Bob Newman, co-founder of the Colorado Technology Association, Photo: The Denver Post
The in is the middle of celebrating its 20th year. And at its annual APEX conference today at the Sheraton Denver Downtown hotel, the guy who really started it all said a few words.
Bob Newman, a co-founder of J.D. Edwards, spoke of the early 1990s when he attended conferences as J.D. Edwards’ representative. He got it in his head that Colorado needed a group of its own, not only for support, but to create a powerful community. He gathered up 10 other top software executives and got a charter in 1994. And 20 years later, CTA has swelled to 15,000 members. Read more about the CTA’s origins and what it has become here: “.”
At Thursday’s event, Newman also offered an amusing summary of “weird coincidences” that also occurred in 1994:
- The U.S. had a Democratic president (Bill Clinton) and Colorado had a Democratic governor (Roy Romer)
- First time in 40 years that Republicans ran both houses of Congress
- Unemployment rate was about the same as today
- The bill was passed in 1994
- The first conference exclusively about the Internet, the at UCLA, hosted by none other than Al Gore.
- Amazon was
- The first commercial Internet browser was born
- J.D. Edwards was the 30th largest software company in the United States, with about 1,200 employees.
