I was going to wait until September to do MY post, but since we're talking anniversaries here... In September 2013 I will be celebrating my 20th year anniversary of being an independent RBase programmer. I thought it would be fun to mention the people who were instrumental in helping me get to this stage. Perhaps some of these names will bring up memories for other people!!
In Sept 1993 I quit a systems manager job in Chicago, wanted to take a few months off before hunting for a new job. At the time I was co-leader of the Chicago Area RBase Users Group (CARBUG) along with Steve Cohen and Jeff Ward. We met monthly, had a nice turnout. Jeff was working on an RBase project, said he could use some help if I wanted to make a little money in my "off" time. And later said that I could do this for a living if I wanted to. Nope, I wanted perks. But a few weeks later, David Greenfield had decided (due to his recent marriage) that he'd rather have a corporate job with perks, so he quit his consulting business and wanted to hand out his clients. He said I'd be perfect for 2 of them, women-based businesses. Decisions to make... I decided to go for it. So I took his 2 businesses, and to this day I'm still working with them, and I worked with Jeff on his client for many years. One funny story about one of David's clients -- they are the largest synagogue in Chicago and it was completely run by a group of wonderful older immigrant women. I went there to meet them with David, and they decided to test me with a program that wasn't working right. I was confused by something David's program was doing and I said "What a minute, something isn't kosher here." She said "Karen, EVERYTHING is kosher here." Thankfully they had a good sense of humor! I met Bill Downall and David Blocker at an early RBase conference, and David asked me to help on some of his clients. I met Howard Simon and Steve Hartmann at the CARBUG meetings, and they also asked me to subcontract, which I still do today. But I remember 1998. I was thrilled with my new business, picking up new clients left and right.. But then it looked like RBase was going away. There was an ownership crisis, just when I was liking being self-employed. All of us consultants were in constant touch. I don't remember who it was who told me that some doctor guy was going to buy the company. I gave it no chance of succeeding, figuring this guy had no clue what to do with a software company. I've never been so happy to have been so wrong! Thank you Razzak for keeping me on the consultant path! And thanks to everyone in the RBase community for helping me along all these years. It's a great group of people! Karen -----Original Message----- Sent: Mon, Jun 3, 2013 10:02 am Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: Celebrating our 15th Anniversary On 03/06/2013 7:00 AM, A. Razzak Memon wrote: > Monday, June 3, 2013 > > To R:BASE Community: > > R:BASE Technologies, Inc. is very excited and proud to celebrate 15 years > of making R:BASE what it is today! > > Over the past 15 years, we have completely revamped and enhanced R:BASE > from version 6.1 to 9.5 (32/64).
