The following is a partial excerpt taken from the HUMANWARE web
site. I am sending it to the list to remind us all of
HUMANWARE'S original purpose and essentially unchanged mission.
i will faithfully reread it whenever the current product version
temporarily frustrates and annoys me:
Jim Halliday Retires (Officially)
After nearly 35 years working with people with disabilities, Jim
Halliday "officially" retires. "Our Oregon Pinot Noir vineyard
will produce its first fruit this year, so it is time to cut back
on my work in the disabilities industry," said Jim. "The wine is
calling." That said, Jim will remain involved with HumanWare on
a consulting basis, driving the launch of the new DeafBlind
Communicator and representing HumanWare as President of the ATIA
Board and on the board of the American Center on Blindness and
Visual Impairment. He will remain active as a speaker at
industry conferences, as a resource to HumanWare's product
development, and as an ambassador for assistive technology. Jim
says, "I may be retiring, but I'm not disappearing."
Jim started working with people with disabilities in the early
1970s when he produced documentaries on Students with
Disabilities. These programs helped stimulate the first state
funding in California for adults with learning disabilities.
This led Jim to produce similar documentaries for Telesensory
Systems Inc. (TSI), the leading company in technology for blind
people at that time. Jim ultimately joined TSI and became
Director of Worldwide Sales and Marketing. He left TSI in 1987
and was contacted by Russell Smith, managing director of a small
New Zealand company called Wormald International Sensory Aids
(WISA) which soon became Pulse Data International (PDI).
Together, they co-founded a company which Jim named HumanWare.
"WISA was about to introduce a brand new talking laptop called
KeyNote," says Jim. "I put on a blindfold and found this product
so intuitive and easy-to-use that I couldn't consider it regular
hardware or software. It was simply humanware." At the time,
every other company in the industry had names like "systems" or
"engineering" or "scientific", but none seemed to focus on
people. "For me, it was all about people. I believed that you
could only produce the best technology if you put people first,
so we named our new company HumanWare." Jim has his own
definition of the word "humanware." He says, "HumanWare refers
to technology that is so sophisticated that it seems simple." A
product like BrailleNote is a perfect example of this concept.
Jim remained President and CEO through a number of acquisitions
and mergers and finally stepped down from that role in late 2003,
but he remained with the company while PDI attempted to find a
replacement. Phil Rance was finally chosen in 2005, the year
that Jim and his wife Karen found their Oregon property and
planted their vineyard. It was also in this same year that PDI
merged with Visuaide and chose the name "HumanWare" for the
worldwide operation. Tragically in August of 2005, the company
suffered the terrible loss of Russell Smith which resulted in the
delay of Jim's retirement.
"I remain totally dedicated to HumanWare and will continue to
work on its behalf, but it is also time for me to more actively
pursue another dream that Karen and I have had for years," said
Jim. "The company is now in good hands, and I am confident that
Gilles Pepin's leadership will move us forward with great
enthusiasm and success while staying true to the essence of the
HumanWare name."
Diane and WORDSWORTH
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