Brainchild

At work on Friday everyone was teasing me about the new posting by David Greenfield at ZDNet, which among many flattering comments about our new release, referred to Response Point as the "brainchild of senior director Richard Sprague, a former Apple engineer". David's a very fun guy to talk with -- full of lots of new ideas, up-to-speed on lots of the latest technologies -- and I really enjoyed my conversation with him a few months ago when he visited us. He's one of those rare technologists who understands that the distinction between enterprise and consumer is constantly changing, so I remember chatting about lots of fascinating ideas like the impact of Second Life on businesses.

Although I do wish RP had been my idea, the credit of course belongs to my boss, Xuedong Huang, who started the project three years ago. For what it's worth, at the time I didn't think it was a particularly good idea, and it took me two years to realize how wrong I was and finally join the team.

They say success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan, so I guess it's good news if more people start taking the credit for Response Point.