Category: Early Internet

8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday: Far too early for the Creatives who stayed up until 1 a.m. the night before. Honing their craft did not generally occur between 9-5.

Still without fail, the morning meeting commences around a ping pong table. Under normal circumstances, the blood might pump with a vigorous game.  Instead, the ping pong table in this trendy office doubled as an affordable conference room table. Team players in the room awkwardly pulled up chairs, where elbows barely reached the table edge.  Those in the middle found their pens and laptops soon tangled in the net. 

There were plenty of reasons to “pull away” from the table, literally.  From both an attention and a physical perspective… it just didn’t work.  Within minutes, proof of this fact emanated from the head of the table, where the Creative Director sat.

Inability to pull up close enough and actually work at the table gave a “pass” to those otherwise expected display leadership.  The Creative Director’s eyes grew heavy, as the nearby Project Manager expounded upon dull matters of deadlines, delivery and client expectations.  A few moments later, the eyes closed and the head slumped to the side.  The head proceeded to bob for the next 8 minutes. In the 9th minute, when the droning finally ceased, thick breaths remained as the only sound in the room. Thankfully the Technology Director broke the awkward sounds of slumber with their own narrative.

Did the Creative Director deserve to be at the head of the table, disrespecting the whole group with his snoozes?

Maybe, maybe not.

To be sure, the meeting material stretched and lingered, dry as the cinnamon challenge. The unlucky team member speaking through the siesta found themselves enriched with a new lesson learned.  Unless you’re presenting Creative, Creatives are not interested.  Least of all, are they interested in project plans. For heaven’s sake, speak your team’s language!

But was the Creative Director’s behavior acceptable? Seemingly so, since witness of the group and possibly related peer feedback never led to any substantive change.  Most mornings the scenario repeated, until “keeping the Creative Director awake” simply became one of many unwritten Business Objectives.  It seemed a reasonable goal, fitting of an often unserious place, where the group might’ve just preferred a game of ping pong to start their day.  But alas, the websites still needed to be built.

So then, how DO you keep attention? 

First, if Creative Directors are made responsible for presenting, there’s a pretty good chance they’d stay awake. Pop in a couple agenda items to present Creative, with bite-size project plan snippets in between, and you may meet your new Business Objective.

Second, in hindsight (with the benefit of empathy gained over many future years of experience), you might just purchase a daily double espresso for the poor fella.  After all, he was a single dad with young kids at home. Imagine a vomiting youngster, disturbing his slumber between the irreplaceable golden hours of 1-6 a.m.  The Project Manager would’ve been sleepy too. 

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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In the early 2000’s remained a breed of web development agencies who had it all.  The modern offices, the top-name clients, and the upwardly striving and oft difficult-to-appease staff.  However a little alcohol went a long way, working like balm on the run-roughshod employees. It helped as they reeled from long hours and often brutal travel schedules.

As a reward, the holiday party was expected: a bit of fun, made more or less awkward depending on where you were in the creative-to-technology / cool-to-nerdish spectrum.  

Arriving at said event, you find yourself approaching a bombed-out warehouse on the seedier side of town.  Once you overcame your fear of the valet attendant single-handedly jockeying a mess of cars, you entered a wonderland. 

In a party womb of rich curtains and plush velvet couches, you go into orbit around a beckoning sun: the full service bar.  Gazing at modern decorations, fuchsia and blue uplighting, and lavishly catered food stations, you felt you had “arrived”.

Sinking into a parlor-style daybed with your significant other, you twirl the fringe of a nearby metallic string curtain.  Across the room, laughter emanates from the photo booth area, as team members don props like feather boas, oversized glasses, and jaunty hats. While on the opposite end, a professional photographer snaps pictures of smiling faces and fit figures in their cocktail-attire best.

The cavernous space gets louder as the booze flows, the live music begins, and costumed performers meander around for your entertainment. As the volume grows intolerable, you take respite in an adjacent room. Settling back in, you enjoy a much lower-key piano bar experience complete with sing-along.

This party even has a name and logo — designed by some on-the-bench graphic designer — emblazoned on your departing swag bag:  Indulge.

You couldn’t help but leave the event with a glow, thinking:  how lucky I am to work here.  Indeed: you did Indulge.  But then again, you might also constrain, inhibit and stifle shortly after.

Because alas, much like your glow necklaces the morning after the rave, the color and light fades by the next morning.  To be more specific, the layoffs followed almost to the day, on January 2, like clockwork.  The first to go?: that benched designer who designed the party logo.

Why?, it left us wondering. Why would the company spend their money on such a lavish affair every year, followed by having to layoff workers immediately following the holiday?  Couldn’t that money have been used to at least extend a job or two?

And there you have the fallacy of the holidays.  From a corporate perspective, the holiday months are simply “no-go” time for layoffs.  If you layoff then, you simply look like a Scrooge.

And then, there’s the “money suck” of the holiday party your employees come to “expect”. The expense that in effect turns you into a Scrooge right after the bar is closed. Double whammy.

The result is just another source of sarcasm and distrust for the Gen-X’ers who lived the early digital boom days or other popular careers. 

It made an impact.  Now that we’re the Directors, VPs and C-Suiters, we make the decisions. Perhaps that is why the “company holiday party” is no more.  We learned that we’re satisfied and well-served by considering less ostentatious and more heartfelt holiday celebrations.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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In the chilled air, a bluish wash of snowy dawn bathed her through the Windows. The color accented her white bathrobe. A sense of quiet anticipation filled the space.

Was this Christmas morning? It may have been, except in this case the bluish glow emanated from a computer. And in the pre-dawn darkness, a tense neck hunched over the device. A topping of bed head poked from the bath robe.

Imagine the holidays of your dreams. Picture home-prepared meals, enjoyed around a hearth with loving family.

But wait. In actuality, what is the feast you are consuming? Perhaps, it… is… pizza.

The ultimate holiday treat, and reality of many! Who knew?

But all of this required website launches. Every holiday, the work ensued:

Share the Deal.

Sell the Pizza.

And so on Thanksgiving, a website was baking in the oven instead of the turkey.

And instead of stuffing the stockings, we got online pizza deals aplenty.

Maybe in actually it WAS giving. A giving of time to the corporate empire, to in-turn pass along the ultimate holiday gift — the freedom to get pizza online if you want, even at the oddest of times.

But here’s where it gets good.

I had a partner in this crime against the holidays.

Donning designer sunglasses, this petite diffuser of team aggressions stood tall. It was she and me where rubber met the road. She: the height of style. Me: the black-wearing nerd component. We: the ultimate managers. Tag teaming every holiday meant focused conversations:

“You take Thanksgiving.”

“I take Christmas.”

It was the only way to maintain sanity. Yet the costs in time and stress mattered little: We had each other’s back.

In work and life, that is an amazing feeling: taking the sting off the pilfering of personal and family time during the holiday season.

So today — 

Celebrate those who have your back. Those who are willing to put action behind it, not just words. And as always, Happy Holidays!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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You hover like a spirit through the long, shadowy halls. The ice maker is at rest for the night, bin already full for the next day. Once toasty coffee sits stale in the pot. The quick shuffle of feet and voices in the air remain as specters until the masses return the next day.

All is quiet, until you find one light source, where two are found in a cavernous conference room. A tiny tapping of keys and clicking of mouse tickles the air. It’s 10:15pm, and the two are locked in silent battle with the work pile.

While others are away enjoying dinners, family, and perhaps sleep, the Creative Director and Project Manager bear the client burden. 

While at work, one of them reflects on these moments of circumstantial commonality. Times when she and he are the last left standing in a land of the delegated, where the responsibility falls squarely. She finds resolve, mutual respect, and focus in the moment. They are the ones who really got the sh*t done.

She muses that some Creative Directors are similar to this late-night wizard, generating their power through sheer will and output. Their kind locks in momentum with their colleagues to achieve a larger goal.

But alas, other Creative Directors are not this way. 

Only a few years prior, a different show played on the proverbial screen. Consider first the tale of a powerhouse Creative Director, who carried a similar client burden, but “used” the team through brute and brawn to make things happen. A confident stride into client’s offices, with boyish locks bouncing, put Robert Plant’s best moves to shame. Soon, the client’s swoon proved this wasn’t your “creatives run amok” kind of interface design.  This was exceptional.

The spearhead felt all-important, while others drove the production machine cogs under his halo of disdain.  And so came one of the greatest lessons: If you have skill, talent, creative genius even — you have the power. And that extends to the ability to belittle others — and get away with it, with no consequences. 

Consider next, the snappy world of NYC Creative Directors.  Throw New Yorkers and Texans on a call, and the New Yorkers went to town on disrespecting their faraway, unsophisticated “team members”.  Whether it was discrimination by region or simply belief that they were God’s Gift to Application Design, you could almost feel their incredulous eyes peering through the phone. Once they deemed you worthy of critique and dismissal from the conversation, you couldn’t help but earn your mettle.

Whether it is masculine to feminine, haves to have nots, race to race, creed to creed, urban to rural, or any other configuration: Primadonnas can be anybody. And Primadonna Creative Directors are some of the best manifestations of those who might never break out of their rut of only valuing and respecting themselves. Yet, they might not even know it! Or care. 

The characters in the show of life are career building, and enlightening in terms of learning to deal with challenging people.  You come across all walks of life on the job, and the trick is making it work.  Sometimes, you go with it and stick it out until the next project. But the fun begins when you face it. 

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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In a cavernous space, water creeps silently along the floor. The leading edge of the growing, globular shape glistens in dim light.  It finds and dips into every concrete imperfection.  It seeps into raw 2×4’s. The fluid expands around pebbles.  It is only slightly hampered by rubber bumpers where the berber carpet begins.

Slowly, steadily it moves toward her work area.  The managers in the nearby offices already vacated their soaked spaces, exiting into the hall.

She remains rigid in the dark, fixated on her still-electrified monitor, and focused on her heavy workload burden.  She takes every minute possible to push one more email and one more file, before the water arrives and renders her useless.  This was not the first time where time ran away from her, pinched by unnatural disaster. 

Somewhere in the distance, the growl of the on-premise power generator hovers just below consciousness.  There was power enough for the computers, but not the lights.  Luckily, the sun outside peeked through faraway windows.

Welcome Back My Friends, To The Warehouse

Once again, she found herself in the lowest rent side of town. At a web agency in the warehouse district, standing defiant in a space of their own rough-and-tumble making, filled with budget scraps and growing client demands.

Going back to the warehouse meant power outages and damp, but also something uncommon. Picture a zen garden, complete with gravel floor covering, concrete pagodas, and a bridge made of plywood over a pebble riverbed.  A calming scene. 

Except when it’s flooded with pee water from the nearby overflowing toilet, and that pee water is slowly approaching your cube.

Still, she was one of the fortunate ones.  Following a hot tip from her mentor, she scaled the layoff cliff.  It took only a mere few weeks to haul herself back up to this next threshold, after exiting her workplace utopia.

Inch by inch, she monitors the approaching flood in her peripheral vision.  At one point she decides it’s time to pick the desktop tower up from the floor.  Pulling at every power cord and connector, the heavy lump of tech is raised to a safe perch. 

Through it all, she repeats a mantra:  I’m lucky to have this job. Lucky. Lucky.  At the same time, the situation begged for an answer:  Is the “cash-strapped sweatshop in a warehouse” the only viable business model for web work?

Why yes, at least in the early 2000’s after the dot-com boom and bust.

To add insult to injury, with desktops, working from home was not yet an option for the typical tech worker of the era.

Escape impossible, there she stayed: purse up on a shelf, water engulfing her rubber soles.  Only then, did the water stop advancing, leaving a soaked carpet to squish upon for the rest of the afternoon.  In her peripheral, she catches the sweaty Facilities guy wiping his brow, feet squeaking away down the hall.

What adventures remain back at the warehouse?  Stay tuned!

In the mean time, revisit the nostalgic fun of our earliest warehouse memories, and travel even deeper back in time to Merlin (the finicky file server).

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Well… that didn’t last long.

Her eyes dart around the colossal conference space at her similarly wide-eyed colleagues.  She swivels in a Herman Miller, where not long ago she kicked off a team of 30.  In that moment, an exciting corporate website redesign project lay ahead.

But instead of an eager team on a new threshold, the room is now filled with 30 people with questions on their faces.  Why are we here?

The group remained generally silent in their suspicions.

They pondered the last year and a half, filled with happy hours and post-it notes dotted across glass. Of travel and cutting-edge design.  Of huge clients and advancing web functionality, but disproportionately light workloads.  Where ample downtime and loose deadlines led to fun, laid-back people playing hacky sack in the modern, swanky environs.  A workplace utopia.

That is, if the budgets weren’t so low.  Soon, the HR Director enters to deploy the news.

What did they expect?

Bankruptcy, that’s what.

After all, the stock price hovered at $1.30, then began a march down to $0.90 after the company IPO’d far too soon.

The entire room was laid off that day, free to leave their utopia behind. And with that, the tech bubble burst before their eyes.

This day, and many others like it across the industry, became better known as the dot com boom and bust (or, the Y2K tech crash).

With farewells and handshakes, she leaves the room, not all too surprised.  As she clears her desk, she entertains silly notions about continuing to work with the clients she had. She did truly care about their fate. Collecting a few too many project files, she quietly makes her way to her car.

In actuality, apart from a few farewell calls to her friendly clients, she would never know how the dissolving company managed their projects to completion.  Did Compaq’s new online IT training modules ever make it to their staff?  Or, did NASA successfully pull off their innovative marketing program to drive International Space Station payloads?  The outcomes remain unknown.

But given a hot job tip from a mentor, her next opportunity would not follow too far behind.  Really, it all happened too quick: no break afforded before the next leg of her journey.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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An exciting, nervous hairball of a day arrived.  A day of suits, curled hair, eye makeup, clean nails, and quirky, irresistible Web Consultants paired with Corporate Titans.

Heads held high, swallowing the nerves, the crew of “internet experts” strode confident. Slow-motion in their mind’s eye, moving past endless cubes, taking in the smells of coffee and fresh paint from their client’s recent office remodeling.  Now breaching the door of a cavernous conference room, filled with about 30 Corporate stakeholders, their first job begins.

The Schmooze

Creating an inclusive sense belonging through well-designed camaraderie, they start with laughs. Light entertainment, leading into the “Dog And Pony Show”.  Marketing Mavens, the Corporate Communications contingent, even IT — the contract owners — started to loosen up in minutes.

“Dim All the Lights, Sweet Darlin'”

The projector glow lights up Paris, The Creative Director. Presentation at the ready, she takes the reigns and the Circus begins.  The Project Manager at her flank knows: this web design presentation could make or break the entire project… and budget… if it missed the mark with this picky Corporate crowd.

But in minutes they knew. The Creative was spot on — capturing the pure spirit and heritage of this historic soft drink conglomerate.

Every brand stood gorgeously presented.

This corporate website design fully represented the critical picture that the client wanted to portray to the whole world.

Lush “oohs and ahhs” filled the room.

Mid-table the Project Manager breathed a sigh of relief.  She thought: Our first preso to my biggest client so far. Again, I have arrived!

For that moment, the well-hidden nerves drained away. The training drilled into their Consultant heads, at one time seemingly self-absorbed, now suddenly seemed manifest:
We are consultants. We keep our heads high. We offer value. We are to be respected. And, every hour is a billable hour.

Afterglow

At the conclusion of the presentation, the client thoroughly satisfied, the Project Manager chimes in: “We’re so thrilled that you love the design! Let’s talk about next steps. We can begin building the site by tomorro…”

But her sentence would never complete, as Paris pushes in: “But if you really want a great site, you need to use Flash.”

Screeeeeeeeech.

The rubber tires skid, melting into the pavement. The needle is slapped over the grooves. The nails pass down the chalkboard. And now: a full stop halt, of wide and shocked eyes around the table.

“What?” the Corporate Comms lead says. “What is Flash? How so?”

Oh no.

Flames instantly spring from our WWW dumpster.

The Creative Director proceeds to explain: “It’s animation. Every banner on every page could move. Wouldn’t you like to see your little brand character dancing?”

<Hindsight moment>

Flash! Dear God. Of all things! A future self somewhere in another dimension understands that this moment is ridiculous. Because this once-coveted Web 2.0 technology has already met its (decommissioning) maker. Why did we blow up the meeting for FLASH?? But then again — in that moment, everyone just wanted a snazzy website. Sigh.

</Hindsight moment>

“Is it in scope?”, the stern IT lady says.

The IT group Project-Managing on the customer side starts to twitch. They brokered the project and budgeted it, knowing full well that their internal customer, Corp Comms, would be a handful to manage.

The other twitcher in the room, the web agency Project Manager, didn’t know that her Creative Director would become a handful to manage too! Why did this Flash thing not come up in the Internal Review?

It’s the agency Project Manager’s turn, to douse the flame with a big, fat fire extinguisher. With a trace of white froth forming at the corner of her mouth, she states with a wide eye: “No, that’s not currently budgeted in scope.”

Ugh.  And so began the…

Bait and Switch.

These words echoed across conference calls for weeks after the presentation. Indeed, straight through to the launch of the project.

Corp Comms ran wild with their Flash demands, given the Creative Director made them feel like they were getting a crap website. Not good enough, without that Flash.

Oh, it was bad. And the agency Delivery Manager pinned it on the one responsible for managing the scope: the Project Manager.

The Moral of the Story

On this day, a phase was forevermore coined: Designers Run Amok. A state of being, when desire for great(ish) design supersedes other project success criteria.

But it wasn’t an us-vs-them. The Project Manager had a design background too, and knew this phenomenon all-too-well. Heck, she even indulged in it herself from time to time.

But when playing a role, moments will arise when you further commit to your path: managing with the business in mind, not just the creative.

And so, live each instance of creative-run-amok as an adventure. And with some luck, preparation, and targeted questions, you might just catch it in the Internal Review, before the client sees.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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How many dotcom-era web development agencies can you name?  Do you remember the slew of sprouts that “rose to the top” during the late 90’s web boom days?  Perhaps:  Luminant, Viant, Scient, Sapient, Rare Medium, Exceed, Agency.com, USWeb, Cognizant, Digitas, Razorfish?

Some of these sprouts still live to tell their tales, having grown into digital behemoths.  But alive or dead, what did they all have in common?:  Lofty, slightly intangible names. 

Perhaps a perfect reflection of the web product they peddled, which was vaguely understood at the time.  (Both technically and perhaps culturally.)  But we all knew, when we worked with one of these companies, that we were on-trend… so cool… so modern.

Enter the Dot-Com Web Agency Utopia

Arriving to work at one of these hot agencies meant moving from the scrappier side of town, a land of converted warehouses, into an actual office building.

It meant being plucked away from the obscurity of “no-name” clients.  And recognition (via a 4-part cross-functional interview process with peers) that you are indeed ready for the “big time” clients.

At one such place, in North Dallas, you find yourself at one of the best, most well-known dot-com agencies.

A land of modern facilities, smooth elevators, fresh paint, and grey berber carpet.  Where walls of white boards stood marked by multi-colored dry erase markers.  Where neon post-it notes formed networks across glass-enclosed conference rooms.  Where comfy clouds of beanbag chairs lined war rooms. And where floor-to-ceiling windows offered skyline views.

Training was not a “thing” here.  Because YOU were already an expert on the web.  That’s why you were hired.  Leads only coached in belief of capability, repeating a mantra when doubts crept in:

We are consultants. We keep our heads high. We offer value. We are to be respected. And, every hour is a billable hour.

It’s true: you’re a little too full of yourself as a result.  But that’s what you needed, when riding the wild west internet bronco.

The dot-com boom is here, and you’ve entered the utopia.  You busy yourself with your first proper client, getting ready for your first major presentation.  So it begins…

Learn more about the the dot-com agency experience. Check out:

You Shoulda Been There – Excellent interviews and stories from the high-profile trailblazers who built the early web. 

Kings of the 90’s Dot Coms

Wikipedia: the Dot Com Bubble

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments.  What do you remember about early web agency life?

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"I'm coming out
I want the world to know
Got to let it show."
    -- Diana Ross

She’s in the sun, wind teasing her hair. Stepping into the street, the burger joint next door wafts a savory scent.

Walking out meant more today: it meant walking off the job. Freshly resigned, her brain tingled. On pure, involuntary impulse, she stuck her finger in the air, and looked up briefly. Then strutted down the street, and hopped into her sporty black car.

Windows down to embrace the fresh warm breeze, she peeled away with a music blast swirling in her wake. Off to meet with her girlfriends and celebrate a new day.

They left the same company not long before: on to bigger and better opportunities. Now she follows the same path.

Soon she strode into the high-ceilinged and high-energy restaurant. It felt like the center of the universe: booming with popularity and lively voices. A pure reflection of the sentiment of the day.

Her countenance no different, she headed to the bar. They catch each other’s eyes. Gal pals Dame and Beckums flash sudden, exhilarating smiles. The new arrival swings her arms above her head, beaming and singing:

“I’m coming out!”

The ladies bust out laughing, as they erupt into dance and exchange hearty high-fives all around their cocktail table.

The song matched the freest of feelings: of a new threshold, of achieving a higher goal. A sense of pride in self, and joy for what is yet to come.

Dame exclaims, beaming: “This the happiest I’ve ever seen you!”

And happy she was. Leaving for advancement, new challenges, a higher salary, and the opportunity to serve clients you’d know by name: it was all she dreamed.  A true acknowledgment of the endless work, the long nights. Of all she accomplished over years of trailblazing work in website development. 

These were the heady early days of the internet: dot-coms boomed, and demand for talent soared to a peak. She rode the wave of an employee market, where hiring was swift and competition by employers permitted her to take her pick of jobs.

In that instant, a sense of pride washed over her.  But yet in that exhilarating moment, her brain still nagged with a sense of regret and bittersweet. 

Should I have given more notice to my old boss? 

But the other company wanted me NOW.

Should I have walked out on my last day? Such a strident snub, for this liquid lunch with my buddy colleagues?

But it’s time to CELEBRATE!

Am I too full of myself?

NO!  Well yes, maybe that’s a little bit true.

The push and pull swirled in her head. But one thing’s for sure… she was off to a proper Digital Consultancy. And it was all about to start on MONDAY!  Future, here we come!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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“I got a funky job 
and I paid my dues 
on the good foot.  
Do it with the good foot."
     -- James Brown

Jitterbug jitterbug

Fingers poking the air

Funky feet, double time

Wave up the bod

And start it again…

Sass danced as Bone played her favorite James Brown tune. The fun-loving spunk of a girl, with dark eyeliner and a crop of blonde hair, just launched her first website.

Her design was chosen from a variety of options presented to the client. After a production long-haul, the fruits of her labor finally appeared on full WWW display.  

“Get on down,” she quipped with James, in that old warehouse downtown. A converted office space brimming with digital creativity, as if bits and pixels flowed out through the multi-colored window panes.

Pride and elevation pulsed in her veins.  And relief that it was done, after so much work!  Soon Dame and Asira joined in, with their own funky feet, in the middle of the concrete floor. Bone looked on with a grin, and popped up from his seat too.

This impromptu celebration lived on for years in Sass’s mind. It remained an unexpected and unlikely memory: achieving praise, surrounded by revelers in her accomplishment.

“Unlikely” because Sass had a secret, well-hidden from all. Her sparkling persona masked reality, and simply served as a construct of what she was not. Her mask reflected her future self: what she aspired to achieve. 

She purposefully transformed to a bringer of levity. A fountain of overt energy. A dance-down-the-street kind of gal. A force-field against her own dark history, one filled with the devastating pain of losing both parents when she was all-too-young.

It left her insecure about her next meal and place to rest. Crushing depression filled her, and turned her into a child gone wild.

As much as she tried, she never achieved enough… but life became a game to overcome her destroyed youth.  

Then she picked up a scent with a pivotal realization: this is my one chance. The web — a new and uncharted territory — opened a door for her. So she picked herself right up, followed electrified wires, armed with her firewall mask, and walked right down the bit-paved trail, into web design.

Never achieved enough? — Well, not until now.

This wasn’t only her first website launch. It was proof that she overcame.

Perhaps her outward persona projection finally drove itself into a new reality.  Surrounded by coworkers and friends — she knew she had arrived.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Have you made a mark yet?  Why make a mark?  Does your mark mean anything, to anybody, anymore?

Where does your mark persist? 

In one such place, a blue window pane remains.  Something easily missed by the passerby.  But look closely… it offers a story.

The tale of a sunny, new day’s arrival. When every pane of glass was colored as if by creativity itself: orange, red, green, yellow, and blue.

Peering through the windows, the internet rag-tags now had their own office!  Granted, a converted warehouse.  But all the sizzling dot-coms and web agencies were down there: Rare Medium, Exceed, Broadcast.com, and more.

The area was called Deep Ellum.  Home of the trendy and techie.  A place for the young and vibrant… for the high-velocity… for the dreamers and driven entrepreneurs.  A place where you could transform in a flash from working in the day, to partying at night.

A figure makes her way down the cracked sidewalk next to the windows, with rustling tutu.  A vision as bright as the multi-colored windows she passes by: hot pink leggings, a side pony with purple streak, green slouch socks, blue eye shadow, and a familiar yellow lump hitched to her side with yellow wires tangled in hoop earrings: The Walkman.

Into the warehouse she swishes, and coworkers’ eyes widen to see just how far she went “all out”.  She arranged this day, after all.  80’s day: a nostalgic throwback, and a bit of fun at the web agency.

The cavernous space filled with smiles and laughs all around. There’s Bone, resident DJ pumping out Duran Duran, with Presto.  There’s Sass, a spirited designer decked out in 80’s garb.  She always stayed “on the good foot”, perched next to the long-haired programmer who smelled sweetly of Herbal Essences.  Next to the phones stood sweet friend Dame, who threw her a wedding shower just weeks earlier at the subleased office.  There’s Boss, posed with his familiar smoothie, and distracted by the phones.  And lastly, there’s Hacker (reformed and hired to build the web, before his ilk became known as “security professionals”).

Such was the fun of youngsters, driving the early internet all day and most of the night, in that warehouse in the arty district in town.

So, where’s your blue window?  Your mark?  And what does it stand for?  Maybe it’s just reminiscent of a simple day of fun with coworkers… and nothing more.  But if we weren’t there, creating, and you there, consuming… would the internet exist exactly as it does today? 

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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