Re: History of Seaint List

Jeremy:

 

Unless I am mistaken, the list got started in July 2005.  It was established by the Computer Applications Committee of SEAOSC.  That committee was chaired by Shafat Qazi, who can probably be considered as the father of the  list.  Some of the other active committee members were Dennis Wish and Bruce Bates.  By September, Bill Polhemus, Dennis Wish, and Christopher Wright were all posting up a storm.  I jumped in about six months later and Bill Allen joined shortly thereafter.

Where did we all go?  Nowhere, we are still here.  I post infrequently now because (1) I am very busy at the office, (2) I have only recently returned from three years of ASCE captivity, (3) I have been embarrassed when new clients have said that they knew me from the list before meeting me in person, and (4) I discovered that every one of my posts pops up whenever someone simply searches my name on Google.  Notoriety is useful for politicians, but not for engineers.

 

What about the other pioneers?  Sadly, some have passed away.  Happily, others have found gainful employment or families to occupy their best hours.  Undoubtedly, some have been turned off by too many off-topic posts and technical posts of no interest to them [for example, in my case, anything dealing with residential].  If there is a trend, it might be that most active participants today are sole-proprietors or members of very small firms, although that has probably always been true to some extent.  One last thought, the list may have lost some of its novelty in this era of multi-function pocket electronics.

 

Regards,

 

Stan R. Caldwell, P.E., SECB

Richardson, Texas

 

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We've already had too much economic growth in the United States.

Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.

Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people.

                                                                                    …Paul Ehrlich, 1990

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On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 4:29 PM, <jwhite@megr.com> wrote:

> I was looking at the archives recently and was curious what some of the

> first posts were and who posted them. It was interesting to see that a lot

> of the questions are very similar to those being asked presently. The only

> major difference is the code references are older. The other thing I

> noticed was that Bill Polhemus is one of the only people active from the

> very beginning of the list to present day. I wonder what happened to many

> of the others who used to participate and also if any of those who are still

> on the list know how the list got started?

>

> - Jeremy