Gidday. I’m Seth Wagoner, the CEO and Geek in Chief at Interclue. I’ve been a sysop of one sort or another since about 1989. At some point somebody started calling me “Sethop”, and that’s been my online moniker ever since.
Every now and then I pause for a bit and try to write something down about what makes our time so interesting, and that usually ends up here. Unfortunately far too many posts don’t make it out of the “draft” stage – I’ll try to improve on that this year.
As noted on this site, I am a technoprogressive, a part time philanthrogeek, occasional philosopher, and general fan of all things web 2.0.
I’d quite like to meet these 43 people, and a lot more besides.
Here’s a quick life history of the Sethopovine entity:
I was born in ‘73, a year after my parents immigrated to New Zealand from the USA.
In the 70s and 80s: I did some stuff I don’t really remember.
In the 90s:
- I ran the most popular “talk” based dial-up BBS in my home town (pop 350k)
- I did a BSc in Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Canterbury
- I did some postgrad Cognitive Science at the University of Queensland
- I gave up computer games and spent a fair bit of time in the SCA and playing backgammon.
- I came back to Chrichurch and became a web and database developer at a local firm.
From 2000 Onwards:
- I did a certain amount of contract web development.
- I ran an online art gallery with my Dad (a ceramic artist and clearly the genetic source of my penchant for crazy ideas) for a while – it never made much money but we were at the top of google for “New Zealand Art” for a bit.
- I had a go at building what might have become a decent social networking site in 2001 – my ideas were good (it was a cross between meebo, shadows, and facebook, before any of those sites existed), our execution not so much. It was really hard to get enthusiasm for web ventures in the 2001 post “bubble” period and my business partner and I didn’t really have the resources or experience to make it happen.
- I did a fair bit of random IT consulting (see my old profile page at apposite.co.nz)
- I developed an appreciation for single malt scotch and microbrewed beer.
- My preferences for gothy dancefloors evolved towards electronica and outdoor concerts.
- I discovered the real world was actually just as interesting as science fiction if not more so. I rarely read fiction these days.
- I got going with another start-up, related to the translation industry, which could have been very cool, but before it got off the ground a “little side project” became even more attractive, and that eventually became Interclue.
- I dabbled a bit in politics, helping Labour win the 2005 election and thus keeping NZ out of Iraq – which was quite distracting. Met some interesting people tho.
- I went to all three Kiwi Foo Camps and met some very cool people.
- I helped run NZ’s first Barcamp
- I’ve been an irregular blogger and a relapsing infojunkie.
- I got fed up with losing stuff I typed into a browser and decided we needed a decent autosave for the web. So now we have Lazarus.
- I’m still working towards making Interclue a success. We have big plans and hundreds of thousands of users, but not much cash. We’re working on that bit.
In Feb 2005 I posted my answer to “What are 10 things you’ve done that your friends/readers probably haven’t“. Number 10 on that list actually referred to Interclue, which was already in the prototype stage. It took a long time to go from prototype -> product. So long that I never intent to let anything take that long again!
