RIP DEN

Wow... It's been exactly one year since DEN shut down. Seems like much longer than that. Out of all the dot-coms that bombed, I'm glad I was part of that one, and I consider myself very lucky to be a part of it. It was the most fun I've ever had at a workplace, and there will probably never be anything else like it.

Pack a lunch for this one...
August 1999 -- I found out about DEN when I was still working at Learning Tree. LTree had just layed off most of the CBT software department, leaving about 6 people to tie up loose ends, which included myself. So during my last month there, in between signing off final builds of our software titles, I did the job search thing online, and stumbled upon a testing position for a web company. The company description was kinda vague (something about providing entertainment for today's youth), and I got the impression that it was a kiddie site -- like online entertainment for grade-schoolers. But I submitted my resume anyways. So later that day, I actually got a call back from the recruiter that posted the job online and was able to schedule an interview that very same day. The first thing I noticed upon arrival was the building. From the outside, it looked like a huge brick warehouse. Not too impressive looking. Once I got inside, it was pretty damn cool. It was around 6pm and I was surprised to see that there were still tons of people there working (yes, I had much to learn about the startup environment). It was actually quite hectic. So I got a tour of the place and interviewed with 3 people. I also had a quick talk with the QA team that I would have been working with. So a few days later, I got an offer letter which I accepted, and gave myself a one day vacation between my last day at LTree and my start at DEN. Heh.

The first day was an experience. For the first time I had to take the 10 freeway to work, which had way more aggressive drivers compared to the 105 freeway. So that stressed me out a bit. Then I parked in the MGM parking structure, which at the time seemed like a total maze. So I found a spot and made it up to the HR office just in time. There was another guy there, filling out his paperwork too, so we chatted for a bit. He was going to be helping out with graphics for the portal team. So after all that, we headed over to the main building. My newest co-worker already had work to do with his team. I wasn't so lucky. The entire QA team was gone and the person I was supposed to meet with was moving to another office. What happened is that I started right in the middle of a restructuring. Some people left the company to join another startup, which included the former QA team. Also, DEN was expanding and acquired new office space a few blocks away. So I had to wait in the lobby for a bit. Someone from R&D finally came out and brought me in, and told me he really didn't know what to do with me, so he just found an available computer for me to "work" on. It was an iMac too. Fun! Hehe. A few hours passed and an assistant to the CTO talked to me and explained everything that was going on. Until then, I was thinking "gee, what a great place to work. nobody knows what to do with me". So he opened up the old QA office for me. Ahh, now this was more like it. I had my own office! So found the best computer in the lab and jumped on that one. Had a couple people drop into the office to introduce themselves. Then towards the end of the day, someone else came in and asked me to go to the Barrington office to meet with the person I was supposed to meet with that morning, along with my soon-to-be boss. So after snagging directions, I headed on over to the other office and met with the head producer and the future QA director (the coolest boss ever, Mr. Kevin Walsh). So we all talked for a bit, where this company is headed, yadda yadda yadda. It was all good. Kevin was going to start a couple weeks later, so he gave me a pile of resumes to sort through, and also gave me a project -- to look into some testing software. Cool. Now I have work to do.

My time in the office was short-lived. They told me that I should move the QA computers out to the main area. I was thinking "don't they have people to do that?" but I did it anyways. I was still very much in corporate mode and wasn't used to the DIY startup attitude. So I moved the equipment to the main area. I also lost the computer I was on to another person in the company. So I was stuck with a slow as hell computer with little memory. But even then, I took that over the Mac. Heh. I was getting frustrated working on it so I started bringing in my laptop. Much better. The only thing was that I still felt like an outsider since there was nobody else on my team yet. So outside of looking through resumes and finding testing software info, I basically just kept myself busy by coming up with test plans.

Fast forward 2 weeks. My boss finally started so I gave him my results on the software stuff and pointed out who would make good candidates for the QA team. I also mentioned that there were some people I worked with at LTree that might be interested, and he was all for the idea. So 2 people I knew took me up on the offer and came in to interview. The first was my buddy Vahik, who was currently doing tech support at some CAD place. (Fun stuff) The second person was my friend Karra who was still looking for work. It was really good to see them again. So they eventually joined the team, along with 3 others. One of them turning out to be a friend of a friend of mine. Small world.

Once our team was set, it was a little rough, since some of us didn't have computers yet. The computer that I had spec'd earlier hadn't come in yet, so I was still on my laptop. Eventually things started rolling, and we had a process in place. Just in time for the big November 8, 1999 site relaunch. The days leading up to that were insane. We all came in on a Saturday to work, but our site was down. Turns out that Exodus was making backups of the servers, and something really bad happened. That's all I know. We were hoping the site would go back online, so we just killed time playing Quake 3. After that got old, Vahik and I made a run to Toys R Us at the Promenade and bought some toys. We bought a bunch of Nerf toys and brought em back. Tossed around the football for a couple hours, and finally they just said to come back the next day. Major bummer. Come Sunday, we all came back in and the system was up, albeit a little flaky. Slowly, things got in gear and we had tons of work to do, followed by nothing to do, then followed by tons more to do. Hurry up and wait was the story. We were there from 8am to 5am the next day. I absolutely lost it by then and could hardly concentrate. So we got the okay to go home, and they launched the new site. So that was a huge deal.

After launch, things just got a lot more fun. We had a set testing schedule, so it wasn't as hectic as the pre-launch days. That's when I really started enjoying it. To the point where I'd come in to work early and leave late, and sometimes even come in on the weekend to polish some things up. Just because I loved working there. Things were going great. Had a cool Xmas holiday party, got tons of DEN gear. It was all good until February when DEN had another round of layoffs, along with a change in business strategy, since the site just wasn't generating the hits. The new plan was to target an older age group, and create more content, and make the site stickier. This meant creating new teams to produce new content, and cut others. We lost one person from the QA group. What all this meant for QA was a lot of downtime, since there wouldn't be any new content to test for a while. I spent that time learning PHP and MySQL and built a QA intranet site. I also got the thumbs up to install Linux on my computer. Very cool, indeed. With the downtime in QA, Vahik moved to programming to help with the Quad group, and another QA person moved to Tech Support. So we were down to 3 people to test, including myself. Feeling a little restless (and getting tired of playing Q3) I offered to help with some programming stuff. Vahik took me up on it and gave me lots of Photoshop mockups to build pages from (which you can see on my portfolio). Slowly, some content started showing up for QA to jump on, and things started to get hectic again as the target relaunch date of May 15 approached. Though it wasn't nearly as hectic as the November launch. The weekend before the launch was relatively dead. Seemed like the energy was sucked right out of the place. Also, the launch didn't go as smooth this time around. We were close to launching a few times, but delayed launching for 2 days due to tech problems. We finally launched the site, only to have the company shut down a day later. It was a huge disappointment, as all the hard work and late nights I put in to get DEN 2.0 up was now a waste. So I packed up my stuff and just hung out. I was too depressed to go home, so I saw Gladiator with my QA partner-in-crime, Mr. Rave, Mr. Ecstasy, "Eric 2.0".

The next day I came into work, with my friend Vahik, and brought along my camcorder to document the closing of DEN. I made a video which I had online but it's gone now (long story). Mebbe if I'm bored I'll remake it. So... that's my DEN story in a nutshell. It's been a fun ride... =)

I know some people have archived their DEN shows online, so I'll post links as I find them.

• I worked with Greg Levine at DEN and OnAir. Here's his site on the DEN experience.