Discovering Windows

Sometime around 1994-1995, Tim Lavender, Teen Mania's Executive Vice President at the time, asked me to help him create a call center of 8-12 stations, each with their own phone and computer.  However, we were having trouble finding cost-effective software on the Unix platform.  At that time, companies developing for Unix were charging $1000/seat for Call Management software or any kind of customer service database.

However, there was inexpensive software being developed like mad for PCs and the Windows environment.  Personal computers had come down in price to bargain levels of $1800-2000.  Windows 3.0 or 3.1 was around $100 per copy and network cards were down to about $150-200 by this time.  So we purchased 8-10 personal computers and started our Call Center.  I think they were Pentium processors, probably not faster than 50 Mhz with 4-8MB of RAM (still with less processing power and memory than your modern Smartphone or iPod).  I think we got some Windows PC's for our executives as well but most everyone was still using Wyse terminals connected to a more robust PC running Unix.

I had been focused solely on accounting for Teen Mania for the past 5 years.  This opportunity to create the computer infrastructure for a call center plus the move of our Computer Manager, Bob Coleman, to the Christian Broadcasting Network, I left Teen Mania's accounting in the more than capable hands of our Controller, Randy Collins, and moved back into the world of computers.  I had no idea how Windows PCs and the incredible growth of Teen Mania would pull me into the world of computers so deeply.