Cadalyst - June 2008 - (Page 24)

25yearscadalyst years commuting once a month to the magazine' s editorial offices in Eugene, Oregon. Once in Eugene, the staff was reformed, with me as senior editor, Gail Elber as senior associate editor, and Sandy Lurins as associate editor. Staffing changed a bit over the next few years. Lurins became editor. Art Liddle was hired as technical editor. Lara Sheridan became associate editor. I stayed with the magazine until mid-1996, holding the position of senior editor for nearly 10 years. Lurins became editor-in-chief, Sara Ferris senior editor, and Sheridan managing editor. Then Lurins left to join Autodesk and Gene Smart took over as editor-in-chief. In 2003, Ferris became editorin-chief. Lisa McAdam joined the staff as managing editor in 2006. Amy Stankiewicz assumed the editorship in 2007. Aster Publishing was sold to Advanstar Communications in 1993, and even more changes ensued, including Questex Media Group' s purchase of the magazine in mid-2005. By my count, the magazine has been redesigned at least 10 times. But through it all, CADalyst has evolved while remaining true to most of the ideals that Johnston envisioned 25 years ago in that little town in British Columbia. Of course, not everything Johnston imagined has panned out exactly as he thought. When he first started CADalyst, he also proposed starting an electronic bulletin board service (BBS) for AutoCAD users as an additional communication vehicle. That BBS never materialized. ª I never knew how to do something like that, and nobody ever offered,º he said. Several other BBSs carried AutoCAD information, but the real genesis of what became NAAUG (North American AutoCAD User Group), the precursor of what is today known as AUGI (Autodesk User Group International), sprang from the AutoCAD Forum on CompuServe, which didn' t come into being until May 1986. I asked Johnston what he thought about the name. ªI ' m not a member. Do they have as their mascot an AUGI doggie?º to which I had to explain how AUGI now runs its Top DAUG contest at each CAD Camp event. Today, Johnston still lives in the same house in Vancouver, where I first visited him in the summer of 1987. His current venture is a startup company called WilliamOnWeb (www.williamonweb.com), which is creating production software for live theatre. It' s based on some work he began while living in Nelson. CADalyst (now named Cadalyst) has published 323 issues in the nearly 25 years since Johnston first mailed that small green or mauve flyer, and I own a copy of every one. You hold in your hands Issue Number 324. Now that' s history. David Cohn is the former senior editor of CADalyst magazine. Before joining CADalyst, he was a partner in an architectural firm in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was an early AutoCAD user. Since leaving CADalyst, Cohn has written for several magazines and has worked as an independent consultant. He currently is an applications engineer with The PPI Group. 24 www.cadalyst.com cadalyst June 2008 http://www.williamonweb.com www.williamonweb.com http://www.bluebeamrevolution.com http://www.bluebeamrevolution.com www.cadalyst.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - June 2008

Cadalyst - June 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Tech Trends: Community Building in Progress A Quarter Century of Cadalyst Tracking a CAD Giant The Highs and Lows of CAD Hardware Industry Insights — Looking Ahead Cadalyst Lab Reviews: HP xw4600 Workstation with LP3065 30” LCD Monitor NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 — Graphics Card LaCie 324 — LCD Monitor CAD Manager: Making Standards Stick MCAD Modeling: Rational vs. Irrational Decisions AEC Insight: Data Collection in AEC CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry: Just a Few CAD Renovations

Cadalyst - June 2008

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