Happy 14th Birthday, CTDATA
Dave Aiello wrote, "On August 22, 1989, Chatham Township Data Corporation was officially incorporated. The 14th year of CTDATA's history was notable because it was slightly worse than last year. We had hoped for better results than we got. On the other hand, we put a floor under the company by developing unique applications for Amazon Web Services that generated money, and when necessary we sold a used book or two."
"Earlier this week, my wife Kathleen said that CTDATA was 'in transition' from what it was to what it will be in the future. Some of us remember the days of long term consulting projects for New York-based financial services companies with a sense of nostalgia. Those were the days when men were men and people spent money out of a fear of being left in the dust by their competitors."
"Many of the projects that CTDATA was involved in prior to 9/11 were win-win projects for everyone involved. But, in hindsight, the projects often began as ill-defined efforts to put up a website that attracted an audience on the Internet or a corporate intranet."
"You may laugh at this assessment of some of our old projects, but these efforts were no more exploratory or tentative then the early attempts at commercial radio programming were in a different period of American history; Nobody knew what would work, so initially, just about anything was tried. Remember the old CTDATA saying:"
You can always tell who the pioneers are, because they're the ones with the arrows in their backs.
"Now, the business is much more about making a few dollars here and there as often as possible each day by helping Amazon.com make more money or connecting Amazon's customers with books that Amazon itself doesn't stock. It's also about teaching people better ways to connect with their customers via the web, and in the process, relegating brochureware to the scrap heap of history."
"The big question that (hopefully) will be answered in CTDATA's 15th year is: what mix of these techniques and what other processes, revisited or yet to be found, will help CTDATA back on to the growth path? We shall see."