Setting up a Bulletin Board System (BBS) back in 1992 at the age of 13 was a truly exciting thing for me. I had to quickly learn a succession of different BBS systems. I would run and moderate message-boards, file-boards and online games, all running on my own PC.
The endless memory-tweaking and file-storage handling led me to learning about various multitasking systems like Desqview, OS/2 etc., and devoting a whole phone-line to receiving modem calls from users around Finland and Europe was a challenge I was willing to accept.
I had to be the first person to have the newest songs, art packs, audiovisual demonstrations and so on, often digging deep to find that rare song that had been overlooked by others. This type of detective-work later helped me immensely in my work as a Free Energy Archivist.
I also negotiated joining two messaging networks, which enlarged the communication-possibilities from local to worldwide — requiring an automated nightly polling system and further configuration.
I ran art and music competitions, judged them and published the results. I attracted the best music groups and demogroups and became their distribution site and sometimes even World Headquarters. When the internet started appearing on the horizon, I was still able to fight against it by operating the best curated service for music and art.
I collaborated with text-mode artists to constantly renew the design and functionality of the system. I also collected votes for so-called disk-magazines published in France, Germany and Finland.
All of this got me started in making my own music, which led to my career as an electronic musician. Having to daily tweak the outlook of the system also helped me to develop an eye for detail for the front-end (user-facing), and how to make it intuitive and friendly. Running a BBS also helped me develop my skills at selling CD-ROMs of creative-commons art and music, which led to me learning a little something about packaging and postage.
The original Cloudcity. The name — and the principle — carry through to the present-day Cloudcity project.