ISP to Software Company

Students were often hanging around in the computer lab during study hall at night. They were using the dozen or so Macs there to type class assignments and message people with FirstClass.

A student came to me one night and said that she wanted to learn more about using her computer and was hoping to do an ISP. She wondered if I had ideas. She could write text and use email and did not want to play games. It was kind of new for me too, but I told her that there were applications called databases that allowed a user to manipulate data in productive ways. She said that was interesting and so over the next few days we designed and got permission for her to do an ISP in computer science with me.

I had seen a program called FileMaker Pro in the athletic office. The athletic director somehow had stumbled on it and had made a few primitive files that allowed him to create team rosters and schedule busses and officials for games and other things. It was both primitive and utterly impressive.

Remembering my days at the USC admission office, I suggested that she create a database for our admission office. The admission director said that he was willing and so we began. At that time, the admission office was still hundreds of file folders in metal cabinets. They were experimenting with a Wang computer based program called EMS, but it really only ran on one computer and had few features.

I worked with her to create some basic fields—first name, last name, birthdate, sex, apply grade, boarder/day, home phone, street, city, state, zip. This was still before email and the internet. We got permission for her to input the data from a hundred files. She worked hard getting in that data, and then we created a list view so that you could see all those records on one page. She proudly showed the office how you could then sort the list by last name or city or zip at the click of a button. It was impressive and she earned her ISP credit. At that point, she lost interest.

I was a bit curious about what more could be done so I started adding fields and layouts. Turns out that it was easy to add check boxes to the database so I created inquiried, applied, interviewed, completed, accepted, waitlisted, declined and enrolled. These are the rolling status of files as they move through a standard admission cycle. I added fields for the interviewer name, recommendations received, financial aid, etc. Whatever I could think of.

I went back to the files that she had entered and input all the rest of this data. Then I assembled the admission staff for a quick demo. I had no idea if they would be interested.

FileMaker then and now has the amazing ability to allow a standard user to find records based on any field in the database. No geeky SQL query programming, no creating filters. Just click “Find” and the screen goes blank, and you typing in whatever you want to find in one or more fields. Simple.

So I showed them how to “find” all the 9th grade boarding girls who had interviewed. 2 seconds. Click and there was a phone list of just those girls. Or all applications for 10th grade. Or all day girls looking for financial aid.

They were stunned. They looked at the lists and then at the room full of file cabinets, and back at the screen, and over at the file cabinets. Well, “what about 9th grade girls who have applied but not yet interviewed?” Boom. All financial aid candidates? Boom. Applications from Bloomfield? Boom.

FileMaker also has a simple way to do text merge. So I had created a sample accept letter, as well as an envelope label and a sheet of mailing labels. With each found group of students above I showed them accept letters, mailing labels and envelopes. They were confused. “But these students aren’t accepted yet! How does that work?” The idea of having merged letters ready for any group of students at any time simply wasn’t something anyone had ever thought about before. Their letters had to be hand typed after the decisions were made in March, one by one.

The difference was overwhelming. To even think about making a phone list or mailing label sheet of all students applying from Windsor who don’t want financial aid was daunting. Someone would have to thumb file by file through 1200 or so folders, read the file briefly to see if it matched what they wanted, then write down the address and the phone number, go back and type those onto a list or page of labels. It would be hours or days. Now it was seconds. And an admission associate could do the same for any group of students—boarding ninth graders, females boarders, etc. Letters, mailing labels and phone lists for any category of student essentially instantly.

The admission director just said— “We want this”. Clearly there was much more to add and adjust, but basically it was a game changer.

I went to the business manager and the CFO and explained the request. I told them that this was NOT part of my technology coordinator job. This was a private project. I would own the code and the product and they could license it yearly. 

They agreed immediately and KJM Consulting had its first client. $500 for a year! I said that upgrades and support were not included or guaranteed but I would do what I could. Because it was fun and very creative I spent dozens and dozens of hours adjusting and playing with the layouts according to their requests. None of us knew exactly what was needed but following their advice I added feature after feature.

The director gave a talk at an independent school conference about his new program. Within a week I had calls from Concord Academy, Milton Academy, Mercersburg Academy, Belmont Hill and several other schools wanting my “program”. I was a full time technology director and triple threat at Loomis Chaffee so I really couldn’t do any work for other schools during the school year. I agree to “install my program” at 6 schools that summer, assuming that they knew that I was NOT a company and could not provide ongoing support. They all agreed.

I guess I had just created a software company.