John Clark
I used to teach MindSpring's Macintosh and Internet training classes as a freelance consultant. I also worked part time as a recording engineer at Oasis Recording. After six years at Oasis, I left the recording industry. Despite the rumors, this had nothing to do with the alleged incident involving a famous vocal group, six pounds of feathers and some cheese whiz. I was cleared of all liability, and the penguin wasn't even mine! .... uummm... never mind. Following my exit from the recording industry, I was drafted by Mindspring to serve in the technical support department. Three weeks after I was hired we bought PSI's dial up customers and suddenly Mindspring had a bazillion customers...and a bazillion phone calls to support. It was trench warfare for a while but we made it through. I have to say that I worked with some of the best and learned a lot in a short time. (Including an extreme dislike of Microsoft and the Windows OS. Even their error's are referred to as "illegal operations.")
After several months I was paroled and given a job as a technical writer working in the E-Services division. E-Services is in charge of the MindSpring help desk, internal help pages and documentation, and the Mindspring New User's Guide (a new version is due shortly) The real bonus is now I got paid to work on a Mac. Life was good.
By the end of 1999, the joy of documenting every tiny bit of Internet Explorer had begun to wear on me, Mindspring had become EarthLink and I felt the need for change. I moved into Operations Documentation as an Information Architect (Basically a writer/programmer/designer combination). The Operations Documentation department created internal documentation for Earthlink and designed the delivery system for the documentation. The best part was I still got to work on a Mac, only now it was a G4 500Mhz with 256 megs of RAM and a DVD RAM drive. Sometimes, It's good to be me.
Operations Documentation got bounced around like rubber ball for a while and was finally split into two and the Atlanta team was moved into the Intranet Development group. Right about the time our feet hit the ground we got re-orged into our own department called Internal Development under BrYan Johnson (Who originally rescued me from support and into E-Services).
Soon after, they got the bright idea to make me a manager. Yes I was "The Man" with a licence to repress people. Actually, considering the people I managed, I think this made me a Scruffy Looking Nerd Herder. Bryan Johnson, twice my former boss, ended up working for me. It was fun and a bit strange. All things considered... It was good to be the king.
In late 2002, the Tech sector went into panic mode and companies began laying waste to their IT divisions. Sadly, as with many of its other decisions, EarthLink followed the herd. The designers went first (It doesn't need to be pretty it just needs to work). Next went the managers, including me (We'll just cram the programmers under another overworked manager). Finally they started getting rid of programmers (We'll just outsource). By the time the Grim Downsizer™ tapped me on the shoulder, I was ready to be out from under the thumb of the man.
Going forward, I am back to doing my own thing under the Twelve Foot Guru label. I teach, design web sites and I program for the web and the desktop. My wife and I are incorporated under the name Sharing Ventures, Inc. With some help from a severance package and the benevolent deities, we will make a go at it and have some fun as well.
I am also back in school, going for a Master's Degree in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) at Georgia Tech.
A few years ago, during a period of beer induced psychosis, "The Ether Family Presents..." was created. Part Band.... Part Family... Part Pun Generator... All Macintosh Users. For those of you who are curious about "The Ether Family Presents..." You can find them at http://www.theetherfamilypresents.com/ Ryan explains it much better than I can.