It had to be back in 1993 that I had dual cards at Interleaf. But it was only a couple of days ago that I came across them.

Yes, for a couple of years I was both VP of Strategic Marketing and Chief Philosophical Officer at Interleaf.

The duties of the former were more rigorously defined than those of the latter. It was mainly just a goofy card, but it did reflect a bit of my role there. I got to think about the nature of documents, knowledge, etc., and then write and speak about it.

Goofy for sure. But I think in some small ways it helped the company. Interleaf had amazingly innovative software, decades ahead of its time, in large part because the developers had stripped documents down to their elements, and were thinking in new ways about how they could go back together. Awesome engineers, awesome software.

And I got to try to explain why this was important even beyond what the software enabled you to do.

Should every company have a CPO? I remember writing about that at the end of my time there. If I find it, I’ll post it. But I won’t and so I won’t.

Categories: marketing, philosophy dw