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10/30/05
So, yesterday was my birthday. Important and symbolic things happen on my birthday. 10 years ago, I flew to San Francisco on the 28th for my first Macromedia conference. I landed and canceled my rental car and business hotel reservations and found some funky old hotel downtown instead. Then I walked through the city on the 29th. During that time, I thought a lot about starting my own company to create games and multimedia. I decided on that day to do it, first in the evenings and weekends, and then quitting my full-time job when the time was right.
While wandering, I saw that Juliana Hatfield was playing the Great American Music Hall that night. She is one of my favorites, so I walked over there, bought tickets, and then walked back that night. It was a great concert and a great way to celebrate my new company. The next morning Macromedia announced Shockwave to the public, which gave my new company focus right away.
Ten years later and a lot is happening. CleverMedia has just moved to a new building and is starting to grow again after the dot-com bust of 2000-2002. A few blocks from our new location is The Gothic Theater and the sign out front shows Liz Phair playing on October 29. Liz Phair is another one of my all-time favorites. The fact that she is playing exactly 10 years after I saw a similar show, and with all that is happening around CleverMedia this month, isn’t lost on me. My wife, who I proposed to on my birthday 7 years ago, gets me tickets as a present and we go to the show.
I stopped going to concerts about 5 years ago. Too loud, too many obnoxious people, too expensive, and so forth. But last night combined all the things I loved about concerts. It was in a small, comfortable venue. The crowd was great. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. I knew the words to every song and enjoyed every bit of it.
A few things have changed since I last went to a concert. For instance, everyone has camera phones now and every five seconds an arm raised above the crowd, clenching a phone and taking a picture. Very odd. Oh, and by-the-way, here’s the picture I took:
I see last night as a symbolic celebration. I’m starting the next 10 years of CleverMedia. Now I have 10 years of experience under my belt. I’m an older and hopefully wiser man with a family, house, retirement plan, and all that. I’ve learned my lessons from the dot-com-boom and dot-com-bust. I’ve gathered a lot of friends and colleagues and learned from their experiences as well. So with a healthy dose of optimism, forward into the future!
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October 31st, 2005 at 9:26 am
If you want to see what Gary looked like almost 10 years ago, I have video from the 1996 UCON at:
http://www.moshplant.com/direct-or/ucon96/GURUS.html