The “dead penguin society”

In case you are wondering, no, I do not hate penguins.  And while I do like penguins as a whole, this is not a weblog with some specific environmental and or social agenda focusing on penguins …

The name is a play on a movie from the 90’s, starring Robin Williams, “The Dead Poet Society”.

It was a time of great change in the software world, and I was amidst some of it, and exposed to some very disruptive ideas.  What happened next was almost inevitable:  The opening up at some of the dinosaur corporations, the experimentation with Open Source … it had one of two ways it could go.

1. These ideas could spread and change the actual culture of the company
2. The company could do an about face,  and decide quite deliberately to not get it.

The Dead Penguin Society was the brainchild of working at company # 2.  At a time when pursuing Open Source ideas and architecture should be gaining ground, and changing how we approached things, we pulled back.  Those left in the wake were undergrounded.  I wondered if people at other companies had noted similar cases, and many had.  And so the joke signature line was “President of the Dead Penguin Society, Lord of the Viking Bunnies.”

~David Williams

President and Founder (or perhaps if there’s money in it, see comments below, Treasurer instead), DeadPenguinSociety

PS- There were other working titles for my blog.  I thought “The Naked Technologist” (inspired by the show on History channel with a similar name but about archaeology)– but, that could be misconstrued…

Another working title was Refactorings.  I actually quite like this title as well, but deadpenguinsociety won, obviously, as it resonated at the time, and still does.