What a Long, Great Trip It’s Been!
CorelWORLD gets set to sail into the sunset
This is an excerpt from the 2003 Conference Guide and the traditional host’s greeting that appears on Page 3.
Ever since March of this year, when I began to think seriously about letting the sun set on CorelWORLD, the same theme kept playing in my head, and with it that wonderful 1971 Grateful Dead song from which it derived.
Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me,
What a long strange trip it’s been…
From there it was an easy leap to consider the man who was at the helm of the Dead for over three decades and ponder a certain kinship that I felt. I must have a few things in common with Jerry Garcia, if you overlook the minor detail that I am still alive.
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We surely must own the two largest noses ever to be published in the CorelWORLD Conference Guide.
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I went to UC Berkeley where I took lots of courses in journalism. He performed in Berkeley and took lots of LSD.
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They named an ice cream flavor after Jerry. My 10-year-old daughter Erica, whom you will meet at the event this year, regularly requests “Daddy’s eggs” for breakfast.
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I used to have facial hair.
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Jerry visited many cities and people traveled to those cities year after year. Look at the number of stars on badges this week and it will become clear to you that we have our own special breed of Deadheads.
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When asked how he could perform for so long, his answer was simple: “I love it.”
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Off microphone, Garcia was a man of few words. Okay, so that comparison doesn’t exactly measure up.
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Pondering CorelWORLD’s swan song is a tall order for me and, I’m certain, for much of the loyal patronage. We know that many of you plan your summer vacations and your work schedules around it. Two years ago, one patron planned her pregnancy around the conference. So rest assured, this was not a decision made lightly, nor with any of the substances that my counterpart above might have used to help him make important decisions.
To say that we have spanned three decades takes advantage of the loophole that we started in December of 1989, and I remember back to that first year as if it were...well, no, it does not feel as if it were yesterday.
What a long, great trip it’s been…
We were all using DOS machines then, and the big news was Xerox’s intention to release Ventura Publisher on the new Windows 3.0 platform. Corel Corp. was a vendor at that first show—CorelDRAW had just hit the marketplace, and it was being touted as the perfect complement to Ventura.
That was also the year that Becky and I were married—if I told you which event I use to remember the other, I might have to sleep on the couch for a while, but suffice it to say that I keep time by the conferences…
1990...The first year of the trivia contest and the Help Center...we referred to it as the Technology Suite and it was situated clear on the other side of the hotel...Our family buys its first home...all four of our parents faint when we tell them what we paid.
1991...Over 500 attendees—we take up six large ballrooms...Becky and I tour Europe that spring...I spend a week in Paris sneezing.
1992...Last of four consecutive years at the Red Lion hotel in San Jose...Erica is born that year.
1993...First CorelDRAW conference in Washington DC...Becky weans Erica just in time to leave her with a grandmother as we go to ClubMed...no separation anxiety in sight.
1994...Three hundred people come to San Francisco in July and freeze, expecting summer in California to be warm...patrons angry about DRAW 4 give Corel officials an earful—force Fiona Rochester to leave the stage in tears…Corel buys Ventura Publisher...Corel rep from Ottawa stays at our house one weekend and can’t believe his eyes when he sees an orange tree in our backyard...picks oranges from it as if he were robbing a bank.
1995...CorelDRAW in Dallas...cousin Dan joins the conference staff and makes all the ladies swoon...Meanwhile at the Ventura Summit earlier that year in Santa Clara, while Arlen Bartsch delivers the keynote address, next door a brigade of Baptist ministers begins a morning session of gospel singing at concert-level volume...Later, the hotel audio short-circuits and two-way radio conversations play through the loudspeakers.
1996...CorelDRAW in Baltimore...John Corkery wows the crowd by showing how he created his Hedy Lamarr image...just months later, he is dragged into the lawsuit that Lamarr brings against Corel for not getting proper permissions (Corel thought she was no longer alive)...Ventura Summit returns to Red Lion at San Jose, hotel misreports amount of rooms sold and threatens suit against me for failure to pay penalty...Second daughter Jamie born.
1997...CorelDRAW conference offered in two cities within one month—Toronto and San Diego...most Canadians choose to go to San Diego...Our tennis team out of Los Gatos repeats as national champions.
1998...Debut of CorelWORLD, week-long combination of CorelDRAW and Ventura...host big party first night, with vendors, a comedian, and a live band—but no bathrooms nearby, and after comedian does his bit, everyone leaves for the bathrooms, never to return...nobody left to dance to the band except Becky and me...Erica starts kindergarten.
1999...Over 300 people come to Orlando and it rains every day...Doug Downey wins first brochure design contest...Becky and I celebrate our 10th anniversary, hire a duet to play live at outdoor dinner party.
2000...Back to San Diego...hire same duet to come to the conference and entertain...hotel double-books ballroom on final day and we agree to move to other rooms...Help Center is set up in the bar…
2001...Boston...Day Two of the conference is September 11...’nough said.
2002...On the eve of the release of Ventura 10, we announce another Ventura Summit… scheduled for February...postponed until May...postponed until July...software still not out...we all have a wonderful time anyway, thanks to the free happy hour at the Embassy Suites…CorelWORLD in St. Louis is at a hotel whose ballroom space is on the top floor instead of the bottom...Mom discovers the riverboat casinos and leads a throng of Corelians into the depths of sin and debauchery...Family moves to Pleasanton (last two points not related...).
You wouldn’t know it by the page of copy that I just wrote, but I’m really more of a forward-looking person than one given to long reminiscences, and I really cannot conceive of a time in which the CorelWORLD legacy won’t continue to touch our lives. Having a software program in common is a nice way to meet people and it creates a comfortable and friendly bond. But that was only where it started; we are now bound by far more than a digital affinity. Developers and marketers like to talk about “creating community,” and that expression has various warm and fuzzies associated with it. But we have created more than just community; we have practically created family.
And it’s not just that we all use the same software. It’s that we have swum against the current all these years in doing so. Having fought tooth and nail out there in the world to keep using CorelDRAW and Ventura Publisher, here at this conference, we finally get to let our hair down. Here, you’re among friends; here, you get to relax; here, you can claim, without fear of derision, that part of what makes you special is that you have chosen this less-traveled road.
CorelWORLD makes it possible for you to say that out loud, but it isn’t what makes you special—you did that all by yourself. In a year from now, a decade from now, a generation from now, when this conference is just a nice memory, you’ll still have that.
And whose to say that you won’t have more than memories about our time together? It’s not like I’m retiring to go live out my final years on a golf course, and it is certainly not the case that I am the only one qualified to host events like this. Fourteen years is simply enough of any good thing...not for all time...just for now.
Let’s enjoy our time together this week, veteran and new patrons alike. Let’s keep Wayne Kaplan in the Help Center up past his bedtime every night this week; let’s watch Paul Huntington’s daily transformation from somber artist by day into crazed hooligan by night. Let’s laugh mercilessly at and with our trivia contestants, flock to the sound of the prize train whistle, and bother my mother at Registration. You’re entitled. This is CorelWORLD, and you run this asylum. Certainly Jerry Garcia would have had it no other way; who am I to say otherwise...?