just a camera pointing at two people eating and chatting. "The Power of Myth"… what can I say. If you haven't seen this series, you need to stop reading this article right now and go experience it. You'll learn a lot about yourself and what it means to be human.

What's your favorite cocktail?
Campari and soda.

When did you first get involved with flash?
Ahhhh, let's see that would be in June of 1999. My good friend, Keith Nichols introduced me to the technology over a phone call. He called and said "Neil, you have to drop by my office right now and see this." So I hopped on the bus and shortly thereafter my life changed. He showed me the original Gabocorp and I realized that the technology had finally arrived. The technology that would permit us as artists and designers to advance the medium to the next level. For the first time, we could now express ourselves online. We could build true, interactive experiences. Not HTML, but true time-based experiences. It was a momentous occasion for me and it really did change the direction of my life entirely.

What is your view of the current use of flash?
That's an interesting question … I assume you mean what do I think of what's being created with Flash today … I think there's some real innovation going on and I want to encourage that. At the same time, I see a lot of derivative work happening as well. That's to be expected. I would have to say that I'm pleased. I'm pleased that so many designers and artists are adopting and creating and learning rich media. We need more people creating rich media. "We need more Flash production to turn the tides to victory!" Seriously, the more that we can grow and share and explore and experiment with rich media and all it has to offer, the better off the Internet is going to be.

I do think that these techonologies like Flash and LiveMotion have lots to offer. Much more than we're doing with them right now. That's not a slight in any way. The technology is new and as the pioneers of this new medium, we have to explore and experiment. We have to push and touch the boundaries and push further. That's our obligation. There is so much potential … so very much potential that we have yet to explore. I encourage everyone to think outside the box. Become a child and play. Ideate and then create.

Who do you feel is advancing the use of flash the most?
As far as advancing the use of Flash, I'd have to say it's all the developers and designers who are using Flash and LiveMotion and related technologies. These are the guys who fight the battles; who convince clients and managers to use rich media; who know what the technology can and cannot do and apply that knowledge to commercial work. I think Macromedia has to be recognized here as well. They have done a superb job of proliferating the player and in the end this has made all our jobs easier. Adobe and Macromedia have also done an incredible job creating these great authoring environments. Listening to us as developers and adding those features and functions in that make all our late nights a little more pleasant and a little less late.

As far as advancing the state of the art - that's a harder question. I see some innovation going on in interface design. I think companies like Monocraft helped to start that. Truthfully, I don't yet see a lot of innovation in other areas like: user experience architecture and innovative applications of the technologies to create new and compelling experiences. I wish that weren't the case and I'm hopeful that it will change because as an industry we need deep innovation. We need to do more than just touch the boundaries, we need to blow right through the walls.

How successful has :Fx been?
:Fx has been a wonderful success. It has surpassed my expectations on what we could create with the technologies. We have empowered thousands upon thousands of people with the ability to create rich media who normally wouldn't have had a prayer. And, we've done this by pushing the state of the art and hopefully opening up some new growth opportunities for technologies like Flash and LiveMotion in the area of online application building.

We're learning so much about true client/server architecture and how to integrate various and disparate server technologies into a single, cohesive system that is commercially viable. This kind of knowledge is invaluable and each and every day that goes by teaches us something new. It hasn't been easy by any stretch of the imagination but each day, we sign up more users, improve the system and learn more. That's important success in my book.

Are there many competitive products appearing?
You bet but none of them yet truly offer everything that :Fx offers. Probably the closest is Chrom-OS. It's a wonderful technology and beautiful but it is more of a shrink-wrapped product in its design and implementation. I think it's important to remember that :Fx is a true online application. That means you don't need to download anything or perform an install or upgrades. The user experience is seamless from the moment you log onto balthaser.com. This is important because it is the future. The .Net strategy from Microsoft and VB.net is helping to propel us in this direction. The sooner you can familiarize yourself with the intricacies involved with this new kind of architecture, they better off you're going to be. Companies and consumers are pulling away from the 20-year old concept of floppy disk based applications. We use CDROMs today but it's still basically a jumbo floppy disk. We need to break out of this mentality because it interferes with the user experience. And, the user experience is what is paramount. Anything that doesn't promote a better user experience needs to be jettisoned. So, we're still waiting for another technology to come along that is a true online application - one that wraps user experience around an application and then puts it all online in a client/server model. I think you need all three of these things in order to be truly competitive to :Fx. We will see it happen. In fact, all applications will be this way one day, but today, :Fx is the current leader.

What features can we expect to see added to :Fx?
Well, it's a company policy not to comment on specifics concerning future development work but I can paint you a broad stroke picture. Besides our ongoing effort to add more effects and objects into the system, our users are going to benefit from :Fx's most fundamental philosophy: to empower our users with the ability to do the impossible. To abstract complex and complicated technologies and make them available at the click of a mouse or the press of a button. That's our mission statement and it's the reason why we created :Fx. Our first objective is to empower our users with the magic of creating Flash. Drag and drop rich media for the rest of us. We've just begun this effort with the launch of :Fx and we will continue to build up this library of rich media objects steadily with each and every passing day. But, there is so much complex technology out there that needs to be simplified in order for their benefits to be realized by our target audience. These are the same problems and challenges that we all run into everyday as advanced developers and designers. Look at the hurdles and challenges that you or your design team has faced in the last year and you will pretty much understand where we are heading with :Fx. Because, what the balthaser.com's are developing for the big boys, is exactly what our :Fx users want as well. There's no difference in needs, just in experience and what they can afford to pay.

I can't say too much more about this but suffice it to say that all the things that excite us as advanced rich media developers also excites our :Fx user base and it is our responsibility at Balthaser to not only master those technologies but make them accessible to our users.

Are you developing any other products?
:Fx will keep us busy for some time. There are exciting applications of the :Fx technology that we will work on - derivations of the architecture and technologies that will take it into new spaces and markets but no new products that we can mention at this time.

The studio continues to work on advanced prototype work for Fortune 500 clients. Much of this work is what I term "pink" or the implementation of technologies and visionary prototypes that stretch out 2 to 5 years. I call it "pink" because if you think of advanced technologies as a color spectrum, then those technologies that are screaming away from us into the future are red shifted. "Red" technologies would be 10 plus years out, "pink" 2 to 5. What we are learning and developing in this advanced r&d work will directly filter into :Fx.

Where do you see the future of flash?
The future of Flash and LiveMotion is in online application development and everything that this new segment has to offer. We're seeing a fundamental shift in the basic concepts behind application building and what an application should be. We're seeing fundamental shifts in how people interact with technology; when and where and how they access that technology and what they expect from technology. These are big issues and they are being catalyzed by big companies like Microsoft. So, it's important that we understand first, where technology is heading and how it is evolving and second, what our role in all this is. Are we just designers or developers? Will our roles, as they are presently defined exist in the future? How will they evolve and ultimately, what does that mean to us as designers and what should we be learning today? Answers to these questions will tell you what the future of Flash and LiveMotion is: total, integrated authoring environments for the creation and maintenance of these new kinds of sophisticated experiences. Not standard application development but true online applications infused with experience and rich media. Macromedia and along with it Flash will probably be absorbed or will merge with a technology partner that can offer the other pieces to this sophisticated puzzle because I can't see one company offering the total integrated solution that is needed.

What advice would you give to budding flashers?
Don't let anyone tell you it can't be done. Believe in yourself and dream. Dream damnit! What your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. If you dream big dreams and believe those dreams, life will figure out a way to make it happen for you. If you don't believe me, just remember that all 100,000 lines of Flash actionscripting in the :Fx client was done in that little, tiny scripting window in Flash 4.0! If we didn't believe, we wouldn't have achieved!

What can FK01 attendees expect from you?
A sharing of knowledge, vision and experience. We have gained incredible experience at Balthaser in areas that are going to have a profound effect on designers, developers and the technologies and experiences that are going to be demanded from us. I look forward to sharing these lessons with the FK01 attendees and to a meaningful dialog that will help us advance the state of the art. The future is in our hands and we must accept and embrace the challenge. I hope to do my part in sharing knowledge and shedding light on the wonderful possibilities that lie ahead.

Any closing words?
Be open to new things. New concepts. New ideas. New approaches. Keep an open mind and embrace change when it arrives. Never limit yourself. You must remain true to the concept and the dream - always. Everything else is superfluous, including those things we presently hold so near and dear to our hearts and which seem absolute. Fortune cookie say "Change is coming".

If you would like further information on speaking opportunities please contact: Mark Fennell(webmaster@flashkit.com). We have conferences planned in LA, Sydney, and Europe and Asia as well, so let us know your interest!