10 years of Reinvented

Today is both my 10th year of blogging and the 10th anniversary of Reinvented Inc..

Reinvented is the butterfly the emerged from the chrysalis of digital island, the company I founded in 1995 to take on the task of working with the Province of Prince Edward Island on their nascent website. On May 31, 1999 digital island became Reinvented as the digital island name was ceded to Digital Island Inc., a Honolulu-based company about to launch an IPO.

Interestingly, the domain name digitalisland.com is now controlled by SAVVIS, Inc., a Missouri-based IT company. Presumably SAVVIS acquired the domain when they acquired the assets of Cable & Wireless America in 2004, Cable & Wireless having purchased Digital Island in 2001. What a tangled web we weave.

On May 31, 1999 Reinvented HQ was in the spare bedroom of our house out on the Kingston Road, Reinvented was just me, and I spent most of my time concerned with the minutiae of Island life.

On May 31, 2009 Reinvented HQ is on the first floor of 84 Fitzroy Street in downtown Charlottetown, Reinvented has tripled in size (from “me” to “me plus brother Johnny and partner Catherine”), and I spend most of my time concerned with the minutiae of the cosmos.

Back in the middle of the winter I had grand plans for fireworks and brass bands to help us celebrate this milestone, but the day-to-day deadlines of current projects were enough to distract me from the goal. As a result I’m left to simply thank Catherine for many years of support (and putting up with late night kernel panics), Johnny for many years of hard work (and putting up with working for his scatter-brained brother), our longtime client Yankee Publishing for many years of challenging projects and, more importantly, for the friendships that came with that work, and my former colleagues in the Province of PEI for getting me started at a time when there was still a lot of doubt that this “information superhighway” thing would take off.