6
IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and other major companies had nothing to show. I met
Alan Meckler, then chairman of Mecklermedia, who had organized the event and
with Jane and Jerry’s urging, I signed up for the largest booth Alan had for the
next Internet World conference to be held in Washington, D.C. that coming
December, 1994. Alan invited me to give a talk during a breakout session at the
conference and I shared my enthusiasm for “The Future of the Internet” publicly
for the first time. That became my theme for the next six years as I gave dozens
of keynote speeches around the world.
After my talk in December 1994 a lot of people called and wrote and emailed
asking for copies of my presentation so I decided to build a web site to share my
views. Over 150,000 visitors have since stopped by at ibm.com/patrick and
asked questions, offered suggestions, or simply said thanks for sharing. I was
inspired by these visitors and their messages and each time I received an email I
said to myself, one of these days I am going to write a book. I thought it would be
a book about the many personal experiences I had with my web site, the people
who visited, and the things they said, but over the years I came to realize the
tremendous impact that the Internet was going to have on our business and
personal lives. I also began to see that the technology would be tremendously
important but that there was an attitude factor that would be at least as important.
In the early days I got the attitude from Dave Grossman and David Singer and
other colleagues but as time went on I began to develop a lot of the attitude on
my own. I began to witness, first hand, the differences between organizations
that seemed to have this “Net Attitude” and those that didn’t. I hope that this book
will help more organizations get a “Net Attitude” so they can be highly successful
(at whatever they do) on the Internet.
There are so many people to thank for making the book possible. First and
foremost is Nick Philipson, my tireless editor, for his countless contributions,
corrections, and helping to me to make my writing more readable. His questions
were painful at times but helped me to clarify and organize my thoughts. Thanks
to John Dvorak for introducing me to John Brockman, my agent. John Brockman
appropriately questioned whether I had anything relevant to write about but I
thank him for taking time to visit our Internet Technology Laboratory, see the
work we were doing on advanced technologies, and take the time to listen to the
story I wanted to tell. I also thank him for leading me to Nick.
I want to thank the executives at IBM who were in a position to restrain me but
instead encouraged me to live out on the edge of the Internet even though we
had no idea where it would lead or how or even if we would ever make any profit
from it. These included Jim Cananvino, Fernand Sarrat, and Dennie Welsh in the
early days and Irving Wladawsky-Berger over the past five years. Irving, more
than anyone, constantly encouraged me to spend as much time as possible out
in the marketplace, learning from others and sharing the IBM vision.
And thanks to my friends and colleagues for reading my drafts and giving me
their candid feedback about where I had gone astray or missed key points. I
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