Director of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Director of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft
- Past
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- Consultant, RIA and UX Strategy at Self Employed (Self-employed)
- Principal Evangelist, Platform Business Development at Adobe Systems
- Group Manager, Platform Evangelism at Adobe Systems
- Sr. Product Manager, Adobe AIR at Adobe Systems
- Sr. Product Manager, Flash at Adobe Systems
- Technical Product Manager, Flash at Macromedia
- Sr. Web Evangelist at Macromedia, Inc.
- Systems Administrator at Becton Dickinson Biosciences
- Recommended
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8 people have recommended Mike - Connections
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500+
connections
- Industry
- Computer Software
- Websites
Mike Downey’s Summary
Mike Downey is an experienced product manager, evangelist, marketer, and developer relations professional with over ten years of experience in the software industry. Mike has been a prominent figure in the web development industry for years and has spoken at industry conferences all over the world. His efforts in building, fostering and growing a vibrant user community have resulted in continued growth both in users and revenue. He is an active contributor to the developer community and excels at managing relationships with strategic partners.
Mike Downey’s Specialties:
Product management, evangelism, social media strategy, product marketing, developer relations, public speaking, presentation development, requirements gathering, strategy, decision making, messaging, product demonstrations, software development, training, Silverlight, .NET, C#, Flash, Flex, AIR, Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, web services, SOA, objective-c, cocoatouch, community, photography
Mike Downey’s Experience
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Director of Platform Evangelism
Microsoft
(Public Company; MSFT; Computer Software industry)
July 2009 — Present (5 months)
Director/Principal in the Developer and Platform Evangelism group focused on Silverlight.
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Consultant, RIA and UX Strategy
Self Employed (Self-employed)
(Self-Employed; Writing and Editing industry)
February 2009 — July 2009 (6 months)
I provide consulting services to companies looking to understand how to implement user experience design practices into their existing product development processes in a practical way. I also provide in-depth strategy training on rich media and rich Internet application technologies including the Adobe Flash Platform, Microsoft's Silverlight and .NET Platform, social media technologies, agile product management, and innovation strategy. Contact me at madowney@gmail.com for more information.
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Principal Evangelist, Platform Business Development
Adobe Systems
(Public Company; ADBE; Computer Software industry)
April 2008 — February 2009 (11 months)
Mike Downey is the Principal Evangelist for the Platform Business Development team at Adobe Systems. He focuses primarily on identifying partnership opportunities and turning them into strong relationships that are mutually beneficial and lead to the expansion of Adobe's developer platform. Mike also spends a great deal of time doing developer relations activities that include speaking at conferences, blogging, video interviews, building product demonstrations, writing, and other customer-facing activities. As a spokesperson for Adobe's Platform business unit, Mike is regularly featured in the technical press talking about Adobe's various platform technologies including Flash, Flex and AIR.
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Group Manager, Platform Evangelism
Adobe Systems
(Public Company; ADBE; Computer Software industry)
April 2007 — April 2008 (1 year 1 month)
Mike Downey was Group Manager of the Platform Evangelism team at Adobe Systems. He created and assembled the new Platform Evangelism team as a result of a growing international demand for highly-skilled product expertise focused on Adobe's new AIR desktop runtime and Flex development framework. Within six months Mike grew the team from one to seven members based in North America and Europe, recruiting some of the top minds in the industry.
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Sr. Product Manager, Adobe AIR
Adobe Systems
(Public Company; ADBE; Computer Software industry)
November 2006 — April 2007 (6 months)
Mike Downey was responsible for product management of Adobe AIR. As Sr. Product Manager, he organized and drove the product requirements process and made tough decisions to determine the minimum viable product for version 1.0. He also led the effort to attract the Ajax developer market to the new platform by organizing interviews with Ajax developers and key influencers. Mike also instituted a rigid product requirements definition process called "Synchronous Product Development". A process that yielded incredible results for the product team.
Mike also spent a great deal of time engaging the user community, handling PR activities for the new product, and acting as a primary spokesperson for Adobe AIR.
Also key to his role was helping to manage strategic partnerships with key industry leaders to get early adoption of the new platform. In several cases, Mike was able to identify, engage with, and get commitment from some of the biggest names in the industry. -
Sr. Product Manager, Flash
Adobe Systems
(Public Company; ADBE; Computer Software industry)
September 2004 — November 2006 (2 years 3 months)
Mike spent over three years as the product manager for one of Adobe's flagship products, Flash. His duties included leading the requirements gathering process for the Flash 8 and CS3 releases including the first implementation of the "Synchronous Development Process" at Macromedia, a process that involved close interaction between lighthouse customers and the product team throughout the product lifecycle. Under his tenure the product exceeded revenue forecasts every quarter aided by his creation of innovative customer engagement programs, delivery of the features and quality that the customers needed and his attention to the product roadmap.
Mike's biggest challenge in this role was managing the integration of the Flash product into the Adobe family of tools following the acquisition of Macromedia in 2006. As a part of the "clean room" team, he was one of few employees to drive integration planning between the two companies prior to finalization of the acquisition. -
Technical Product Manager, Flash
Macromedia
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; MACR; Computer Software industry)
October 2003 — September 2004 (1 year )
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Sr. Web Evangelist
Macromedia, Inc.
(Public Company; MACR; Computer Software industry)
September 2000 — October 2003 (3 years 2 months)
Mike joined Macromedia as a Sr. Web Evangelist focused on engaging the user community, strategic partners, and key customers with technical presentations, training, support, and relationship management. He spent most of his time delivering technical seminars all over the world that reached over 800,000 people in just three years. Mike's focus was on the Dreamweaver and Flash product lines and he provided in-depth instructional materials and presentations that ranged from absolute beginner to seasoned professional. He regularly taught complex technical subjects and languages including application servers, ASP, ColdFusion, JSP, XML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and ActionScript.
It was in his first year in this role that Mike would begin a nine-year run as a United 1K flyer, accumulating over 1.2M miles flying around the world and meeting with customers to share his passion about web technologies. -
Systems Administrator
Becton Dickinson Biosciences
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; BDX; Biotechnology industry)
June 1998 — September 2000 (2 years 4 months)
Responsible for network and server administration and web application development for the company's Intranet. Microsoft MCSE and Cisco CCNA certified.
