By Robert Janelle

Web developer Roger Obando signed the mortgage papers for his new house, then walked into his boss’ office at to give notice that he was quitting to work freelance.

In this interview, we talk about networking to score clients good uses for Flash on web sites (and obscene uses…) along with the many ups and downs of freelancing.

RJ: First of all, congratulations on the Webby award. What was it like working on a web site for a company as big as Sony?

RO: Thank you very much! The whole webby thing came as quite a surprise really. We submitted the site and started telling everybody we knew to vote for us when we got nominated in the hopes of winning the people’s choice. I think the folks at New York Times had a few more friends than we did though. It was funny because on the voting site you could see up to the minute voting results up until the last couple of days at which point we had fallen woefully behind NYT. We all went on about our lives and then we got notification that we won the real Webby which more than made up for the loss of the people’s choice award.

Working with Sony has always been a real treat. They were a pleasant surprise from the very start. I worked on that project in collaboration with Sisu, a design firm here in Southern California that I do a lot of work with. We pitched the project against a slew of other agencies and were probably one of the smaller firms (virtual firm at the time) they saw. We put a lot of effort into the pitch and I suppose that came through. The other surprise was the fact that we pitched an open source solution which, from my experience in big consulting, I didn’t think they would go for. In my experience, big names like Sony like to have a phone number to call when something breaks. With a PHP solution, like the one we pitched, there is no such number. You just have to grit your teeth, hit the message boards, and figure it out. They were very level headed and realized, much like many of my other clients, that using an open source solution saves an incredible amount of overhead costs which can then be redirected back into the project.

I was surprised by how small the team is for sony.com. Sony is broken up into many smaller teams (electronics, games, Sony style, etc.) and the group we got to work with was just responsible for the sony.com homepage and corporate information site. Each of the groups has to be cognizant of the others but they each get to run their own ship. I think that lead to them being able to work with our suggestions. They didn’t have much of an existing legacy system that we had to fit into. They respected our opinions as the experts and because of that we got to deliver more than they even asked for.

RJ: Along with Sony, you’ve got some other major clients in your portfolio, how did you link up with companies like Fox and CBS?

RO: I must say that I have been very lucky with the clients that I’ve been able to work with. I’ve also been very lucky in that I’ve never had to seek out work, it’s always come to me. I’ve always worked on a referral basis. This is going to sound corny but watching my father run his own business for years made me realize that if you deliver a quality product to a client not only will they ask you to come back for more but they are also going to recommend you to everybody they know. This is exactly what has happened to me over the years. I’ve also found that honesty really resonates with my clients. I’m honest almost to a fault with them. I’ve never been one to ask “how high” when told to jump. I’ve always been more inclined to ask exactly why they think I should jump and the recommend the elevator instead. I think there are a lot of yes men in this industry and my clients appreciate it when somebody can tell it like it is.

One of my first clients when going freelance was actually the firm at which I had been working, Blitz Digital Studios. The guys there were entrepreneurs themselves and understood why I was taking the road I had chosen. They were great and hired me to work on a few projects for them on a contract basis. One of the next clients I got was CBS who came to me when one of the guys I worked with at Blitz recommended me to a buddy of his who was currently working on their in-house web team. The story continues on from there in much the same way. It’s kind of like the whole six-degrees of Kevin Bacon thing. Each team I have worked with is connected to each of the other teams I have worked with in six steps or less. I think being in Los Angeles has had a lot to do with it as well. There are so many interactive firms out here and the average stint of a designer/developer at any one of them can’t be much longer than 18 months. Every time one of my clients or one of the team members that I worked with moves on to a new job he/she takes my name with him.

I think one of the keys to being successful for me has always been to treat my business as just that, a business. I have been in situations with other contractors who do things I just can’t believe. I mean, I’m all for the contractor lifestyle of make your own hours and do what you want but, at the same time, in order to run a successful business your clients need to know that they can depend on you. I’ve seen guys just up and leave from projects leaving clients high and dry, I’ve seen guys unapologetically show up to work half a day late and expect everybody to be ok with it. A lot of guys will leave at six o’clock on the dime just because that’s what they signed up for. I started out of college working for Sapient, a large consulting firm, and to this day I think the teams I worked with there consisted of some of the most competent and driven people I have ever worked with. While I was working at Sapient there was always a feeling of “we’re in it together” and on many projects there were late nights where nobody went home until everybody could go home. While lots of late nights was one of the reasons why I left that job it’s a little different when it’s your client’s project on the line. The late nights are no longer about making the boss happy, it’s about coming through on promises you’ve made to your clients. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there’s nowhere that the expression “you’re only as good as your word” is truer than in the freelance world.

RJ: What do you like about being a freelance coder as opposed to working somewhere in-house?

RO: There are so many things! Where do I begin?

I think the first and most important aspect is the fact that I don’t have to do projects I don’t want to do. Working in big consulting I found that I was generally working on projects I didn’t want to be working on. It was never up to me and I found it very hard to keep motivated. That is really no longer as much of a problem. Sure I do projects from time to time that are not ideal but there’s always a larger picture in mind.

Variety! I’m a bit of an ADD case when it comes to my work. If I’ve been doing a lot of Flash work I’ll start to miss doing backend programming work. If I’ve been doing a lot of programming work I’ll be itching to do some animation. Being able to pick and choose the projects I want allows me to set my schedule so that I’m constantly moving onto something that I’m excited to be working on. This allows me to not get in a rut with my work. It also allows me to make sure that I’m staying up to date with the latest technologies. For example, I’ve been doing a lot of Flash work lately so I’m currently looking for Flex work so that I can be excited about working with a different technology as well as sharpen my skills.I think most people would expect me to say that I can make my own hours but, quite honestly, that’s not all that true. With the magnitude of the projects that I generally work on I can be booked on projects for upwards of 3 months. I will generally overlap projects as well in order to make sure I have a steady stream of work (and money) to depend on. I definitely work better hours (8:30 – 6) then when I was employed but I still work pretty full days. There is the occasional dry spell which I’ve learned to enjoy. When I first started in this line of work it would freak me out when I had more than a couple of weeks of downtime but now I realize that it all evens out in the end and that I should enjoy it while I can because for every low week I have I’ll have one where I’m working till 2am for 7 days straight. As a matter of fact I’ve been having one of those weeks for the past 2 months now!

RJ: And what are the disadvantages of freelance coding?

RO: There are so many things! Where do I begin? Seriously, there are many more downsides that I had expected.

Client management! I never appreciated project managers enough while I was in consulting. As the projects and teams (I have been employing subcontractors on projects for some time now) have been getting bigger and bigger so have the headaches. I find myself missing the days when I could just put my head down and work but I suppose that’s the way things go. I acknowledge that it doesn’t have to go that way but it’s the way I’ve decided to take my business. It’s actually been great for my professional growth.

No steady support team. One of the great things about working on a team is…the team. You get to know the folks you’re working with and the team doesn’t change much from project to project. That completely goes out the window with freelancing. In my line of work with the exception of repeat clients you get to work with a new team on each and every project. It’s kind of like being in a band where the members change for each show. It’s so hard to get into a good groove. At the same time this has lead me to really sharpen my “hit the road running” skills. Doing this over and over really teaches you exactly what to expect and what can be expected of you when you start a new project with a new team. This can be useful in every area of business.

Clients can get skittish about giving larger projects to somebody other than a firm. I can’t say I blame them, it makes absolute sense. If I’m handing out a large project that has to be completed on time I’d like to know that there is more than a single point of failure that needs to go down before my project gets hosed. This is more of a problem with new clients but it’s sometimes hard to get people to take you seriously as a development option when you don’t have a “firm” in your back pocket. Generally after a project or two my clients realize that they can trust me and the projects get larger but it’s hard getting my foot in the door sometimes.

RJ: What drew you to work on the Flash platform?

RO: I studied computer science and visual design in college. They might as well have called it a major in Flash. When I first came to the industry Flash wasn’t very widespread so my only real option for mixing design and programming was DHTML. I did a lot of DHTML for many years and was always trying to push the envelope as far as I could but inevitably the browsers were constantly pushing it back. While at Sapient, I had ended up in the Chicago office (the Sapient trail was long, NY to London to Chicago to Los Angeles) where Sapient had speculated a tidal wave of work would be coming through. Well it didn’t and I was bored out of my mind so when a buddy of mine from Sapient NY who was working in Los Angeles on a Nissanusa.com property asked me to do some Flash work I jumped on it. The next couple of weeks were a crash course in Flash for me and it was the best thing that could have happened. I had no idea how much scripting was possible in Flash (Actionscript 1.0!) and how little people were really taking advantage of it to that point. Actionscript (Flash’s programming language) and JavaScript (DHTML/AJAX core language) are based on the same scripting specification, ECMA, so the transition was quite painless. On top of that, the fact that it was browser agnostic really sealed the deal for me. I ended up doing a lot of Flash work for Nissanusa.com and had the LA office ask me to join their team. That’s how I ended up in Los Angeles and that’s how I ended up as a flash developer.

RJ: Flash takes it’s share of flak from web designers as often unnecessary and slow, from a design point of view, what do you think is the idea use of Flash for a web site?

RO: I think a lot of people abuse Flash and those people really give it a bad name. It’s not so much the case these days but a few years back there really was a lot of Flashturbation going on. What I mean by that is people using Flash for no practical reason other than because they could. Add to that developers who really don’t know what they’re doing and you end up with bloated annoying page elements…the animated gifs of the day. That being said, I believe the best use of Flash is the Flash that you don’t even realize is Flash. For example, most people don’t realize that YouTube’s video player is made in Flash. As a matter of fact you’ll be hard pressed to find any online video player that isn’t. Flash has a huge presence in the online video market and due to this a large portion of my business these days is dedicated to developing video display media. I’m sure those same people who had complained about Flash being unnecessary and slow would also complain about having to download three different video players to watch video online and I’m sure they don’t realize that Flash has eliminated the need for that. A lot of people also probably wouldn’t know that the new Yahoo! Maps site is done in Flash (well, Flex but Flex is nothing more than a Flash framework so it’s all Flash in the end). All that being said, I think there are three ideal areas for flash usage.

1. Page spice! Because of the fact that the animation work you can do in flash is so much more intricate than anything else you can put on a webpage often small flash touches can really add to the overall aesthetic of a page while adding no more weight than an image would. You just have to be mindful of not crossing the line into the world of “too much” with this though.
2. Truly Immersive Experiences. When you really want to control every aspect of you site design and interaction there really is no better tool on the market than Flash. You can basically recreate any and all functionality of the browser within your own site. This allows you to control how every aspect interacts with other aspects of the page and, more importantly, how everything on the site feels and flows. Good examples of this are http://www.sony.com, http://www.vw.com and http://www.gettheglass.com/.
3. Rich Internet Applications (RIA for short). This is really becoming more of the job of Flex these days but Flash has been the best way to develop RIAs to this point. A good example of this would be Yahoo! Maps or, to a lesser extent, Flickr which uses flash as the display medium for slideshows and the like. These sites would be infinitely more difficult to implement if the Flash technology were not available and as widespread as it is.

RJ: What advice would you give to other freelance programmers or freelancers in general?

RO: In my opinion there are two things that a freelancer needs to guard with his/her life.

YOUR REPUTATION. You’re only as good as the last thing you do right? When times (to be read clients) are tough and you get the urge to walk away from a project or to deliver something that is sub par think about how that will reflect upon you. Don’t think of a project as belonging to your client, think of it as belonging to your portfolio. I know that in my industry, at least in Los Angeles, the network of freelancers working at this level is very small. I know a group of about fifteen of us who pass projects around to each other when we ourselves can’t handle them. This network is a great asset to have. The minute you let a client down or deliver something that is anything but great every one of the people in that network and most likely each of their regular clients will hear about it. So protect your reputation!

YOUR NETWORK. This is really the most important tool I have in my bag. Without the network of connections that I’ve amassed over the years I would not be doing the level of projects that I do. When I say network I mean other freelancers and clients. With a healthy network you can become a go-to person for all of your clients. If a client of mine approaches me with a project that I cannot handle due to availability issues I am able to recommend at least one or two other developers that might be able to help them out. When the time comes that I need subcontractors on a project those same guys are usually more than willing to help out. Your network can be your business development team and your support team all at once. These are services that we as freelancers usually don’t get the luxury of having.

If you can manage to have both a good rep and a good network the rest of the pieces will just fall into place.

Robert Janelle

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