Los Angeles Technologist, Entrepreneur, Educator and Community Leader
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About R Blank

R Blank

R Blank is an entrepreneur, author, community leader and teacher, specializing in web technologies for over 15 years and Adobe Flash for the past decade.

R is CTO of Almer/Blank, an LA-based Adobe Solution Partner specializing in Flash application and game development for clients including Apple, IKEA, Ford, Konami, and the House of Blues. R also runs the Rich Media Institute, offering training live and online, based in Los Angeles and Toronto. Previously, R co-founded Wildform, where he co-created Flix, the first video encoder for Flash.

In his spare time, R manages LA Flash, the Adobe User Group for Flash in LA with over 2,800 members, teaches at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, and participates actively in community activities, including user group meetings and conferences. He is the lead author of Advanced Flex Application Development book from Friends of ED, Practical ActionScript 3 and numerous other on-demand course titles for the Rich Media Institute, Adobe Flash CS3 JumpStart online training and Inside Adobe Flash 8: Project-Based Training DVD from Magnet Media, and numerous articles for Adobe DevNet and the Edge Newsletter.

R has an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, with a specialization in Entrepreneurship. His undergraduate degree is in History (with a US focus) from Columbia University. During college, R additionally matriculated at Cambridge University (Cambridge, UK), the University of Salamanca (Salamanca, Spain), and the Institute of Foreign Lanaguages (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia).

Some of R's random claims to fame include:

  • Building the first website for a movie on the web (Sex, Drugs & Democracy, 1994)
  • Building the second website for the Parliament of the Republic of Georgia (1997)
  • Building the first website that included video embedded inside of Flash, for Tibetan Buddhist Scholar, Robert Thurman (2001)
  • Co-creating the first Flash video encoder (2001, Wildform Flix, now owned by Google)
  • Building the first interface and help system for a desktop PC application in Flash (2000, SWfX, now Wildform Flair)
  • Being one of the first 50 certified Flash developers in the world (2002)

R loves hiking and camping and considers himself far better a cook than he actually is. He hails from New Jersey and now makes his home in Topanga, California, with his gorgeous fiancee, Cindy, their beautiful golden retriever, Leila, labrador terrier mutt, Max, and the most outstanding bunny in the world, Pippin (all of whom can be spotted in the header at the top of this page, if you reload enough times).

You may contact R through this form.

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