Online Communications Consultant

I began communicating via modem in 1983 with a 300-baud modem connected to a POTS (Plain-Old-Telephone-System) line. Over the years I have subscribed to several of the original proprietary online services, including the major networks: America Online®, CompuServe®, and PRODIGY®. Today I conduct the majority of my Internet business activities through high-speed digital cable and occasionally analog access points over major network backbones.

It wasn't until November 1990 that I decided to devote full-time to the online venue as a business communications platform. Since then I have posted over 20,000 electronic messages comprised of more than 8 million words to public and private forums. Since 1992 I have created and supervised numerous virtual community development projects.

During one of my projects as an online communications consultant for the Prodigy Network, I served as Bulletin Board Leader for its small business community. In that role, it was not unusual for me to post over 400 notes a month publicly in response to member correspondence. One of the more dubious honors I continue to hold to this day is being the only Board Leader who posted so many notes in a given month that the system automatically locked my ID from further access to the board. It turned out, as a safeguard against spammers, the Prodigy® bulletin board software was designed to cut off access for any ID registering somewhere around a thousand messages. Unfortunately, the programmer did not take into account that someone could actually post that many unique, relevant messages in a given month! To this day, my peers often marvel at how I can manage to get any paying work out while contributing to so many online forums. Yes, Virginia, there is a secret to it -- learn to embrace online technology tools and stop wasting away in front of your television set! 

On any given day, I deal with no less than 300 messages and most days over 1,000. I use the full version of Microsoft Outlook to help me with the e-mail tasks. The only time I feel overwhelmed is when my e-mail filtering system fails. Of course, I've got more e-mail aliases than ever before but there's a valid reason I use them. Doing so enables me to refine my message filtering system and target responses accordingly. The best part is I save a lot of time!