About Sarah Allen
Sarah Allen is a serial innovator with a history of developing leading-edge products, such as After Effects, Shockwave, Flash video, OpenLaszlo and Laszlo Webtop. She has a habit of recognizing great and timely ideas, finding herself amidst a talented team, and creating compelling software. She is now an independent consultant who is excited to figure out what happens next.
Sarah most recently led the devlopment of Laszlo Webtop with a focus on creating an approachable and efficient user experience for web mail and other online applications, along with RIA/AJAX coding patterns for developers. Sarah is also an active contributor to OpenLaszlo, an open source, XML-native foundation for building rich client applications that deliver a breakthrough online user experiencei in either Flash or DHTML/AJAX.
Sarah has been developing commercial software since 1990. 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, introducing streaming video and multi-party communication in Flash Player 6. She has also developed software tools for multimedia, digital video, and graphic arts at Adobe, Aldus, and The Company of Science and Art (After Effects). She 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 Projects
- 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
- 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)
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