Traveling in Cyberspace: The Evolution of SIOP on the Web

The pace of change in technology is dizzying. The Traveling in Cyberspace column began less than 3 years ago with a promise to discuss the emerging capabilities of technology as it related to the interests of SIOP members. Because of its "newness" to many, our first themes were the Internet and the World Wide Web. Back then, the Web was only one component of the ‘Net. It offered little more than text and graphic formatting, and the browsers crashed frequently. The browsers still crash frequently, but the Web is now capable of delivering everything from personalized news to multimedia-enhanced training to live radio. More importantly, it has grown into an indispensable tool for quickly accessing information.

In the intervening years since this column was launched, we’ve also been responsible for SIOP’s presence on the Web. Things have changed quite a bit since then. At that time, John Boudreau (Cornell University) served as moderator of the very successful human resources listserv (a technological precursor to the homepage). Mike Coovert and I (PC) had begun our discussions as to how we could accelerate SIOP’s transition into the information age. That transition began in early 1995 as the TIP home page, which was housed on my computer. For months, only Mike Coovert, Milt Hakel, and I had access to our fledgling homepage as I worked out all the kinks. In April of 1995, we opened the TIP homepage for access to the public (we developed the SIOP homepage in early 1996). About that time I was selected to be the Chair of the "E-Mail" Committee, whose name I changed to the "Electronic Communications" Committee to reflect the variety of technologies that we use on a daily basis.