In the mid-90s I discovered Geocities. How much fun was THAT service? You could build countless pages without a thought to good design principles or image optimization. And once Yahoo came on board I could choose to 'park' the hideous beach-background, center aligned, pixel-stretched site in The Tropics or Hollywood BLVD. Yes!

Somewhere around '97 I drug myself away from my page to attend this guy's corporate holiday shindig. It was GE in its prime hiring decade and I was surrounded by recent ivy-league graduates entering the corporate leadership program for IT.

The hostess thought it would be 'fun' to sit us away from our dates. AND after a courage-building glass of wine I gushed to my table guests about my Geocities site. The guy next to me (later I learned he was CIO of GEAE) must have thought me insane, but he asked me to show him my ugly Yahoo/Geocites/TheTropics/19182734793743656 site. And I did...with glowing pride ;-)

Where could any of this lead? Well, today, probably nowhere. But back then, while in my Freshmen year of college, it lead to my first offer letter of employment WITH salary from GE.

I continued in that position for 6 years, working with an incredibly talented team that planned, built, and implemented the company's original Intranet.

I'm curious if that first little Geocities mess of a webpage still sits on a server somewhere. God I hope not. Because this time it may ruin my career instead of starting it!