The show started for me with a meeting of vendors at Cornerstone to discuss the progress towards a flat ASCII file for information interchange between vendor modules. I took Rick Tarbox and Catherine Tarbox with me to this meeting so our average age would be closer to the average meeting age.

Computer Doctors Abound

Dr. Johannes Schmidt of Cornerstone, creator of the Image and Scanner Interface Specification (ISIS) in 1990, chaired the meeting. He had a group of young smart people from Cornerstone with him. The comments from the technical people at the meeting created electricity in the air. Bill Murphy, the creative programming power at TeraForm, spoke little; but it was fun to hear his comments. People from Prime Recognition, June Peoples of RAF, AEG/Electrocom and others spoke clearly and gave me the feeling that history was being made at the meeting. The show itself also provided opportunity to meet some excellent talent. Dr. Dennis Brittain, Vice President Engineering at Mitek Systems, exemplified the Silicon Valley intellectual to me -- smart, observant, articulate.

Service Bureau Needs Tough

In the Forum "Component Imaging vs. Turnkey Software," Dennis Peters, of FaxMasters, shocked me when he stated that his company did not do business with service bureaus. Peters said their requirements were too tough.

On the last day of the show, I was fortunate to meet Mr. Herb Teaque of Application Software Inc. For many years Herb and I have spoken on the telephone and this was our first chance to meet in person. Herb is the client who specified the purpose of the Unibase Technical Review many years ago. "Just tell us what you are working on and what concerns you -- we will do the rest." was and is the stated purpose for The Unibase Technical Review.