Impact of a Consulting Assignment with Laszlo Systems

Notes on exposure to the 'state-of-the-art' of information technology during the last few months


Feeling more connected with the 'state-of-the-art' on the Internet. Partly the result of the last half-year of consulting with Laszlo Systems on the product launch of the Laszlo Presentation Server. Besides developing the original White Paper, various pieces of marketing collateral, and a product review guide, I also orchestrated the unveiling of the platform through a series of technology conferences and trade shows, including Demo 2003 , O'Reilly 2003 Emerging Technology Conference and JavaOne 2003 . The O'Reilly conference was particularly eye-opening, with a parade of IT industry luminaries speaking and in attendance. During this consulting stint, the LPS received a 2003 Webby Award nomination for technical achievement , alongside fellow nominees Google, Linux, Apache and phpBB. This nomination stunned the Laszlo engineering team, given the cult status of the other technologies recognized by the Webby committee. But the most rewarding part of the experience for me was the exposure to recent trends with programming languages, open standards and Web application development. I have been surprised by the variety of uses for XML from declarative application programming languages to server configuration files. In old age, I will look back feeling privileged to have participated in the early commercial development of the Internet.