Chester Chipperfield: Developer spotlight

What (Adobe and non-Adobe) technologies are you currently using?

Within my company, Emak Mafu, I'm becoming more and more hands-off but our team mostly uses Adobe Flex, Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, Hessian, mySQL, INNODB, and Eclipse. However, we strive to adapt and use the best technology for the job at hand.

What is your most recent project you've built and what (Adobe and non-Adobe) technologies have you used?

A site we built for the Wellcome Trust, called The Big Draw, to try and get people drawing again uses Flash, Flex, and Java services. A site for Tank Magazine in the UK is a film competition site that uses Flash and server-side encoding to FLV format.

What excites you, inspires you, or makes you say, "Wow that's really cool" about the technologies that you work with?

The ability to save time while expanding boundaries, giving us more room to be creative and deliver more for our clients. The more open these technologies become, the more we can mold them to work best for a specific need. For example, the way the Flash platform has evolved, especially within the past three years, has made it our only choice for development. No other platform can give us the same breadth of possibilities and allow us to be pretty limitless when it comes to realizing a concept.

Where do you get your information about technology?

Blogs, conferences, user groups, friends, geeks, and work.

What are some of your favorite websites or blogs?

• For inspiration:
  • Core77 Industrial Design Magazine
  • Dezeen Architecture and Design Magazine
  • Playfool: Darren Richardson's blog
  • Preoccupations: David Smith's blog
• For Flash/Flex:
  • Ted Patrick's blog
  • Matt Cutts's blog
  • Matt Chotin's blog
  • Mark Anders' blog
  • Doug McCune's blog

What is your favorite or most useful electronic gadget that you own?

The Apple iPhone. It has changed the way I communicate, especially when traveling. The only thing missing from it is Flash!

Favorite TV show, movie or band? Why?

Radiohead, for the way they are leading the revolution against the traditional distribution model for music by ditching their record label and embracing the internet as a tool.

What's the one thing you'd love to see in web technologies in the future?

The constraints of limits being broken down. Being able to deliver to users wherever, whenever. The web breaking out of the screen and into the physical world, interacting with us in a tactile way.

What was the genesis/origin/history for your existing work?

I studied architecture but moved into digital quite quickly. I saw it as immediate and far reaching. My architecture projects started to become more focused on animatronics and data capture, ways of interacting with people and space. Now I'm looking at taking technology the other way.

If you could build something you considered revolutionary, what would it be?

Something that fundamentally changes the rules of society. The way we work, the way we live has not changed significantly for centuries.

What's next for you? For technology?

Next for me is continuing to work with our existing clients as well as finding challenges in new ones, whilst always trying to push the boundaries of technology. It's always nice to find clients who are open to new ideas because without them we would not be able to innovate as we do.

For technology, it will always cater for our immediate needs. Obviously everything is shifting from the operating system to the web, but I think it will be balanced out with a movement towards interacting with the physical. Sensors connected to applications, integration with fabrics, and mobility will all become more important.