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.