Meet The Speaker: Opher Vishnia

As part of our preparations for YGLF 2019 Code Camp (it's almost here!) we're excited to share with you another interview, in the series of interviews, with this year's amazing speakers. Hear their stories and their professional insights. This time we're with Opher Vishnia (@Opherv)

Q: Hi Opher, tell us a bit about yourself

I'm a multidisciplinary creator, invested in many fields like computer science, art, music, design and game development. Honestly I just never decided what is "the thing" I do and my areas of interest kept growing and growing (and my sleeping hours shortened and shortened). I think it's super interesting when unrelated fields collide, because that provides the ability to ask questions and see things in new perspective that might not have been possible otherwise. For the past six years I've been working at Eko as lead creative developer. What does that mean exactly? In my day-to-day I push JS, CSS and other browser technologies to the extreme to support interactive video, a new and exciting creative medium on the web. Working here I had many interesting "extracurricular/non dev" opportunities like writing the script and directing the video for our developer website, and even developing and presenting a short VR film that was featured at Cannes film festival and the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC These days I'm learning how to be a dad... which proves to be my greatest challenge yet :)

Q: Who is your favourite tech thought leader and why?

I don't know if that fits the bill, but the Keyframers are a great resource. During their show David Khourshid and Stephen Shaw present and teach how to create really interactive web interfaces in real time.

Q: What advice would you give yourself at the outset of your career?

Be curious, learn, create, do, act. Don't worry if what comes out is "not good enough", "uninteresting" or "uninspiring". Inspiration and motivation are a fleeting thing, and once you force yourself to be in the habit of creation only good things will follow.

Q: What will you teach us at YGLF 2019: Code Camp?

I will discuss animation through the lens of my experience developing rich interfaces for interactive apps and games. These are very stateful softwares, where state changes happen frequently and constantly trigger and re-trigger animations. My goal is to give attendees the theory & tools to manage such interactive animations in their own apps.

Thank you, Opher!

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