Flow is Complete

2 years is a long time; at least, It is for someone who was used to working on projects that range in length from 3 hours to 3 months. Taking the time to get something right is a luxury that you rarely get in most areas of production. At least time that you get paid for. It was for that reason I originally took a position with Gridiron Software. Making a move that few people understood and others called me crazy for doing so. Why would I essentially walk away from what some people have described as one of the coolest jobs in motion graphics to work for a small startup software company in a city that ranges in temperature from -40 to +40. And working in software?

The reason why is now available for all to see, try and hopefully buy.



Flow is an extraordinary new tool.

It was in IBC in Amsterdam in 2006 that I first met the guys from Gridiron. Introduced via a friend Wes Plate at Automatic Duck, I spent a few hours talking with Steve Forde, their president. We had a long ranging conversation talking about the stuff I had done for movies, ideas I had for better ways for interacting with systems for creatives and showed me a sneak peek of a little tool they were playing with. Nothing more than a small command line application that was tracking everything that happened on a system. One of the first and most basic iterations of what was to become Flow.

We followed up 4 months later and I spent a week with them in Ottawa, talking about the design of a front end for the application and how creative users could best leverage the amazing technology the guys had developed. Two days after I started working with them, I took the job. There were many reasons for doing so, personal and professional, but you rarely get the opportunity to work on something so radical and with a team of inspired and brilliant people. It was too good an opportunity to not take.

It has been a hard journey as well as a cultural shift in so many ways. To go from freelancer to employee in a company, to move from England to Canada, to convert from fast turnaround, almost single shot productions to a development process that is painstakingly iterative and drawn-out. All large challenges on their own, but combined is another matter entirely. Yet, they are all ones that have been worth it. Flow 1.0 is done.

I am proud to have been a part of the great team that have realized Flow. This is just the start and there are so many great things we can do with this, so many avenues yet to explore. There is a larger vision that I and others have for this product and what you see now is just the first (huge) step. What we have done together, the development team, extraordinary users and testing team, is pretty cool, what is coming will be even more so.