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Summer 1997
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In the summer of 1967, at the age of 11, the word "Pick" had several meanings to me; none of them were terribly good. I was repeatedly told to "pick up your room", "don't pick your nose", and which stocks to pick.
Little did I realize as I pedalled my emerald-green Schwinn Stingray bicycle along my mostly-commercial paper route (which stretched all the way from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts to McDonalds, with both of my other food groups conveniently located between) that a man in California named Dick Pick was at that moment nurturing a multi-user database into reality (so to speak) and the profound effect that his efforts would have on the course of my life.
We've all heard the stories about the exploits and exploitation of the man and his band of merry men. He was a radical, but he had a good vision. Sometimes even double-vision, which may account for why he was so roundly slammed by the media. I know he may have contributed to the reputation by such actions as appearing in a photo on the cover of the now defunct Computer Systems News, hanging upside down in his anti-gravity boots with the caption reading "... because it makes him think better". This didn't exactly help the cause of those companies trying to pitch his database solution to large, stodgy corporations.
But it's not those large, stodgy corporations who built the Pick market by buying into it, despite the ravings of The Man. It's the small to mid-sized companies who had a common thread among them: they wanted to get their actual work done quickly, efficiently and most important, inexpensively, so they could spend their time with their families or playing golf, rather than at work. These kind of companies are the foundation of the market formerly known as Pick.
Talk about staying power. The techniques invented and implemented back in the "Summer of Love" (maybe for some of you, it was a summer of junk food for me) are still the basis for some of the most productive companies in the world. Many of them don't even know that the basis of their database was the result of Dick's efforts.
It's not a well-known fact that Dick was invited to talk with IBM about the same time Bill Gates was. Bear in mind that while young Gates saw the possibility of a single-user operating system that actually allowed you to play Pong, Dick's product was already a virtual memory based multi-user platform with a common, consistent interface to large, shared databases.
At the advice of his Chief Licensing Officer at the time, Dick chose to not take the meeting. Can you imagine what the data processing world would be like today if he had, and IBM had anointed him rather than Bill Gates?
First off, we'd probably all be using dumb terminals with foot pedals, but perhaps we'd have more time to spend with our families, rather than futzing around associating sound events with such actions as when Windows crashes. (My system says "arrrggghhh" on this event, all too often).
Even in 1997, I still believe that Microsoft does not have a clue how to do databases. Their vision seems to be a docucentric view of a world full of disparate objects that know very little about each other, but are beginning to learn.
As time passed, emulations of the product formerly known as Pick popped up: Revelation, Prime Information, UniVerse, Unidata, jBase, Univision, and possibly others that I may have missed (sorry). They rarely, if ever, even mentioned that their product was based on the Pick data model. But they got the job done, and that's what was really important to their customers.
There are currently movements afoot to disassociate the product from the "P-word". One third-party organization is proposing an innocuous symbol and name, sort of like the Cotton Council, with a few, but not all of the other players adopting it. Even Dick's company, Pick Systems, is attempting to distance themselves from the name and the stigma that was Pick. They have already renamed the product "D3", and are rumored to be considering changing the company name.
My guess is that if Dick were alive today, he wouldn't be exactly supportive
of this idea.
Since 1978, I've found myself explaining to people what this great product is
and does, and possibly why they've never heard of it. I can deal with that.
I can even deal with the fact that the existing set of players whose products
are based on his technology don't pay homage or even royalties to their roots,
but I guess I'll always be a "Pick" guy at heart.
Like it, admit it, or not, there's a little Dick in all of us.
Jon Sisk
Last Updated: 30 June 1999