When I sent in my first crude vector drawings for his site, he accepted them graciously and encouraged me to continue developing my skill. To this day we’ve still never met in person (although we’ve recently reconnected on Twitter).He wasn’t critical. Tech apprenticeshipThinking back, Shawn Logan did something amazing: he took a chance on a 13-year-old kid he’d never met face-to-face. I posted about our launch on Usenet groups, on FidoNet, invited people personally on message boards, and did ANSI and Roboboard artwork for other BBSes in exchange for advertising. Once connected to the BBS, you could use message boards, play door games, and download files (known as "warez").As a teenaged geek who loved computers, being asked to be a co-SysOp was a big deal.Even then, I was interested in marketing.
We’ve homogenized everyone to being 20-30 years old, and at a certain skill level.If you’re a web designer, you might have forgotten that you once started building sites in Flash or Dreamweaver.If you’re a developer, you might have forgotten that your first foray into programming was HyperCard or Macromedia Authorware.(Somewhat surprisingly) one community that I’ve seen show great sensitivity to new programmers (and young programmers) is Stack Overflow. We have no idea if a participant is 13, 33, or 63. I hope the tech culture is still doing this.The BBS scene was so small and personal that people would learn your age right away.But our modern online communities are largely vague on age. If I had a question, I could call him at any time.
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