I started working for Volt Information Sciences in 1992 as the manager of their software documentation and training group in Blue Bell, PA. The Directory Division sold software and services for publishing yellow pages. My team documented the mainframe and terminal software and delivered user training to customers.
In 1995 I was looking for a better way to distribute document updates to a thousand widely spread users across three continents. I stumbled across a technology called the Portable Document Format and a new communication tool called the World Wide Web.
I built my first web page in 1996. By 1998 I had built one of the very first online yellow page directories for AT&T: The National Tollfree Directory. In 1999 and 2000 my yellow pages web sites for The Community Phonebook won gold medals in just about every technical category the Yellow Page Publishers Association defined.
I had to teach myself to code, but I loved every minute of it. The joy of watching a screen full of data spill out from a query and few lines of code is still with me. In the years that followed I learned:
By 2008 I was running the Web Directory Development group of a Fortune 1000 company. We published several hundred print and online directories a year. We distributed a million copies of the National Tollfree and Internet Directory on CD-ROM using an insert in Forbes magazine that year. And I was making interactive training programs and videos again.
In 2010 I started working at Cenero in Malvern, PA. They needed someone to build their own web-based video meeting platform, and I had just the right combination of programming and video background to fill their niche. I was in my fifties, and looking for a smaller company to make a real difference in. I know there were some who wondered if an old guy was up to this kind of technology challenge. But what the young guys don't think about is that it was us old guys that invented most of this stuff.
It's been several years now. I'm the IT Director. I build WebRTC sites and design web service tools and API stacks to collect data on video conferencing system usage and service contracts around the globe. I'm even getting to mentor the next generation of programmers and network engineers as I guide my team. In a few more years, I'll hand the management role over and move fully into the design and coding side of things so I can work remotely well into my seventies.
When you work in your head, you can work from anywhere. And I plan to be working for many years to come.