Steve Kury Profile

February 1, 2000
by the DOUG staff

Name: Steven H. Kury
Location: Burlingame, CA (San Francisco Bay area)
User Group: San Francisco Macromedia Users Forum
E-Mail: skury / at / primenet.com
Homepage: http://www.primenet.com/~skury

Birthday: January 24, I'm an Aquarius
Education: B.A. '93 - Bard College, Graduate Studies - California Institute of the Arts
Nickname that I hate: Schteeve
Job Title that best describes what I do: Developer and Producer of Interactive Media
Years in Multimedia: 5 professionally

The last good book I read: The Mythical Man-Month
Favorite music to crunch code by: All good Jazz, with a capital "J," including Miles, Benny Goodman, and Charles Mingus among others
If I wasn't doing this, I'd be: Snowboarding
I've always wanted to meet: Ray Kroc
When they make my life story into a movie, they'll cast: Brad Pitt

Currently working on: Development of a corporate communications CD-ROM, and a new cutting edge entertainment application
Three words that best describe me: candid, punctual, creative
Browser preference: Netscape, of course
If I had a time machine, I'd go (pick a year): 1970, and hangout in Amsterdam

DOUG: Steve, you've recently left Macromedia where you were working on the QA team for Director 8. Can you tell us what QA does and how they coordinate with the other groups there? What did you do day to day?

SK: The QA team serves several functions at Macromedia. Its principal job is to find and report bugs in the product, either implementation mistakes or design errors, as it is built. So, its job is to give the development engineers some grief, be a devil's advocate for the "user," and be an advocate for the quality of the product in every way.

One aspect of this is to create test applications within Director that exercise individual features and combinations of features.

QA also takes part in the design and specification stage of the product's new features. During the beta phase of the product cycle the QA team interfaces with the beta community, which is a lot of you, in order to process the bugs you send in. This includes verifying that every bug reported is indeed a bug.

The QA team is integrated into the development team by pairing a QA engineer with a development engineer. They design and build each new feature, basically "owning" it. As that feature is developed the development engineer creates, on an almost daily basis, a bare bones build of Director with just the latest version of that feature and no others. The QA engineer then does his/her testing on that version of it and reports the bugs. This way the development engineers receive feedback on the bugs as they build it and fix them expeditiously, rather than waiting until after they build the whole thing and finding out about them much later.

DOUG: You were developing a lot of CD-ROMs before you went to Macromedia. What kinds of projects did you work on?

SK: My favorites were integrated CD-ROM/internet/server controlled systems. The first of which, chronologically, is a distance education course for the film school at University of Southern California, and the second is an online casino gaming system for World Wide Web Casinos. That's right, my slot machines pay the winner REAL money. (This was an actual casino where you give them your credit card number and gamble over the internet, with the offshore servers located in Antigua.)

I've also done a variety of small interactive projects and Shockwave games... you know, the typical stuff.

DOUG: There's a strange sort of glamour attached to working "inside" at Macromedia, but that's a big shift from production. Did you miss actually developing programs?

SK: Yeap. Doing QA on Director and using Director to develop projects are two different things. As a developer you get to create the goal of the project and have something to show for your time. If you do a good job everyone notices. But in QA, you don't create the goal of the project, you find bugs made by the people who create the goal of the project. A bad QA job is more noticeable than a good one.

The vast majority of things that QA engineers build with Director are just bare bones test cases that demonstrate bugs, nothing that you can sink your teeth into. There are some bigger, more challenging things that they do there, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

DOUG: Now that you've gone back to producing programs, the experience at Macromedia must change the way you do things... the way you look at a project. Can you share any insight on that?

SK: Sure. I have learned alot about what goes into hardcore software production and is important to it. This includes source control, a formal Quality Assurance process, the issues involved with a large product team, and the software process in general. Not everything scales down to the average multimedia project, which is usually much smaller, but they give some good insight into what needs to be done.

DOUG: I would think that having a stint at Macromedia on your resume would be a career building move. What's next for you? Where do you want to go with your skill set and your career?

SK: It is proving to be a career building move. I'm now more or less a "certified" Director expert. Picking up Lingo engineering jobs is easier than it used to be.

With this as part of my experience in interactive technology I want to move into the project management arena. That is my next career goal. Hands-on experience in software and multimedia/internet development gives a project manager valuable insight into what they are managing. I think that project managers without the experience of actually doing project work stand out from those who do, and it can be a detriment to them.

I do admit that project management and development are two different professions though. Studies at U.C. Berkeley Extension gave me a lot of insight into both. I enjoy building projects, and enjoy working with the team to make them happen at least as much, if not more.

DOUG: How did you get into multimedia?

SK: I grew up with music and computers. I learned how to program BASIC on an Apple II+ in seventh grade, and started doing motion graphics then. In college my senior project, basically an undergrad thesis, was a massive integration of electronic music and video, playing with counterpoint between the two mediums, and also synchronicity/dis-synchronicity between them. This brought me to the conclusion that multimedia is what I should be doing, creative applications of technology.

I moved to Southern California to pursue an MFA at California Institute of the Arts, left after the first year because art school wasn't for me, starved for a while doing the Hollywood thing, and eventually got into production with Director.

I would like to point out that I don't distinguish between multimedia and the internet. It's all "interactive media" to me, and considering that there are many good ways to integrate CD-ROMS with the internet, which I have done, I hope to continue working on big supersystems where the two blend together seamlessly.

DOUG: What part of production and development do you like best? Where do you think you excel?

SK: As the Director developer I am usually a focal point of the project. This is because everything, the art, graphics, sound, specs, and design decisions come together through me. I get to work with all the different people, from the artist to the producer, and help them refine their ideas and get what they are doing ready to come together in Director.

I enjoy working with others to work out their ideas and bring them to fruition. As a project manager I would be in a better position to do this and have a global impact on the project. I consider myself to be an advancer and refiner of ideas.

DOUG: How do you spend you time outside of work? How does this affect your work?

SK: Outside of work I touch my computer as little as possible. I want to get out and do more personally interactive things. This past weekend I went snowboarding for the first time, in Tahoe, and I really want to do more of it. I also like going to the movies, doing the offbeat things that are available in the SF Bay Area, playing volleyball, exercising, and getting outside in general.

As for the impact this has on my work, I want to do good work and achieve the desired results expediciously. Hopefully I will be able to work with more clients and/or have more time to myself outside of work.

DOUG: What will you be doing in a year? In five years?

SK: Tough question. In a year I see myself managing interactive projects, possibly doing a mix of development and management. Five years, you'll have to ask me in three or four, but I'm sure that it will be an advancement of what I am doing now. It would be nice to get rich and retire, which in known to happen in Silicon Valley.