For most followers of InsideRIA, this blog post will hold little relevance—for good reason—but as an FYI and an opportunity to toast others, I’ll be stepping away from managing InsideRIA and Adobe Developer Library and moving on to being associate publisher for the new Microsoft Press/O’Reilly strategic alliance (more here). http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/microsoft-press-oreilly.html

I really mean it in the header of this post: Hopefully no one will notice that I’m no longer involved, since that will mean I’ve done my job in setting up an operation that can thrive on its own.

InsideRIA began as a coincidence of notions: After creating the Adobe Developer Library co-publishing partnership, and being at O’Reilly and (naturally) seeing the convergence of open-source technologies with proprietary tech (e.g. Flash, ActionScript, Flex, Silverlight), I wanted to expand into an online community site for the rapidly emerging area of Rich Internet Application development.

What do you know, but Adobe had the same idea: to create an online community resource for RIA folk that existed on neutral ground. We huddled with Craig Goodman and Jonathan Wall of Adobe; Adobe offered to underwrite the site, and we all agreed on some basic guidelines for editorial neutrality: No employees, including fulltime contractors, of major-player companies would be among the content contributors. Thus, you won’t see InsideRIA blog posts or articles written by employees of Adobe, or Microsoft, or Google, or Sun etc.

Craig Goodman also had in mind the perfect person to bring in as InsideRIA’s community manager: Rich Tretola (@richtretola), who had also been thinking about the need to create an online gathering spot for RIA developers.

In three short months, Rich and I worked with O’Reilly’s Laura Painter to set up and launch the site by January 2008. Since then, Laura’s handed over the web producer duties to the incomparable Rachel James, who is responsible for a lot of the great ideas for usability and functionality (she’s responsible for implementing all of them, too) on the site. We’ve added a slew of regular contributors (more each month) and are constantly working on new features to make InsideRIA a richer experience (“RIA Radio” will make its debut later this month, thanks to Garth Braithwaite and Stacey Mulcahy, Zach Stepek and Leif Wells). In the past six months we’ve really begun to see the numbers take off: we just passed a quarter-million page view per month, and the growth rate is heading into hockey-stick territory.

All thanks to you: we appreciate your giving us a chance to serve you, and I know this sounds corny, but it is absolutely true: InsideRIA is a community. It’s you, me, and anyone who wants to take the time to read, listen, share thoughts, help others, bitch and moan, raise alarms, sooth tempers, add perspective, speculate, educate, and have fun.

The new O’Reilly-side managers of InsideRIA will be Mary Treseler (@MaryTreseler) and Mike Hendrickson (@mikehatora), both of whom are veterans of the O’Reilly open-source programming and web design/development realms, and who are champing at the bit to help Rich and Rachel make InsideRIA even better than it is now. They’ll be at MAX with me in L.A., Oct 4-7, and I’d love to introduce you personally if you’re out there.

In the meantime and thereafter, let us know what else you want to see on InsideRIA. We’ll do our best to make it happen for you. Thanks, cheers, and see you online…

--Steve Weiss, O’Reilly Media

steve@oreilly.com

@steveweiss

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