Work stories: 1998

 In the trenches [Previous ¦ Next]

Implementing OpenExplorer at Landmark client sites around the world, I most often ended up working side-by-side with GeoQuest teams (see Y2K). I also started to work on software by ESRI, for whose product ArcView we would sell the most runtime licenses - little did I know where that would lead me eventually! In the meantime,  major accounts often split Landmark applications and GeoQuest data management, so project teams always worked together with clients, while marketing pitched the two companies against each other; this wasn’t always a smooth process, and it reminded of a purported event in 1914: at the beginning if World War I [1], Canadian and German soldiers apparently celebrated Christmas together above the trenches... and the next day resumed shooting each other! Metaphors aside, clients quickly saw the benefits of GIS front-ends to data warehouses, and demand for similar functionality increased radically after a slow start – the benefit of GIS in data management was taking hold of the petroleum industry’s imagination.

1: in the euphoria at the beginning, what was briefly called the gallant war was thought to be over next spring; the war to end all wars as it was later called, marked the transition from chivalresque charges of the light brigade (as in the Crimean War over 50 years earlier), to grinding trench and tank warfare: the horrendous human sacrifice, barely abated by large-scale deployment of the Red Cross (also started in Crimea), was also a dim glimmer of what would follow a mere 25 years later during World War II...