Friday, November 30, 2007
Applied Messaging, Convoq, Zingdom == kaput.
Friday, November 30, 2007 
I was tooling through some XBox 360 demos when an MSN message came through. "Convoq is dead." Wow. I haven't worked there for a long time, but the company kept trying to re-invent itself (first it was Applied Messaging, then Convoq, then Zingdom), trying to package up some code that was written to come up with new product offerings, or try to manage to come up with some ideas to code to.
I got to meet a few great guys/developers there whom I am still i touch with today. Alan, Alexis, Dan, Patrick!, Onur, Rajeev and Tonytip. I learned a lot from those guys. In the hey-day of the company, we often stayed late and killed each other playing Unreal Tournament. It was all code, free sodas & Perrier, and lots of fun. Some saw the writing on the wall though, and they departed. I left. One of the writers there died. Those that departed consulted back. A CEO was replaced. The product changed. Another CEO was replaced. Finally one of the bigtime developers who was still left quit, and that was the last straw. Now the thing is dead. No details, but the VCs must have seen enough already. Too bad, it was a cool place to work for a while. I got to work in a real software development environment, I got to be build engineer a bunch of times, got to see how people in the industry handle things, I got to meet and get to know Jeremy Allaire too. That's super cool. Worth the job right there. I got to work with one of the software engineers that helped to create LiveMotion 2!
So now there is a chance to score some cheap hardware before the auction. Maybe have a party for all those who worked there. Cya Convoq. You lasted a whole lot longer than many ever thought it would. I have a ton of funny, scary, depressing, and frustrating stories... as I'm sure many who tool around in the bowels of a startup can attest to. A story in the inevitable production in futility. A great team of developers all traveling in different directions. I think it would make for outstanding reading. I wonder if I should pitch it.
I got to meet a few great guys/developers there whom I am still i touch with today. Alan, Alexis, Dan, Patrick!, Onur, Rajeev and Tonytip. I learned a lot from those guys. In the hey-day of the company, we often stayed late and killed each other playing Unreal Tournament. It was all code, free sodas & Perrier, and lots of fun. Some saw the writing on the wall though, and they departed. I left. One of the writers there died. Those that departed consulted back. A CEO was replaced. The product changed. Another CEO was replaced. Finally one of the bigtime developers who was still left quit, and that was the last straw. Now the thing is dead. No details, but the VCs must have seen enough already. Too bad, it was a cool place to work for a while. I got to work in a real software development environment, I got to be build engineer a bunch of times, got to see how people in the industry handle things, I got to meet and get to know Jeremy Allaire too. That's super cool. Worth the job right there. I got to work with one of the software engineers that helped to create LiveMotion 2!
So now there is a chance to score some cheap hardware before the auction. Maybe have a party for all those who worked there. Cya Convoq. You lasted a whole lot longer than many ever thought it would. I have a ton of funny, scary, depressing, and frustrating stories... as I'm sure many who tool around in the bowels of a startup can attest to. A story in the inevitable production in futility. A great team of developers all traveling in different directions. I think it would make for outstanding reading. I wonder if I should pitch it.
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