Pasadena Chamber of Commerce

Joel Spolsky in Inc. reminisces about the golden age of tech dreams, when everybody who could string a couple of 0s and 1s together was going to thrive in the new economy.

That was all of, maybe, ten years ago.

Interesting reading and a good reminder that not all prognostications are valid and not every boom will last.

Joel Spolsky: The Day My Industry Died

A decade ago, everybody was starting a Web consulting business, so I did too. Then, one day, the industry died. Does that sound familiar?

With all the talk about the deaths of various industries — from the car companies to newspapers to mortgage brokers — I’m reminded of the time that my industry abruptly died on me.

It’s been more than a decade, so it’s easy to forget just how exciting the early days of the Web were. I first caught the bug in the mid-1990s, when I came across a programmer named Philip Greenspun — a man who was truly ahead of his time. Along with five of his friends, Greenspun had started a Web development company, ArsDigita, at the beginning of the dot-com boom.

And long before blogs, Facebook, and oversharing online became endemic, Greenspun maintained a personal website on which he did something astonishing: Greenspun shared the whole story of the company he was building, live, as it happened. Everything from the big vision to the technical details.

Eventually, these essays formed the basis of a book, Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing. (The “Alex” in the title was Greenspun’s dog, a huge white Samoyed.) The final chapter of the book was titled “A Future So Bright You’ll Need to Wear Sunglasses.” (You can read it, for free, at philip.greenspun.com.) It couldn’t help leaving its readers excited about the fantastic new opportunities available on the Internet. Every single industry was going to be turned upside down! New industries would be created! Start-ups would make people rich! Which is really nice, because it’s awesome to be rich! And, bonus: It’ll never be winter again!

Optimism is terrific!  It is good to remember that not every boom lasts and not everything works for everyone.

Paul