We are gearing up, here at Strom Galactic HQ, for a massive anniversary celebration next month. I am sure you have all marked your calendars for when Web Informant turns 20. It is hard to believe that I have been writing these columns/blog posts/whatever for so long.

This week I wanted to talk about a few of the influential people that I have met down through the years. They were the industry luminaries that played pivotal roles in the development of the tech industry. In those early days, it was quite easy to call someone up to get a quick quote, but I am talking about people that I had more of a relationship of mutual respect and understanding, people who had big ideas and shaped the course of products that we use today, and people who I have interviewed over the course of time.

One resource I want to point out is the nearly 100 MediaBlather podcasts that Paul Gillin and I produced during the late 2000’s. We interviewed many of the leading marketing and social media experts of the time and had a lot of fun producing these programs. Paul worked for many years at Computerworld and started Techtarget before striking out on his own and writing several books.

Here are some of my favorite interviews, in no particular order.

Mark Cuban is better known today as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and his time on Shark Tank, but he was quite influential in the early days of the PC networking world. Here is an interview that I did with him in 2007, where he talks about his HDnet project.

Vint Cerf was one of the most refined gentlemen in our industry, always impeccably turned out and always managed to be both serious and playful and being able to say in a few words what many of us couldn’t articulate in whole paragraphs. I have met him at various times down through the years, while he was inventing key Internet technologies. This interview is from 2005 when he was just starting at Google.

Adrian Lamo was one of the key players in the Wikileaks/Manning case. Before that happened, he was in trouble with breaking into the proxy servers of numerous businesses. He actually stayed with me back before couch-surfing was a thing in 2002, here is a recorded interview I did with him in 2011.

I first met Professor Tom Schelling of Harvard back in the early 80s when I worked with on a project way before I was in the tech industry. I wrote about my experience here after he won the Nobel in Economics. If you haven’t read his book The Strategy of Conflict it is well worth your time.

Phil Dunkelberger has been around email and encryption for decades and I have spoken to him numerous times. Always a fountain of wisdom. Right now he is leading the FIDO authentication effort. Here is an interview that I did in 2005.

John Patrick helped build IBM’s Internet business and now serves on numerous tech company boards.  Here is a story from a visit to his house, one of the first very “smart homes” that I saw back in 2004. People are still figuring out how to implement things that he first thought of then.

Here are a few of the people that have been taken from us: There was my remembrance of Ray Noorda, the head of Novell, who died in 2006. Ray was far from a perfect leader but someone who moved mountains and was a key player in getting local area networks established in businesses in the late 1980s. And Garry Betty, who died in 2007 from liver cancer and was a key player in Earthlink, DCA, and Hayes modems. Another early cancer victim was Ed Iacobucci, who died in 2013 and was behind the early IBM PC, Citrix, and NetJets. I was very lucky to have spent the time that I did interviewing each of these guys, and learning about their products, passions, and people that they mentored in our business.

So yes, it has been nearly one Web Informant every week. Many of you have been readers from those early days, and I thank you for sticking with me. I would encourage you to put in the comments your memories of your favorite column or moment when we’ve met.