Gary Thuerk - Father of Spam

The earliest documented spam (although the term had not yet been coined) was a message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 recipients on ARPANET on May 3, 1978. Rather than send a separate message to each person, which was the standard practice at the time, he had an assistant, Carl Gartley, write a single mass email. As the marketing manager at Digital, he was hoping to get attention, particularly from West Coast customers, for Digital's new T-series of VAX systems. Instead, he ended up getting crowned, for better or worse, as the 'Father of Spam'. He prefers to think of himself as the father of e-marketing. There's a difference. 

In fact, Thuerk's original spam "did work," he says. "We sold $13 million or $14 million worth" of the DEC machines through that e-mail campaign. On the negative side, complaints started coming in almost immediately, and a few days after the original e-mail, an ARPANET representative called him up and chewed him out and made him promise never to do it again.

In this episode of Your Partner In Success Radio we will delve into history and how Gary failed retirement, misses working in the DoD & AeroSpace Industry, and how he got to work with the people who built the internet technology.