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Stories
Beginnings
I'm always fond of telling people that I've been part of TVI since the beginning back in '93, and even fonder of bragging that I was one of the earliest in the group to work on VanCity's home banking project as far back as October or December of 1992.
There was a time when I could never have imagined that it might come to an end. This was my "dream" job - I had the "Art Director" title which I had coveted since leaving art college in 1989, and I was part of a creative, energetic team that was going to take over the home banking industry one CD32 at a time. At the time, I think TVI was the only company in the world to develop a successful, practical, and relatively inexpensive TV-based home banking system. (More on that later...)
I started working as a freelance graphic artist when I was with the BNG Design Group in 1991, and later with HSI in 1992. These two companies were at best rather rag-tag groups of local developers and entrepeneurs who hungered after one contract or another, or in the case of BNG, after many little contracts at the same time. The environment at BNG was in fact more like a collective or a co-op than a company. Everyone was expected to bring in jobs and give a portion of the proceeds to BNG, and everyone had to bring in their own computer, otherwise you would have nowhere to work! Like I said, it was a rag-tag environment...
While one half of BNG's software developers toiled away creating electronic bingo systems, the rest of the group (including me) developed a proof-of-concept home banking demo for VanCity Savings Credit Union. We were trying to generate some excitement and to prove that a TV-based home banking system was feasible. All of our team were familiar with and deeply devoted to the Commodore-Amiga computer platform, and Amiga 500s and 2000s were all over the office at BNG. For the home banking demo system, the regional manager for Commodore in Western Canada, Duncan Fraser, supplied us with a CDTV set-top box. Commodore and VanCity had already decided that the Amiga CDTV platform would be an excellent CD-ROM set-top delivery system for TV home banking. Now BNG just had to convince them that we could make a demo that would run on one.
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| The CDTV from Commodore |
When BNG died of a lack of money a few months later, a few of the people involved in the home banking demo joined together in a new company called "HSI", with the intention of continuing development for VanCity.
The big goal for HSI was to finish the home banking demo that had been started by BNG, and turn it into something that could be demonstrated to VanCity's Board of Directors in May of 1993. The VP of Information Systems required a good demonstration in order to sell the feasibility of the project to VanCity's Board.
The trouble was, the software developers who had worked on the original BNG demo had been lured away to Antigua to pursue golden opportunities in electronic bingo, so HSI had to find a brand new programming team! I went with HSI's President to an old house on 54th Avenue in Vancouver and met four guys who were heavy into the local Amiga programming scene: Steven McClain, Daryl Hegyi, Bob Hardy, and Vince Hodges. Steven was studying microcontrollers and embedded systems at BCIT (and maybe some AI too). Daryl had previous experience in large software development projects, and had worked independantly for the last few years. He had a lot of professional experience, and was also the most formally educated in the group. Bob had worked a lot locally, programming a video overlay system for the local cable company, porting an adventure game, and developing numerous Amiga software products of his own, mostly as shareware. And Vince was a self taught programmer and enthusiast - by his own admission the apprentice of the group, learning as he earned working with the other three. Amongst the four of them they had developed an impressive database system called "DynaBase", and a suite of run-time libraries called "HKLib", which provided a developer with easy access to common Amiga GUI, sound and I/O functions.
The original BNG demo was designed to give the viewer the impression that they could do home banking using their remote controller or "clicker", via a set-top box attached right to their TV. At this point in it's evolution, the home banking demo was a conglomeration of a few different systems cobbled together into a highly graphical simulation which featured ungodly amounts of impressive 3D animation done by the talented Cory Lake. In actual fact, the demo software itself, animation and all, ran on an Amiga 4000 which received control signals serially from the CDTV. The CDTV system basically just translated the infrared codes from the CDTV remote control. Much of the BNG demo had been written in 68000 assembly language too, and although we had some consultation from the original programmer (thanks Darren!), it was decided by the new HSI crew that it should be redone from the ground up.
Among other people who were involved (but not in the software development itself) was Jennifer MacMaster, who helped fill our various administrative needs, Ellen Watters who provided financial and bookkeeping advice, and Michael Ferri who liased with VanCity and assisted Kerry. Most of this group gathered at Steven and Daryl's house to help assemble a set of formal written software specifications to VanCity, or to attend weekly shareholders meetings.
Over a number of weeks, our team of software developers re-wrote the BNG demo to use the HKLib libraries and to generally improve it's stability. I helped wherever possible by re-making graphics, testing, or just staying out of the way. In the first week of May 1993, the HSI home banking demo was finally completed, and I accompanied HSI's President, and Kerry, Bob, Daryl, Vince and Steven down to VanCity's Head Office to set up our demo in the Boardroom. This was an exciting moment for everyone as months of work came to a head. Richard Wafer, VP of Information Systems (and the champion of the project at VanCity) went through a dry-run first. A little while later, his demonstration to the Board was completed and had gone off without incident. Meanwhile, we all waited around the corner from the main area of the Boardroom listening carefully to the Board members question Richard, and nervously awaited the outcome.
Within a week, we heard from VanCity that the project had been approved and that we were to continue with development on VanCity's premises.
By June of 1993, HSI had suffered from irreparable personality clashes and had ultimately dissolved entirely under very difficult circumstances. In it's contract with HSI, VanCity had wisely added a condition that HSI must guarantee it's development team members individually by name. When HSI failed, it was no longer able to guarantee the developers as spelled out in the contract, so it found itself in breach of contract. Not wanting to lose the chance to continue on with the home banking development contract, the ex-staff of HSI formed their own company: "#274 Taurus Ventures Ltd." It was a shelf company with a horrible name, a post office box at Bentall Centre and no office, but it was legal! Our new company was in business.
Because the break-up of HSI had been rather messy, VanCity did not want to risk getting burned a third time by a local group who might not be able to keep their act together. And so we learned that they were considering hiring other firms who had a better track record and would be more stable. For the next few months the future of Taurus Ventures was up in the air as far as working for VanCity was concerned. We continued meeting weekly at Daryl and Steven's house, discussing what other kinds of business we could undertake to get some cash coming in.
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