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98 - Boston, MA - September '98 -- Still living in Portland, Maine
at the time - I came down to Boston for WEB 98, to check out the conference
and visit a few HotWired Alumni.... Goodbye to S.F. Party - July '95 -- A delightful party I threw for myself and my pals, at the Gordon Biersch Brewing Company - under the shadow of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. Ten great years in SF - but it would take NYC, post-Freudian psychoanalysis and the love of my life to really kick my ass and change my Weltanschauung for good. My HotWired Years - Dec. '93 to July '95 -- As the first "Online Ambassador" for Wired Magazine, I was in charge of Wired's presence on the Well and AOL (until Julie Petersen, Jonathan Steuer and Matthew Nelson came on board). This was the Fall/Winter of '93. Soon, we added Michael Gold and Brian Behlendorf. That was the core group of people who started HotWired, all working in the original Wired office on the third floor of 544 Second Street. We were given a little area in the back of the office we affectionately called "The Grotto." Julie found Justin Hall's website, and it wasn't too long until Justin was onboard. From the art department of the magazine, we got Barbara Kuhr to join us, and J. Caleb Donaldson - (then boyfriend, now husband of ex-Wired art production wizard Tricia McGillis) spent many hours away from his legal career to at first help, then join us full-time. Investment banker Andrew Anker joined up in the Spring of '94, and Howard Rheingold was recruited that Summer. Louis brought Chip Bayers in, fresh from working with the infamous Michael Wolff (of Burn Rate fame) on YPN and NetGuide and Gary Wolf, co-author of the early Net primer Aether Madness and food critic for the SF Weekly. By year's end, the web site that would invent the banner advertisement and popularize the web-based threaded discussion would launch to much acclaim, and two of the core architects - Jonathan Steuer and Howard Rheingold would resign. Matthew and Brian would go on to found Organic Online - headed by Matthew's brother Jonathan Nelson (who also happened to be Jonathan Steuer's Milwaukee, WI -high school friend and former business partner); Howard went on to form Electric Minds, and then Brainstorms; Justin went back to school; Michael G. went to C|Net; Jonathan went on to start the Cyborganic Cafe, and would later join up with Scient; Caleb, for a time, went to Cyborganic, where he built out the SpaceBar chat environment. Julie went on to completely reinvent herself, and then join USWeb/CKS - SF; Chip stayed on - later moving over to the magazine; and I went on to try and reinvent Prodigy (with a tiny amount of success). There were many others, of course - the place has launched dozens of careers, and if not a career, then it gave folks a good reason to go back to grad school and get serious about this Internet business. Perhaps it's not surprising
that Wired and HotWired would serve as the "strange attractor"
for so many wayward youth working through the gestalt of their dysfunctional
upbringings. Chronicled on their personal
websites and in low-budget
movies, it was one of those places that just changes people - for
better or worse. It certainly changed me. And Gary Wolf's book about Wired is due back to his publishers in December 2000...should be interesting! From a single pebble, many ripples. (corrections - contentions
- additions to these histories/heresies welcome)
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