From ISP to Cartoon

We're serious about this. Cartoonists are finding a laugh a minute at work, but only one started laughing while working at an ISP (PacBell doesn't count as an ISP).

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [December 4, 2003]

Ever since Dilbert (maybe since Doonesbury), cartoonists have felt free to find the workplace a very funny environment. We're serious about this. Cartoonists are finding a laugh a minute at work.

The tech world has its own, deeply cherished cartoon, User Friendly. The cartoon, now in its seventh year, has tackled subjects as diverse as the best Linux distro, Verisign's wildcards, the RIAA, and Cthulu. Imagine our surprise when we learned the author had first drawn the cartoon while working at an ISP. (Actually, it makes sense.)

Anyway, we contacted the author, Illiad, and asked for an interview. The interview was accepted, and we fired off our questions:

Q: Can you disclose which ISP you were working at? How long did you work there? What does a "creative director" do?

A: At the time it was Mind Link Communications, an ISP that a business partner and I rescued from the jaws of a Monolithic Corporation. I had worked there for about a year prior to the buyout, and continued to work for the new mother ship for about another six months. After that my business partner and I bought back the ISP and re-launched it as Paralynx Internet.

A Creative Director in general is tasked with coming up with a dozen great ideas and designs for marketing, presentation, positioning and the like. Out of that dozen, eleven will be discarded and only one will be used per project. It's a fancy title for a senior media designer.

A CD in the net industry does all of the above, writes copy, and knows how to build and manage websites. Preferably without using 3-meg Flash files for the menu bar, or "IE Only" features.

Q: What led you to work at an ISP? How did working at an ISP change your attitude to the Internet?

A: Like a lot of geeks, I've been plugged in to the net long before there was a Web. I read UseNet regularly and spent a goodly chunk of time on the BBS scene. I ran my own BBS for a while as well, which was really fun and a great creative outlet.

I was on friendly terms with the proprieters of Mind Link Communications, and they knew about my background in the tech and creative industries. When Netscape 1.0 was released they contacted me and offered me a job: I was to start up and run their web services division. I'm happy to say that I succeeded at making it a profitable business unit in a shorter time than expected. I'm also happy to say that I retained my sanity despite providing HTML support for customers for a very painful ten weeks. By then I had passed that torturous mantle on.

Q: What ISPs have you been a customer of? Any praise or flames you wish to share?

A: Mind Link, as I've said before. It was Western Canada's largest ISP at the time. I actually used AOL briefly, but only so I could see for myself what everyone was talking about. I really liked Mind Link because it felt like the company paid attention to customers needs and wants. Features would be developed and corrected according to requests from the membership.

Listening to your customers—what a concept!

Q: What's your educational background? (Not MCSE, I assume.) Art degree? Comp Sci? English?

A: Three years of science (geology, mostly), two years of criminology and history.

No degree, because I kept changing my mind until I ran out of money. At the moment I'm working on completing a Baccalaureate in military history.

It's not like people get jobs based entirely on their majors, is it? I have a cert in Multimedia, and training in corrections.

Q: What jobs did you do before cartooning? (Anything like Walt D., who was a manual phone operator?)

A: I was a corrections officer for about two years many moons ago. It was around the time I was pursuing a career with the RCMP. Law enforcement is really interesting, but I don't have the kind of personality that can handle that kind of life readily.

I worked as a contractor for a while, installing and integrating office systems. I've been an art director for a couple of travel publications, and moved on to being a production manager. I've served time as a creative director, and collected some scars as a project manager. I've even had the opportunity to work as a game designer for a time.

Q: What's the history of user friendly? How did you get from personal project to print production?

A: The history in brief is: doodled a few comics, co-workers liked them, I put them on the Web. That was November 1997. By 1999 I had 4.7 million page views per month. UF now draws over 1.5 million readers worldwide and generates around 13 to 15 million page views per month.

The first instance of UF showing up in a major print outlet was in the National Post. That was a great experience, but I don't know if I'd do it again. I'm not a big fan of the way syndication works; I've turned down three offers from two different syndicates which was a real charge for me. I had submitted cartoons over fifteen years ago to the six biggest syndicates and promptly received six rejection letters.

Having said that, if a syndicate offered me a contract that I considered fair and equitable, I'd consider it.

Q: What's the origin of the name?

A: I chose the name on an intuitive whim; I sketched the first cartoon and knew I needed a name for it. I looked at what was in my browser window and when my eyes fell on the term "user-friendly" I knew I had the title.

I knew I had the title because "user-friendliness" has always been an issue with computers and their users. It's a sword that swings in both directions: the geeks who think "user-friendly" invariably means "programmer-hostile" and the end-users who think "user-friendly" is a cruel taunt.

Q: A lot of ISP-Planet's readers are the small independent ISPs. Is there any similarity between their situation and yours? Fought any monopolies recently?

A: All the time, even if only by proxy. I take shots at the RIAA, MPAA, the government, the population of sheeple, and all of those things that exist as large, unwieldy monolithic structures that are packing a whole lot of inertia. Being the little guy is a tough game, because not only are you trying to protect your own corner of the universe, there's this big guy above you who keeps trodding on you with his fat feet. "Oh sorry," apologizes the big guy. "That's all right," you reply politely. "I didn't need that limb anyway."

Ultimately, I want to make people laugh and think. If I can't do both, I try to make them do one or the other. If I blow that, I get another chance the next day.

It's not a bad arrangement.

— End