In March, 2000
The Chicago area was starting to thaw. I started spending an increasing amount of time between my client appointments walking around nearby Hidden Lake. As I walked in circles, I pondered the possibilities of this unexpected idea of becoming a computer programmer. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. I prayed about it, and felt peace about what I was considering. So I kept looking for opportunities.
Over a weekend, I was cleaning out my car and found a scrap of paper with a web address on it. I remembered the commercial I heard on the radio about a startup. I stuffed it in my pocket. When I had some time later, I pulled up the web site on my trusty Internet Explorer 5 lickety split with my super-fast new “broadband” connection. Well, the startup wasn’t in Chicago, it was in Skokie, a hellish 40 mile commute only possible by car from where I lived. Yet, what I saw on the site seemed to fit my background. The company, Edventions, was developing a product called StarshipSchool to help parents, teachers, and students use the web to collaborate on homework, progress reports, email, etc. I had a good feeling about the opportunity, so I emailed them, attaching my resume.
Within an hour of emailing Edventions, I received a reply asking me to call. I called and was talking with someone named Irv about what they were looking for. (I later found out he was the CEO. These sorts of encounters are one reason small companies can be so remarkable.) We set up a time for me to come to the office for an interview. This was all moving very fast, and I loved it. I felt like I was living in “Internet speed”, the instinctual decision making I had heard stories about over the previous couple years as dot-coms started dominating the news.
The interview was set for the day before my 26th birthday, April 3, and I was excited.
[This year, I’m going to be blogging the year 2000, the year I started programming.]
