Maybe it’s the time of the year or something. I’ve had several emails recently from people deep in my past (well, from up to 15-16 years ago anyway).

The biggest thing was an email from one of the old Telecom Gold Noticebd users. This was the first electronic community that I came across. TG was an email service, all text-based with modem speeds from 300 to 2400bps. The Noticebd was a latest-first bulletin board that any user of Telecom Gold could post to. I found it in 1988 when I started work at the aforementioned TG, and the community was well-formed by then.

There were a crowd of users on there, some of the earliest were named after characters from A.A.Milne’s Pooh stories, others just picked whatever name appealed. We used to meet-up at “eyeballs” (from the old CB lingo) in a variety of generally excellent pubs around London. Many of these were followed by a post-pub trip down to Brighton for breakfast at “The Market Diner . There were all sorts of people involved; a few from TG itself, some from BT, others from ICL, P&O, charities and a whole load more. There were also some deaf and deaf-blind people (the blind users had braille keyboards and readers to access the system). I even met one of my (now ex-) girlfriends through the system.

So it was great to hear from Asterix again after many years. He now runs Sound Associates which he has takenover from his father. Asty emailed a whole bunch of us to suggest a reunion, and it looks like this is now going to happen in mid-March this year. There have been various emails from the other people on Asty’s list too. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the old crew and seeing how they’ve all got on in the past few years.

I also got an email from Peter Lee, who I worked with at BT in 1994-96 when I was working in the OA part of . I haven’t heard from Peter since I left that department, and he seems to be doing very well for himself, married with a kid and currently working in the Netherlands.

Last but by no means least I also got a mail from Bill Parker (who now runs some gites in France). Bill worked at BT at about the same time Peter and I worked together. Bill’s just taken part in the Elefant Treffen motorcycle rally in Germany, and by all accounts it was a bit of an adventure.

It’s strange how this online life manages to keep people in touch after so many years. TG is gone and mostly forgotten, but the small community that used the Noticebd is still in touch after maybe 10 years since the last meet.

Over the years, I’ve been involved in quite a few electronic communities. Alongside TG, in 1989 I set up my own BBS running on a PC with first one, later two phone lines and modems (thanks to Asty paying for installation of the second line). Arkham BBS started off small on an 8088 4MHz CPU Wyse PC Plus with a 20MB hard drive running Wynn Wagner’s Opus BBS software. I later moved the board to Andrew Milner’s RemoteAccess BBS software. I also joined FidoNet an amateur BBS network initiated by Tom Jennings . At its peak Arkham BBS took over 150 calls per day, not at all bad for a free system with just two phone lines. I still occasionally get emails from people who used to use the system and remember me.

Arkham BBS ran for 8 years, until 1997 when Internet access was so cheap and available at local call to so many people that BBS usage started to die out in the UK.

In parallel with TG and my BBS, there was another community that I was involved with for a time. This was a community based around the text-based Multi-User Game, Shades written by Neil Newell (aka Hazeii As well as playing the game (which was mainly available via Telecom Gold and Prestel back in those days), people often used the system as a simple chat service, and as with TG, people used to meet up in pubs at irregular intervals (and they were _very_ irregular events in more ways than one!). Shades is still going but I haven’t been involved in it for many years, and only keep in touch with a few of the people I know from there (mainly Beermat

After those, I get briefly involved in Ultima Online and then the chat system that was part of Bravo TV’s Doll’s House

More recently, I’ve been hanging around on Urban 75 and have met a few of the people from there.

I really should write up all this stuff properly, including my involvement in some of the episodes described in Indra Sinha excellent Cybergypsies Indra used TG’s Noticebd and also played Shades, both of which are mentioned in the book.