Tariq Ahmed
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Bio
Tariq's software development career started at the ripe age of 10 when he began coding on his VIC-20, saving his applications to a tape drive. As time went on he moved onto the Commodore 64, Amiga, and eventually the Windows and UNIX platforms.
His formal career began at Bell Sygma Telecom Solutions based out of Canada where he introduced Web Applications to this 30,000 employee monolithic Enterprise, he then did a stint at PSINet implementing their global eCommerce solution before migrating to California where he worked at a REUTERS subsiduary (TIBCO) as a Portal/Content Management Systems developer. It was at REUTERS where he discovered ColdFusion, and has been using it ever since.
After REUTERS he joined eBay, where his next major technology adoption occured with the discovery of Adobe Flex. Tariq lead the campaign to adopt Flex (back at version 1.5) within the Operations organization, which then later proliferated to other organizations. eBay is now a heavy adopter of Flex for internal productivity tools and externally with their AIR client and ActionScript API libraries.
Tidbit: Tariq's replacement at eBay was Tom Ortega who then founded the Silicon Valley Flex User Group, and the 360 Flex Conference.
Now in his mid 30's he's the Manager of Product Development at Amcom Technology where he oversees all software development activities for Amcom's clients. The team specializes in web based RIA applications using ColdFusion, Flex, AJAX, SQL Server, and Business Objects based Business Intelligence. Although business activities are a key role, he continues to stay hands-on by actively working on software projects.
Tariq is also the lead author of Flex 3 In Action (FiA) - a book for coders who come from traditional web technologies, and progressively takes them on a journey of understanding. Flex can easily be frustrating to newcomers who are used to the ease of their current language, so FiA takes an approach of leveraging your existing skills by using examples that you can relate to in your current tech vs how it's done in Flex. It gradually introduces topics on an as needed basis so that you only need to worry about learning one thing at a time. Plus various ways of doing the same thing are explained in depth so that you understand your options... and lastly, FiA makes learning Flex fun!
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