Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Technology Nostalgia - My TI is older than some of my members

Twenty four years ago NAR had a program named "Leadernet" to facilitate electronic communications with associations -- and I used to work with that program. Used the same "dumb terminals" that were used for MLS at the time -- the TI 707, which also required owning cases of quickly-fading thermal paper to read messages. The TI terminals initially moved at 300 baud which was a lot faster than waiting for the next MLS book to be printed and delivered; and faster than updates by mail. (Fax wasn't affordable yet.)

It wasn't remotely easy getting everyone to use that "new" technology/information service (many never did), but every decade seems to bring much faster adapting. Let's see what happens with membership adoption of texting, twittering and social media sites .... We know consumers are using them ...

2 comments:

GramE Pat said...

Thermal paper...Boy does that bring back memories.Just FYI: I still have a thermal fax machine tucked away in my storage area...with an extra role of paper.."You never know" :)Perhaps it's time to put it on ebay! GramE

Peter L. Mosca said...

Good luck Cindy

Peter L. Mosca,
Your Fav. Public Speaking Trainer :)