Network World reporters reflect on their favorite moment

Things were zany in the tech industry before the bubble burst. We take a look back at the past 25 years worth of reporting.

By Network World Staff, Network World
May 09, 2011 06:03 AM ET

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Network World was created in the spring of 1986 as a newsweekly to serve the blossoming network industry, to help shape the next big wave of technology driven by the need to interconnect information systems. A slew of new companies were emerging to aid in that effort and IT decision makers were struggling to put network technology to work for their companies.

Networking was the Wild West 25 years ago. There were multiple flavors of every net tech, endless incompatibility problems, competing standards, and broad uncertainty about which road would lead to the future. On the LAN side alone, for example, there were questions about broadband vs. baseband, Ethernet, Token Ring or StarLAN? And should data traffic be migrated to the voice network or vice versa?

Today many of the basic issues have been resolved, but every turn on the journey seems to reveal yet another way that networking can change the enterprise, indeed, the world. Here are a few memories from Network World staff members that have played a role in our 25-year history:

Read the entire 25th anniversary package

A sobering moment

By John Gallant

Over the course of two and a half decades with Network World (beginning as managing editor with our launch issue in 1986), there have been many terrific memories as our publication grew and the industry we chronicled expanded by leaps and bounds. But one experience stands out above all the others, and resonates especially today in light of the recent news of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

On Sept. 11, 2001, many of the writers, sales executives and other employees of Network World were attending NetWorld+Interop in Atlanta. I had just finished a breakfast meeting and was headed back to my room to check email when I passed a television set in the hotel where I was staying. The first tower at the World Trade Center had been hit by a hijacked plane, although the newscaster didn’t know it at the time. I was transfixed. Watching the tower burning, the even more startling news came out: Another plane had crashed into the second tower. Soon, the frightening reality became all too clear: America was under attack.

I left the hotel and headed to the convention center across from CNN's headquarters, where I had been scheduled to meet with the CEO of a top security software company. I went to the company's booth and the CEO and I quickly agreed there were more important things to do than discuss the everyday topics of product strategy and market directions. Network World staffers gathered at our booth on the conference floor. N+I attendees stood riveted to TV sets broadcasting in other booths trying to digest the news of an attack on the Pentagon and another plane down in Pennsylvania. People were pale, shaken. Some cried as they feared for colleagues in New York or Washington, D.C. The mood was somber, the normal hubbub of a bustling convention silenced. Shocked out of routines, each of us wondered what we were supposed to do as the entire nation struggled to come to grips with events beyond our experience and understanding. (More than a few showgoers wondered out loud whether we should abandon the convention center in fear that it might too be a target.)

A handful of colleagues took charge, reaching out to customers to cancel a major Network World party planned for that evening and turning into an employee-only gathering. I've never been so happy to be in the company of co-workers. As we ate and drank and talked nervously that night, everyone worried about family and loved ones, but was comforted by the presence of colleagues. A charter bus was procured and, early on the morning of Sept. 12, nearly 50 Network Worlders and some customers and other friends pulled out of Atlanta for the 20+-hour drive back to our offices in Southboro, Mass. We waved as other colleagues headed off in rental cars for the West Coast.

As the bus rolled up the eastern seaboard, we watched movies, played cards, ate and drank. Somewhere, at a truck stop in Virginia, I had my first Krispy Kreme doughnut. We laughed and joked, until another news report or a quick glance at the newspapers - with the horror and devastation of the attacks emblazoned across their front pages – reminded us of why were all together, sobering us up quickly. Like people everywhere, we were unsettled, anxious, confused. It was eerie to note that not a single plane passed overhead the entire trip. We were on one very strange field trip, the likes of which none of us will ever be involved with again.

Early in the morning of the 13th, we arrived at Network World's parking lot. We hugged and shook hands and headed off alone to our cars or cabs to finally get home and see our families. But as I drove off, I was deeply grateful to have been with my extended Network World family at a time when no one in America wanted to be alone.