Sometime in 2000 we had a fancy party to celebrate the spinoff of Roxio from Adaptec. Apparently we put on headgear to dance “YMCA.” The guy on the floor was the new CEO, Chris Gorog, whose claim to fame was that he’d produced a few little-known movies. But he was a Hollywood guy, and the Adaptec board rather grandiosely saw Roxio as a media company. Um, yeah… sorta.
Category Archives: my life in tech
CeBit, 2000
IN 2000, I went to Germany to help staff the Adaptec/CeQuadrat booth at CeBit, at the time the largest tech conference in Germany (and maybe all of Europe). CeQuadrat was another small CD-recording software company that Adaptec had bought, so we had acquired a(nother) bunch of German colleagues – I don’t remember whether this happened before or after Adaptec bought Toast, the most popular CD-recording software for Mac. I made friends among both teams, some of whom remain in touch today.
Adaptec in Seville, 1999
In the summer of 1999 I got to attend a get-together of Adaptec Software sales people and partners in Seville, Spain. I don’t remember the names of most of these people (except for Big John Heckethorn) but I do remember that we all had a lot of fun, particularly with a treasure hunt involving teams in jeeps cruising around the hills. There was also flamenco dancing.
It’s Here! Brendan’s Latest Book
My Career Evolution from Tech Writer to… Many Things
I recently gave a talk at at internal Amazon conference for tech writers. I was a technical writer from early in my career, and still consider tech writing one of my foundational skills. In the talk, I hoped to provide some insight to other technical writers about their own skills, and how those could be used in other roles. I’m sharing all that information here, in case you also find it useful. (It was an hour-long talk, which makes for a very long blog post!)
Continue reading My Career Evolution from Tech Writer to… Many Things
