ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

December 11, 2003

The Trojans lost the war because they fell for a really dumb trick. Hey, there's a gigantic wooden horse outside and all the Greeks have left. Let's bring it inside! Not a formula for long-term survival. Now if
they had formed a task force to study the Trojan Horse and report back to a committee, everyone wouldn't have been massacred. Who says middle management is useless?

- Adam C. Engst, (?- )

In his own words, Adam marks his experience from 1972-1977 at Edward R. Eastman Elementary School as consistently receiving checkmarks for "Dresses appropriately for the weather." and making a secret pact with the librarian so that he could take out more than two books per day in the 2nd grade. From 1977 - 1980 at Newark Valley Middle School with winning the 6th grade reading contest by reading some 250 books in a month and beating out all the other students and all the other classes except for one, which he could have beaten them if their teacher hadn't asked him not to. From 1980-1985 at Newark Valley High School being Valedictorian, for which he received a tiny medal, and Student Athlete, for which he received a big honking trophy as the leading scorer on varsity cross country team senior year.

He spent 1985-1989 at Cornell University, earning a BA in Hypertextual Fiction and Classics with honors: Magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

Since April of 1990, he and his wife Tonya have been doing TidBITS, one of the oldest and most-respected Internet-based newsletters, distributed weekly to many thousands of readers. He has written numerous technical books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series, and many magazine articles as a Contributing Editor at MacUser, MacWEEK, and now Macworld. 

On occasion, he takes on interesting projects of the short term writing, editing, and reviewing variety. His innovations include the creation of the first advertising program to support an Internet publication in 1992 and the first flat-rate accounts for graphical Internet access in 1993. In 1998, TidBITS filed a spammer lawsuit against WorldTouch Network for the Bull's Eye Gold spam and successfully shut down one of the invasive spammers of the time. He occasionally consults on Internet information design, electronic publishing, and Internet communication techniques for organizations trying to set up or improve communications with customers. In the annual MDJ Power 25 survey of industry insiders, he ranked as the second in 2000 and third in 2001 and 2002 and fourth in 2003 most influential person in the Macintosh industry, and he was named one of MacDirectory's top ten visionaries. He is the chairman of the board of
directors of the XNS Public Trust Organization, an independent Internet non-profit tasked with maintaining and promulgating the XNS open specification for digital identity.

Wishing you great and continued success!

Sincerely,