OK please be gentle on me. I am going to  write my first ever blog post and it’s been a long time coming. I feel on paper I should have written many blog posts, but this is not  on paper is it. I want to as briefly as possible get out of the way all of those questions like who am i, who are  we, why are we here, what sort of things have we done, what sort of things do we do, and will we do. You know those sorts of question. Then  once those are out of the way I can deal with lots of much smaller questions. Context  - that’s what I’m talking about  - I want to post a kind of context introduction to our  brand new blog.

Who Am I?

My name is John C Scott  and I was given it on the 13th January 1972. It wasn’t until 25th December 1981 that I got  my  hands on my first computer of my own in a Sinclair ZX81. Luckily my brother and sisters were very tolerant of me using the only TV in the house to write programs in 1KB of memory. I was hooked on that first day and would happily write the rest of  this post about how I learned to use memory and the 256 bytes of video RAM etc,  but this isn’t that story. I’ve carried  on taking an interest in how computers work, and allowed them to inspire my imagination ever since. I’ve done other things too, but usually brought computers into it somehow. Unkind people might call me an obsessive Internet geek, kinder people would call me it  to my face with a big reassuring smile.

I took a route from ZX81, ZX-Spectrum, to Mac IIse, Atari ST, DOS 5, Win3.11, NT4 and at the same time Z80 machine code, Hypercard, DBase3, FoxPro, ASP, and currently C# .net. From 1986 onwards I did a great deal of DeskTopPublishing starting with Letraset’s ReadySetGo!  then electronic Typesetting and from there got into databases, and then combining  the two with content management from 1995 onwards. I built my first web pages in 1995 using iHtml, then Coldfusion, ASP classic and currently working with .net.

I  got quite excited about “Web Applications” in the mid to late 90s, I’d built a few office LAN based applications around databases and and really saw the power of having lots of people contribute to different parts of a  database, and started developing around the idea of websites where the user didn’t need technical skills to contribute their thoughts and ideas. Throughout this my ideas were very abstract  and about inspiring others to contribute, whilst providing the  tools and the training and supporting those I worked with.

In 1998 I thought a good exposition of all of  this would  be building a  site for Glastonbury Festival  and this became an all encompassing undertaking for the next 10 years. It had meant to be just a side project to test and develop some ideas to use in a commercial product. It was clear that the festival couldn’t financially support what was needed and so I worked on some interesting 6 month contracts and then had the rest of the year to work passionately on Glastonbury. We pulled together some great achievments for that and  to do it justice this needs to be blogged separately too. Now the festival needs a new  approach  to it’s website and it’s time for me to climb aboard the leading-edge again after a period of learning, listening, growth, development and recuperation.

The world’s moved  on a lot  since 1981 and many  of the things since then I thought of  as  science fiction are now very much fact, yet some are still to have their day. One thing to come about is blogging.  It’s definitely better for me to use someone elses tool to start publishing my varied thoughts, plans, hopes and reminisces than to spend  time building and maintaining a  tool for  other people to do the same. In a few rare spare moments I’ve speculated what I would write if I had time,  and now I do, and now you’re reading it.

I believe passionately in free (as in free and fair elections, as well as free beer) software and that the challenge of our times is how  well we can work together. The truly great art of the past may have been made by a single artist but the great pieces of our modern times, such as movies like “Slumdog Millionaire”, are harmonic works between hundreds of collaborators each enabling another to exceed  what they could do alone.

I’ve mostly shared in the past by getting passionately involved in message board communities and always trying to answer at least one question for every one that I need an answer  to. However these contributions live mostly only in the context of those boards and if everyone is blogging it  then maybe it’s time to admit I should have a go at this medium. So there are a couple of very specific projects I have in mind for this blog and some more random  ones, and I look forward to finding  out which fly.

Who Are “We” ?

c3x associates are people who enjoy working together. I recognised a long time ago that it was no longer possible to have an expert level of understanding of everything in computer, databases, operating systems, languages, design, publishing, the web etc. For example  I couldn’t produce the  graphical treatment for this blog but that was provided by Wojciech Wawrzyniak. Across all the disciplines needed for a major  project we have associates who can provide stress-testing, clustering, hosting, content, copy writing, original music, photography, illustration, cartooning, database tuning, needs analysis, training, documentation, requirement gathering, project planning, security, encryption, design and graphical realisation plus many other things. The important thing is we have a track record of working together effectively, the tools to make projects work, the experience to advise if  a project can work and the honesty to say what needs to change to allow it to work.

why are we here

I really believe there is more to life than another day another dollar,  that every day is a conscious opportunity to  allow us to learn something new and to develop and that by this approach  we can deliver work that constantly exceeds expectations. We are here to understand what needs to be done and then to deliver it on time and on budget.

what sort of things have we done, do we do, and will we do. 

This certainly needs to be the focus of many  more posts. Things we’ve done include content management systems since 1995, logistics and financial applications, and solved many challenges. That includes an understanding of how best to achieve change and what tools can best help the people at  the centre. Presently we are supporting Ektron CMS and Umbraco for a number of clients.

We will continue this collaborative approach and intend to form more relationships in an increasingly open world where you will continue to  be only as good as your last recommendation.