My love of freedom brought me to this field. While in college, I worked at Los Angeles's first Interactive cafe. The endeavor was funded by four of the brightest engineers I've ever had the pleasure to meet. Back in 1995 high speed access was rare. A 28.8 modem was fast. Venice Beach sits near the Internet backbone on Mae-West. Cyberjava in Venice was the first high-speed public access point in Los Angeles. Early adapters saw great promise in the emerging technology. The Cyberjava Manifesto reads, "...in order for the vision of a digital democracy to be realized everyone needs to have access..." As the Internet began to experience double digit user growth Cyberjava was a hotbed for Media Companies, technocrats and visionaries. We were going to change the world -we knew it.
It was at Cyberjava that I met I landed my first job in high tech. The job was to conduct “Strategic Planning” for Packard Bell. I worked night and day. It was not uncommon for me to spend a 14 hour day at work. Eventually, I became frustrated. Being young, I found long term planning unfulfilling. It was hard for me to watch multi-million dollar opportunities fall by the wayside. Eventually, I created methods to pull outside funding to finance my projects. I was dumb enough to think there was no such thing as “can’t be done”. This philosophy led to many achievements I’m very proud of. More than anything, I’m proud of the people that worked with me – and what they brought with them after leaving my business units.
Being an idealist, I found advertising somewhat disappointing. The burgeoning field had new players with old ideas. They came from the “traditional” media companies where bribes are somewhat institutionalized. It was hard to watch. I refrained from engaging many contracts after being offered bribes – new cars – free trips – you name it. I figured “If you can afford to give me that, you’re not giving my company the best deal”. Maybe that’s the way of the world, but it’s one I don’t really want to participate in.
Today, I live in the Ozarks. Because of the type of work I do , I’m able to stay home and spend time with my child while her mother is at work. In this respect, the digital revolution has brought me the greatest of freedoms.
