Chicago memories and vignettes

About 10 years ago, I was in Chicago to deliver a Vignette StoryServer training class. It was cold. And I was standing in line, outside, waiting to get a bag of Garrett cheese popcorn.  The guy in front of me turned back a few times, then introduced himself.  He was with the Trib and had recognized me.  We spent a cold walk to the L talking about the impact of the web, the news, and the future.

I never got his name.  And time proved most of our speculations (and stock options) worthless.  But I do remember the impact that the Chicago Tribune’s web operations had on my own career.  They were Vignette’s first marquee customer for the old StoryServer product (which had its detractors).  Acquired from CNET – where it was called PRISM – it ran on Sun and was powered by Tcl and Sybase (or Oracle if you REALLY wanted to IPO well).  And after a time I actually managed a pale imitation of MVC using it.  While I had some exposure to data bases prior to coming to Vignette, I spent many a long night in 1997 with the Trib schema on the screen and “Database Design For Mere Mortals” on my desk.  By the time I was back getting popcorn in the winter of  ‘98 I was able to give the Trib guy an idea or two from our first forays into XML services.   I will always be grateful to those Trib folks that answered my first dumb questions and helped convince me to leave Detroit for Austin.

Several bubble-bursts later, I hate to see the Tribune  fall, although it looks like it was financial engineering, not the technical or business models.  I hope 2009 is kinder to us all.