ICOM Lore

Anecdotes about ICOM, Inc., a software automation company, last located in West Allis, Wisconsin (1985-1994).

The intention is to have volunteers contribute their memories. Over the course of time, one person's memory is not always the same as someone else's memory, and may not even be accurate. But it might be entertaining anyway…

The volunteers can be virtually anyone, an ICOM employee, distributor, customer, vendor, or even competitor. But, there needs to be some rules:

1) We cannot intentionally do anything that might violate trademarks or copyrights held by Rockwell Automation or others.
2) The intention is to post fond memories of ICOM, not memories that might embarrass, humiliate, or otherwise hurt someone's feelings. Of course, this goes for photographs as well.

To reconnect with former ICOM employees, we suggest using LinkedIn.com.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

ICOM in the News

ICOM makes an appearance today in this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story about Rockwell Automation, penned by economics writer John Schmid.

I suppose it qualifies as fair use to quote the relevant paragraph, as it's a small portion of the story:

Rockwell Software owes its founding to a couple of university students at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Joe Menter was writing computer code in his apartment near the MSOE campus in 1985 when he met two business partners. They hired another MSOE programmer, and the four founded ICOM Inc., which grew rapidly. Rockwell acquired ICOM nine years later, calling it "one of the strongest and most successful companies in the automation software industry." ICOM formed the heart of Rockwell Software.

Well, that's got a breath of the truth, I guess, although Joe met Scott earlier than this, when working at Amcast. I'd also characterize Scott and Joe as the founders; Eric and I were just two guys invited to the party, and many others followed. I've already written my perspective on this story here under the caption Genesis.

posted by Dave Ruske @ 7:28 AM   0 comments