A Nation of the People and IP Addresses

Reflections: Gail Wekenborg, Missouri

"Reflections" is an occasional series featuring brief interviews with a NASTD member nearing retirement. Gail Wekenborg, former NASTD president, contributed the following thoughts.

First...

I began my technology career in 1966. My first job was with McAuto, the data subsidiary of McDonnell Aircraft in St.   Louis. I wrote Autocoder for a 1410 tape system computer and did some wiring for the 407 Accounting Machine. I could run a card sorter and collator. The 1410 had about 1000 positions of memory. I had a memory chart that I used to set the word marks needed to identify fields and instructions. That was state of the art punch card accounting. IBM had just begun manufacturing the S/360. MAC had a model 65 on the engineering campus. “256K and 512K” were buzz words and big time computers.

I was fortunate to enter data processing. It was a new field, unplowed turf. Equal pay for men and women was a reality at MAC and in my jobs to follow. Women did not get squashed the way they did in some fields because it was an evolving occupation. To say you were a computer programmer caused you to get looks like the gawker thought you were a genius.

I have seen so many changes that I feel my career has spanned the Westward Movement via the covered wagon to the exploration of outer space. I am in awe of the computing capacity and power at our finger tips today and the places that the network can take you is really like science fiction when I started.

I know I was supposed to stick to the questions, but those who know me well, know I must do it my way.

Gail Wekenborg
State of Missouri
Life Member NASTD

Reflections: Jody McCann, Wisconsin

"Reflections" is an occasional series featuring brief interviews with a NASTD member nearing retirement.

Jody McCann, former NASTD president and the current Network Domain Manager for the Division of Enterprise Technology in Wisconsin, contributed the following thoughts.

What was your first or most memorable job in state government?  My first job was as a capital budget analyst, working in the Department of Administration for the state's Building Commission.  I had Corrections as an assignment and wrote budget decision items which resulted in the construction of two multi-million dollar prisons.  My most memorable job was my time as the Director of the Bureau of Telecommunications.  I served in that capacity from 1988 until 2000 and was fortunate to serve on the NASTD Executive Board for a total of five years during that time.