FirstClass – a quantum leap

By the early 1990s most of the faculty were using a computer or had access to one somewhere on campus. The computer lab in the Science Center and a smaller one in the library provided access for students during the school day. 

With a student body of about 700, 100 faculty and 40 or so admin staff, trying to get messages on time to people was a challenge. It was nothing new. For the last 1000 years there really was no way to distribute a message to a group of people except to maybe post something on a wall or to individually contact each person physically or call them one by one. The school was no different.

Each faculty person had a “box” or a “slot” in one of the two faculty rooms that was big enough to take a letter or a small package. Likewise, every student had a box in one of three or four buildings depending on their grade and boarding status.

That meant that meetings needed to be scheduled well in advance and regular with the time and date on a calendar. Impromptu meetings needed someone to write 6-7 messages and then personally walk them to each person’s box and hope that they read it before the meeting.

Somehow we came to know about FirstClass, a software package from a Canadian company. It was amazingly simply yet provided a quantum change to an organization. Logging in, each person would see a group of folders. Next to the folder was a flag to indicate a new unread message. The user simply had to click on the flags and read all new messages.

As the sender of a message, you could click on your message and it would show a list of everyone that had opened it with a timestamp. So when someone said “I didn’t get that message”, you could say, “Well, actually, you opened it on Tuesday at 11:14am!” 

The administrator, in this case me, could create an unlimited number of folders and give permissions to different people. So we had Math Department, Faculty, Taylor Dorm, Admission office, Club Soccer, etc. I could make someone the owner and they then could add additional subfolders and subscribe people to those. So that both created division of labor as well as total security. If you were not in a group, you did not see the folder. Each faculty person would see their dorm, their department, their team, the faculty folder, and their email. 

In the subfolders you could drop a document, either text or a photo or whatever. That allowed departments or teams to distribute handouts or project documents, keep them secure, and know who had read them. Revolutionary.

With the right permissions, a user could see who was currently logged in and use live messaging. This was also revolutionary. Imagine having a 2 minute chat with someone about a pressing issue and get it resolved without setting up a meeting or going to their office! It also led to people learning to type better.

In its early versions, it was Mac-only and an application. Soon it became cross-platform and then a web app. But this could not happen until PCs got a stable Windows operating system (Windows95) and the web was created. It was also just a closed system. There was no internet to connect to. So for about 3 years FirstClass gave us a campus-only productivity communication system.

To aid in outreach to the day community, we then installed 6 modems to the campus network. With this, a person at home could dial a certain number and with the right password could connect their computer and access FirstClass. The speed was very slow, but it was infinitely faster than driving to campus and dropping off notes. The 6 modems soon were humming all night long.

With the rollout of FirstClass, everyone now had instant access to any group—faculty, staff or student. The rollout was slow at first. People were accustomed to walking around campus dropping notes into boxes. The Dean of Students had famously carried a huge notepad in his back pocket where he had notes about all the students he needed to meet with. Getting him to simply put a note in the student’s FC was a long slow change.

This changed increased the desire of the administrative offices, including the Head, to get a computer. Soon there was a Mac on the desk of all the deans, their admin assistants and all the dorm heads. The Dean of Faculty was very helpful in that she started to send all her notices and faculty info only through FC. A few die hard faculty were constantly complaining that they had not been notified about this or that or had not gotten a note in their box. Slowly but surely they started paying attention when it became clear that this was not a passing fad.

FirstClass became such a key component to school productivity that on the few occasions when the network went down or the server quit, I was instantly deluged with calls and people running to my office.

The difference before and after was a quantum change. People could now be notified and documents securely distributed in a way never before possible. Changes like that don’t just make things slightly faster, they also create new cultural norms and practices. Lots of people were talking to each other a lot more about many more topics.

FirstClass was so revolutionary that is quickly spread across the non-profit and prep school market. There really was nothing like it. As Microsoft and Google rolled out their email systems schools slowly dropped FirstClass, but they lost so much organizational productivity. There was not anything even close until the emergence of Slack around 2016.

Making users go one place for email and another for documents and another for a calendar meant that lots of things slip through the cracks. It was a huge productivity step backward for many schools.