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Andrew Himes He didn't use the term then, but Andrew Himes was one of the web's first content strategists. Years before Bill Gates' famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo, Andrew and his co-founders at the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) were working on a proprietary hypertext document system, code-named Blackbird. Then along came the web. Andrew and his colleagues at MSDN were uniquely positioned to pioneer some of the very first enterprise-scale web content strategy. They had tons of digitized information - newsletters, code examples, etc. - published on CD-ROMs with Blackbird. They served a community of several hundred thousand tech-savvy readers around the globe. They had access to the best programmers. Andrew had already gone to school on Apple's early Hypercard program and had worked on one of its successors, PowerCard, so he knew how to work in a hypertext environment. This confluence of a huge tech-savvy global audience, access to programming talent, a huge storehouse of digitized information, and familiarity with hypermedia led to the creation of what was likely the world's first content management system. Andrew's Bio Andrew Himes is a consultant for Carbon Innovations. Himes was founding editor of MacTech, the leading Apple technology journal, then co-founded the Microsoft Developer Network and led the first web development project at Microsoft. After leaving Microsoft, Himes became a nonprofit startup specialist before founding Charter for Compassion International. He produced the documentary "Voices in Wartime" and is the author of "The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family." Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/yw7o7H_CVMc Show Notes/"Transcript" [Not an actual transcript - just my quick notes on first listen-through] 0:00 - long-winded intro by yours truly . . . 1:30 - Andrew intro - one of several co-founders of MSDN - connect, learn, get software, SDKs, tech info, APIs, etc. - used to need a brother-in-law at MS to get that stuff - early SaaS - orig delivered on CD along with monthly newsletter, "MSDN News" 3:40 - his accidental introduction to the world of publishing for developers - Puget Sound Computer User - wrote about consumer software in early 1980s - learning as he went - local Apple user group + 25K in Apple coop - then Macintosh came out so Apple launched Mac mag - consumer mag - never went anywhere - started a software mag for Apple developers and he became, reluctantly, founding editor of MacTech magazine - once you have that job description, people talk to you as if you are an expert, even if you aren't 6:20 - Apple launched Hypercard - shipped with every new Mac - he was fascinated - got into hypertext, other technologies that prepared him for web - brought that intense interest to MS 7:30 - 1993 - discovered web browser - immediately realized power of online publishing - over next couple of years MSDN launched online access via SAAS developer access to SDKs, sample code, advice, interaction, and online network - extraordinary learning experience for him - got to implement brand-new stuff 9:30 - from monthly paper newsletter - microsoft.com existed, but only content was random pieces of content, just random info - they wanted to build online application, but no tools yet, so created VBScript, Access database, and pointers to Word docs, converted to RTF and then to HTML, added home page - only tool he know of then - the first CMS? - yes, first database-driven, auto-built, structured set of documents - 12:25 - information architecture - an intense, sophisticated methodological group already in place at MS, working with SGML - only folks who knew about SGML were PhDs - they used SGML to create CD-ROM product with structured content - 600 MB of info - thousands of pages of content - created hieararchy and imported into Media View file - one big file on a CD-ROM - only worked with structured info and link...