3000 Reunion snares MANMAN support
June 20, 2011
Members of the MANMAN ERP community will be adding their numbers to this September's HP3000 Reunion. Terry Floyd, founder of the MANMAN and ERP support company the Support Group, said that the CAMUS user group will be meeting alongside the Sept. 22-24 reunion. Floyd, one of the CAMUS officers, said he's been in touch with the ASK Computer founders and the group will be helping to sponsor the event.
I hope we attract some real users, but I think there could be a large contingency of former ASK employees for Friday night Sept. 23. Founder Sandy Kurtzig can’t come, but Marty Browne is interested.
Some real users have signed up to be subscribers to the Reunion's blog, where they get a notice when news is posted about the fall event at the Computer History Museum. Supported by Speedware, Marxmeier Software, ScreenJet and the Support Group (so far), the event will be almost free -- the organizers plan to charge only a minimal fee to cover the cost of food and beverages at the Saturday night party.
There's plenty of room and opportunity for other sponsors and groups to join the Reunion movement. CAMUS, unlike Interex, re-tooled itself for longevity years ago and so has approved cash to spend on the event. "We have saved some cash and intend to be viable for as long as anyone is interested in MANMAN on HP,: Floyd said.
But that fiscal responsibility will extend to the entertainment, too. Floyd, who's a mandolin player and picker at the annual Kerrville Folk Festival, said, "I contacted a band from Philadelphia called MAN MAN about playing a concert, but their number of $40,000 plus expenses brought that thought to a halt very quickly."
Browne is a part of the 3000's earliest success, being among the first executive leaders at ASK when MANMAN drove the 3000 into a leading ERP position. "A whole generation of VC-backed manufacturing companies that said you need manufacturing software, buy ASK," he said at a 3000 software seminar held at the History Museum three summers ago.
For the Reunion attendees who want to share memories of the early 3000 days, Browne is a great resource. At that seminar, he told stories of the days when a system -- HP called the computer the System 3000 at first -- was an innovation
I worked with Sandy for several years at a manufacturing company putting their systems together, understanding what bills were, understanding work orders, understanding purchase orders, understanding inventory control. These were not systems. It was a bill of material that was handwritten and maybe it got put on punch cards and updated every six months, but it was all manual. This was 1972. You know in the 1970s, most of the systems that we sold were to people who were using manual systems. They weren’t using computers.