Hello, world
The proverbial first blog post. I guess introductions are in order.
Hello, my name is Gary Sherman, and I’m a Certified Clarify Developer…
Where to start? Perhaps with a just a touch of history.
In 1995, while working for The MathWorks as a Technical Support Engineer (bonus points for identifying this image), I got involved in an implementation of our new Tech Support software – Clarify’s ClearSupport. We purchased Clarify when it was version 2, but waited til version 3 (the Camelot release) before going live. Before long, I was the “Clarify Guy”, responsible for all aspects of the Clarify system, from daily administration, upgrades, reporting, integration, customizations, etc.
In 1997, I went to work for Clarify as a technical consultant, where I spent the next 4 years working on Clarify implementations, including Made2Manage, Best Buy, Guaranty Federal Bank (Temple Inland), Compaq, and IBM. New guys like me were always paired up with a mentor, and I got paired with one of the best – Marty Sirkin . Not long thereafter, Marty left Clarify to help transform First Choice Software from a Clarify consulting company into a product company. While working at Clarify, it seemed that almost every implementation used at least one First Choice product. First Choice and Clarify had a great relationship back in those days, and we were all focused on making every implementation a success and every customer a raving fan.
Jump forward 4 years, and after far too much time spent traveling as a consultant, and Clarify being purchased by Nortel, I left Clarify to join First Choice. I was able to still utilize my Clarify skills, but I was able to sleep in my own bed every night. Six years later, I’m still here. Our name has changed from First Choice Software to Dovetail Software, but we’re still delivering great software and services, for the Clarify market, and beyond.
I still have a lot of obscure (and occasionally useful) knowledge about the Clarify product suite, which I hope to share through this blog. In addition, there are tons of new technologies and ideas that I get to interact with on a daily basis around here, so don’t be surprised if I post about Scrum, .NET, Web Development, or any other random thought that may briefly cross my mind. I’ll try to leave topics regarding Inversion of Control, Dependency Injection, and Orthogonal Code to my more technical peers. I’m looking forward to hopefully learning a lot more about technology, our customers, our market, and perhaps even improve my writing a bit in the process.
