I grew up on a farm in a small town in New York. Early interest in all things technical led to a degree in Electrical Engineering and a job as an integrated circuit design engineer for Hewlett-Packard. H-P encouraged employees to try new things and my interests in engineering, graphics, and communications led to a new career in technical marketing, then product management for office automation software. I eventually joined a startup in consumer electronics. Initially the sole member of the marketing department, I quickly embraced Heinlein's remark that "specialization is for insects."
In 1995, Mark, an engineer friend, showed me a new, free bit of software called a "browser." I had sampled online communities, having been a pretty heavy user of CompuServe, but when I saw the web, a light came on. Mark and I built the company a website (pretty much on the sly, since the boss told us to quit wasting our time).
We beat all our competitors to the web -- including Sony, Panasonic, and Canon -- and developed a body of informative material on video editing and videography. It worked. Attracted to the information, customers began to find us. So did search engines. Then we were chosen Cool Site of the Day -- which, in 1995, was a huge deal. After a day of struggling to keep the server alive, traffic settled down to 5 times what it had been, and grew from there.
The company is gone but the lessons aren't. I had a passion for the Internet and in particular, how it is uniquely suited to sell product in business to business or business to consumer settings. I learned how to work the web to drive business.
And that's what I do, professionally. I am lucky enough to have found a company that "gets" it and sees the strategic value of the web.- Views: 600Published version: 4Edited: Dec 27, 2008 2:20 PM
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Thank you for your reply and yes, I agree, there are alternatives. My comment was that in many situations, the alternative...Published version: 1Edited: Nov 1, 2008 2:24 PM
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