About Sarah Allen

Sarah Allen is a serial innovator with a history of developing leading-edge products, such as After Effects, Shockwave, Flash video, and OpenLaszlo. She has a habit of recognizing great and timely ideas, finding talented teams, and creating compelling software. She has led small and large teams and confidently turns vision into reality.

She is CTO of Mightyverse, a mobile startup focused on helping people communicate across languages and cultures. The technology is still being incubated, but parts of it are emerging at mightyverse.com. Currently, Mightyverse is primarily self-funded, so Sarah is paying the bills with independent consulting and training.

Sarah leads a small consulting group, Blazing Cloud, and in her spare time works to diversify the Ruby on Rails community with a focus on outreach to women. In keeping with her belief that programming is a life skill, she also regularly volunteers teaching programming to kids. Sarah believes that open source software provides solid technical foundations and compelling business models. She is an expert with Ruby and Rails and is on the OpenLaszlo core team.

In both technical and leadership roles, Sarah has been developing commercial software since 1990 when she co-founded CoSA (the Company of Science & Art), which originated After Effects. She began focusing on Internet software as an engineer on Macromedia's Shockwave team in 1995. She led the development of the Shockwave Multiuser Server, and later the Flash Media Server and Flash video. An industry veteran who has also worked at Adobe, Aldus, Apple, and Laszlo Systems, Sarah was named one of the top 25 women of the web by SF WoW (San Francisco Women of the Web) in 1998.

Contact

follow me twitter/ultrasaurus
or send me an email: sarah (at) ultrasaurus _dot_ com

Personal Statement

I believe that software should be fun. Software should enable someone to do something meaningful that they couldn't do otherwise.

Interests: learning, language (both spoken and code), experience design, social computing, video and motion graphics, communication, art, science ...

Software Product

OpenLaszlo v1-present (contributor)
Laszlo Webtop v1-1.5
Laszlo Mail v1-2
Macromedia Flash Communication Server v1 (renamed Flash Media Server)
Flash Player 6
Macromedia Shockwave Multiuser Server v1-3
Macromedia Director v6-8
Macromedia Shockwave v1-8 (only 5 versions, they skipped from 1 to 5)
Adobe ScreenReady v1
Apple's Open Collaborative Environment (AOCE) released as System 7 Pro
CoSA After Effects v1
PACo (PICS Animation Compiler) aka QuickPICS v1-2

Speaking History

The Mobile Phone is the new PC. Ignite Bay Area | Women Innovators, Dec '09 (slides)
Mobile Applications with Ruby, RubyConf, Nov 2009 (slides)
Rails Webservices APIs and always up-to-date documentation with Cucumber aka Streamlined Geek Talk, July '09, (notes, video)
Cinematic Interaction Design, Interaction 08, Feb 2008
How to Build Webtop Applications, AjaxWorld, Sept. 2007
The Cinematic Web, presentation, DCamp, May 2006
The Future of Digital Product Design, panel, BayDUX, Dec. 2004
Designing Next Generation Web UI in a Declarative XML Framework, GraceHopper 2004
User Interface talk: The future of the Web is not the past of Windows with Bret Simister, July 2004
W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents, June 2004 (position paper)
Making data easier to use with Laszlo, Macromedia User Forum, 2003
Developing Multiuser Applications, Macromedia Web World 2000
ChikTek '97, keynote speaker. A showcase of women using interactive technologies for artistic pursuits. Sponsored by San Jose State University and the San Jose Museum of Art.
How to be a Software Engineer, SFWebgrrls, 1997
Streaming Shockwave Futures, Macromedia User Conference, 1997
CyberDog Unleashed (Shockwave demo), Apple WWDC, 1996

If you would like me to speak at your event, email me.

Awards

Top 25 women of the web 1998 (top25 site, 1998 list, 1998 article)