Mark's CV and Clients

Neil Young

In the heyday of large music concerts, a little known fact was that all show production expenses, and payments were made in cash. This posed obvious bookkeeping problems which were made more odious when the tour went to Europe and the fact of currency regulations kicked in.

In these days, we communicated at a blazing 300 baud, and the cost of daytime connectivity was almost $300.00 per hour. Despite it all, this systems saved thousands of dollars.

Neil was planning a European tour, and wanted an easy way to control the inefficiencies of a large scale cash business. To be more precise, his accountants insisted on a solution.

We opened an account with Dialcom, and distributed workslates to the pertinent members of the tour. These workslates had a built in modem, and a 16 line display with a chicklet keyboard, but they did the job.

A key ingredient to success was the pedal steel guitar player who was responsible for nightly merchandise settlements. He was a country boy in every sense of the word, and training was not going well.

One day I discovered that the Dialcom system had a gateway to the future trading system, and when Ben discovered that he could check hog futures online, training was over!

The success of this system carried over to another effort. In 1984, Neil joined Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp to produce the first Farm Aid show

Distant Past

In the early seventies, I came off the road as a musician, and with a partner opened a retail repair shop in San Francisco called Stars Guitars. We began to manufacture the replacement parts we used, and in a couple of years became the largest manufacturer of custom guitar parts in the country.

I've been at this online community business a very long time. Shortly after buying my first Apple II, I discovered BBS systems, and my life changed forever

This experience taught me much about marketing, and more importantly about the various sales and distribution channels. While guitar parts is a pretty limited vertical market, the principles learned here have held me in good stead over the years. Perhaps most importantly, we bought one of the very first Apple II computers to help manage our business.

Since the mid 70's, the power of online community has been a clear and present part of my life. Once the concept became clear to me, the applications of this concept seemed limitless. although the technology was laughably primitive, the concept was sound.

Better to be lucky than smart

I had been a musician most of my adult life, and found myself living in the small coastal town of Half Moon Bay just south of San Francisco. Serendipity put me in touch with Neil Young who was had a specific problem that I thought I could help to fix.

Zadar County Landmine Project

I have been active in the Landmine Removal efforts for several years. In the summer of 2005, I went to Croatia to explore and execute an online penpal project between a middle school in Croatia, and one in Tennessee.

Through this project, youngsters in Croatia are able to practice their English, and the Tennessee students gain a first hand account of life in a war torn, landmine infected country.

Sanako

Sanako builds language laboratories and software all over the world.  Their customer base spans literally every time zone on earth.

In 2002 I met with the CEO of the company to discuss how a community site might bridge some of the problems associated with such a diverse, and dispersed, client base.  In operation since 2003, the discussion forums have become a central piece of the customer/product support strategy of the company.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores

The company operates over five hundred restaurant/gift shops throughout the U.S.. As the company grew, it became more difficult for the founder to stay in touch with the hourly employees.

He knew that this is where the rubber meets the road, and wanted a way to be able to get direct unfiltered opinions and observations from the hourly employees.

EcoTone was contracted to build a site to make this possible, and Barreltalk was born. From a test group of fifteen members in 2001, it has grown to over 15,000 members, and become a valuable tool allowing for previously impossible interactions between the home office and the field.

Recent Past

Business

From 1990 until 1999 I worked for Cracker Barrel OCS in Lebanon Tennesee. It is a chain of over five hundred restaurant/giftshops doing over a billion dollars a year. This was an exciting time in the growth of all things internet. As the technology matured, it moved from department to department within the company, and I moved right along with it. During the years at Cracker Barrel I worked in:

• I.T.: While there I built the first active intranet application using a very early version of Cold Fusion. This application pulled the nightly sales reports and put an email link to each of the senior executive's mailboxes. This replaced an often broken VB application that depended on current runtime files that seemed always to be out of date.
• Corporate Communications : Here I put up the first online employee directory, phone list, and online version of the corporate orientation manual.
• Training : I helped to write and produce the very first online training materials. The company had begun with Macromedia Author and CD technology, but quickly saw the benefits of web based delivery. This training system is now in all 55+ stores, responsible for the training of over 60,000 employees each year.

In 1998 I proposed an online community for the employees in the field. This proposal was met with less than stellar response in the legal department, and was quickly killed. A forward looking CEO kept a copy of my plan, and a year later approached me about beginning the project.

To insure corporate peace, I quit the company and began EcoTone to fulfill the vision. Now in our sixth year, this community has proved to be a cornerstone asset to the company. Suggestions posted here have saved a documented amount in the millions of dollars...the value to the employees...priceless.

Pro Bono:

I've also done at least one nonprofit/pro bono project each year. Many have been small local issues, but I'm every bit as proud of them as I am my large corporate accounts. Some that I am especially proud of include:

• Hartsville Nucleur Plant: I built an online community that rallied to defeat one of the largest corporations in the U.S. which wanted to build a uranium enrichment plant in this small community.
  
• Costa Rica: I helped with a project for indiginous tribe's rights in San Jose.
  
• Tecapulco Mexico Artisans:A woman's jewelry coop in Central Mexico.
  

In each case, my contribution was simply to find a need that could be filled by online community, build and then manage the community until they were self sufficient, or the project had been completed.

Recent Information

 

I am fifty five years old, and in good health. Currently I live in Alexandria Tennessee, a small town about forty miles from Nashville for half of the year. The remainder I spend in Fribourg Switzerland and Helsinki Finland.

 I live alone, without children or pets. While this can sometimes be tedious, it does allow me a flexibility that I enjoy a great deal.

Apart from my work and the Internet, I'm actively involved in Landmine Removal projects, as well as a Local Food initiative in my hometown. I speak fluent French, and have helped out translating a Kids Museum project.

Back to the Future

In today's world, we are able to do almost unbelieveable things remotely. Various online tools allow all of us to do much more without leaving our homes and offices.

There are however many things that are better done the old fashioned way...face to face