About Electric Minds

Electric Minds (commonly abbreviated "EMinds") was founded in 1996 by Howard Rheingold (EMinds user ID <howard>), author of The Virtual Community, a book that stemmed from his experiences on The WELL. With WellEngaged conferencing software (derived from that used by The WELL) and a team of talented individuals, he created a Web site that was named as one of the top 10 Web sites of 1996 by Time magazine. Electric Minds also was noted for hosting discussions for the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match. It quickly gained popularity, with tens of thousands of registered users.

In 1997, Softbank, which had been the major investor in Electric Minds, pulled its funding, causing Rheingold to sell Electric Minds to Durand Communications, Inc., an Internet company from Santa Barbara, California, which used a conferencing platform of their own design, CommunityWare. The developers at Durand labored in a two-month crash program to make their conferencing software work like WellEngaged, to ensure that the community enjoyed some continuity. This effort proved successful, and Electric Minds became the largest online community hosted by CommunityWare, with over 100,000 user accounts. Rheingold stayed with Durand as a consultant and host of the Electric Minds community for a time, but later left.

When Durand Communications was acquired by Online System Services Inc. of Denver, Colorado (now Webb Interactive Services Inc.), CommunityWare was combined with OSS' existing product and became the "WebbMe" portal system, with Electric Minds still featured prominently. The community continued to function even as Webb's technological focus shifted away from WebbMe and towards its newer AccelX product line. However, due to budgetary constraints and the lack of available space at Webb's NOC facility in downtown Denver, WebbMe was finally shut down at the end of January, 2001. The remaining members of the Electric Minds community gathered in their temporary home, a private conference at Cafe Utne, facing an uncertain future.

The community members, however, were not about to give up so easily. Among them was Eric Bowersox (EMinds user ID <erbo>), who had been a developer with Durand Communications and Webb Interactive, and worked extensively on the CommunityWare and WebbMe systems. He and his wife, Pamela Boulais (EMinds user ID <silverwrist>), working with Pike and other community members, began an effort to make Electric Minds an active community once more. As Boulais collected donation checks from the community members towards a new server, Bowersox labored in his spare time to create a new conferencing platform patterned after the original CommunityWare, but written in Java and using JSP and Java Servlets (unlike the original, which used Microsoft ASP and VBScript technology). He made this software, the Venice Web Communities System, available under the Mozilla Public License, hosting its development on SourceForge. Further development on this system is ongoing, to include more features from the original CommunityWare, as well as new features inspired by other conferencing systems now prevalent.

The new server, christened "phoenix," was purchased by Bowersox, using the funds donated by the community members, from DCC Inc., a computer retailer in Englewood, Colorado. Server colocation was graciously provided by Bill Rockefeller of NetWizards, a provider of domain registration services, DSL access, and dialup network access, located in the San Francisco area. Additional support for the minds.com domain was provided by Kevin Braun (EMinds user ID <wolfee>), Network Technician for Webb Interactive. The new server runs Debian GNU/Linux, Apache, Apache Tomcat, and MySQL, as well as the Venice software; Bowersox has described the server as "open source right down to the metal."

The community is run mostly by consensus; Pike is responsible for decisions regarding the conferencing structure of the Electric Minds community, as well as for coordination among the conference hosts, while Bowersox is responsible for the administration of the server and the further development of the Venice software. The other community members offer their input as necessary to ensure the community's smooth functioning.

For more information on Electric Minds, you can join the community and post your questions in the "The Technical Side" conference of the Electric Minds community. Members of the community check there regularly, and will post their answers.