Blog Challenge – Honor Your Inspirations

I am working to finish Part 4 of the Cairngorm tutorial sometime today or tomorrow, but I have a Blog Challenge for all of you out there. Most everyone who is involved in web development has been inspired, encouraged, and taught by people that they might not have ever met. I know that there were a few people in particular that really helped me along the way (people that I have since met at conferences). However, I wanted to take the time to point out the contributions that they made to my development as a web developer. I would encourage all of you to do the same on your respective blogs.

Lee Brimelow – Lee started his gotoandlearn.com tutorials at a time when I was just getting into Flash. I had “played” with it previously, but I had never been a serious Flash developer. The training videos themselves also made a big impact on me. Screencasts (or whatever you want e to call them) have played a big role in the way I receive and offer training. My current Cairngorm Series is a testament to this fact. Lee has made such a positive impact on so many developers, and I am very glad that he is now at Adobe.

TheFlashBlog.com

Ben Forta – What can I say? Ben’s books are never far from my desk. When I was learning ColdFusion, several of his articles were ingrained into my Firefox address bar. However, Ben’s value as a writer is surpassed only by his ability as a speaker. You honestly feel that he could answer just about any question you could come up with. I don’t know of anyone in the community whose opinion is valued more than his. Also, he has answered every email that I have ever sent to him (and usually pretty quickly). I can’t even imagine the number of emails that he gets in a day.

Ben’s Blog

If I can find a wish-list for each of them, I will be giving a contribution to each of them. Hopefully that will help remind them of how much the development community appreciates their contributions. Who are your inspirations?