Syndesis Syndicated
2 messages in this thread
Hey John (new thread for a different frame of mind)
In yer most recent posting you quipped:
JF > I just hired a new full-time person to work on the next 3D-ROM…
Is he handling P.R.? 😉
Hey, John, I'm just kiddin'. Put away that gun.
But seriously, smolks. Tell me sumptin'.
Howdja get started in all of this? I've been visiting you in yer booth for
a couple of years and you've always been so busy… and you know the way
shows are… so much to see and do… so little time. I never got to ask ya:
1) How did Syndesis come about? I've got the CD and I know you're the
president of the company and all, but tell me more.
2) We've been brainstorming on names of late, how'd you come up with yours?
3) Are you a programmer who designed a solution to a problem
that you recognized others faced?
4) Or are you an entrepeneurial type, a creative thinker,
that recognized an opportunity and went out and hired the talent
to produce a product you knew you could market?
5) How many different versions of Interchange Plus are there?
An inquiring mind wants to know.
Besides isn't this what you'd rather be talking about?
Kevin Gibson
Animation Nation <tm> -=iT's A StaTe OF MiNd?=-
Syndesis came about in late 1987. A few years before that, I quit my
last programming job because they were about to put me on a project
writing 8086 assembly code. I knew that would destroy my brain. I'd
been writing freelance in the Amiga market and decided to do it
full-time instead. I had been writing for a year or two when one day
I wanted to move a 3D model between two Amiga 3D programs. There was
no common file format, but since I was actually a programmer who'd
specialized in data translations in the past, I wrote the first
version of InterChange. I realized it had commercial potential, so I
started Syndesis.
"Syndesis" is actually a word, it means "a binding together." I took
this Latin-Greek derived word and gave it the Americanized
pronounciation "syn DEE sis" instead of "SYN duh sis". I stole the
company name from an article in an in-flight magazine about a New
York artist who made lightweight furniture from concrete.
The best advice I can give about company names is "two syllables, easy
to spell, easy to pronounce." I learned this *after* I'd picked an
obscure name like "Syndesis." 🙂 I've already picked the name of
my next company or subsidiary. As it turned out, there is already a
"Syndesis" in Canada, they make X.25 repeaters, and they took
"syndesis.com" domain on the Internet, so I have to pick another
domain name. There's also a large Southern construction firm called
"Syndesis", I've seen in on signs in cheesy cable movies in scenes in
construction sites.
There's also an "Interchange" office building in Minneapolis. Threw me
for a loop one day driving down the highway. 🙂
Syndesis is a small company. I do the bulk of the programming, along
with everything else I can't delegate. I've used consultants on
specific projects over the years. At one point, the company had
three full-time programmers and one shipping person, but I've
re-balanced the company and now it's much more profitable. (In other
words, a few years ago I bought out my business partners.)
How many versions of InterChange? I' not even sure how many file
formats we support. 🙂 We've had the Amiga version since 1987.
There's a version that's built-in to LightWave in the Video Toaster.
There's the Windows (Win32s) version. Some of the code and test
harnesses are up and running under Mac, Linux and SGI. Then there's
the IPAS version, plus several other 3D program's plug-in formats
we're investigating.
Any other questions? I don't answer questions about sales figures.
🙂