It's a new Wolfram Research Europe...

17 years ago, we moved into our current Oxfordshire offices---yup, one year after I started doing non-stop email. Well, today we're moving to a custom built new office just up the road. The site is kind of an interesting place actually--where pioneers in wildlife filming Oxford Scientific Films set-up in 1968. Strangely I had had a school trip there in around 1982 and I'm pretty sure they told us they'd just finished filming a Cadbury's "glass and a half" ad with a then new micro video camera moving along many chocolate bars. None were left by the time we arrived!

Even though this is an exciting, positive move, there's a strangely eerie, reminiscent feeling sitting where I am now at my desk: all my stuff packed up, my monitor, phone and desk, the last to go. I was decidedly young when we moved in; I'm quite a bit creakier now...

And oh has the technology changed. 17 years ago I was equipped with a fine if monochrome NeXTStation computer. I wondered whether I really needed a colour monitor; it seemed unnecessary. And I needed lots of filing and a complex system of trays to manage my paperwork. Clearing up this morning, I realise that I haven't accessed physical files for 3+ years for anything. They're not moving with me.

It was here I was sitting when I first heard about "the world wide web". The keen Mathematica user from CERN on the phone was surprised that I hadn't tried it yet and hadn't understood how much it was going to change the world.

Over the years my desk size has reduced, as has the volume of my monitor and filing cabinets (even my waistline has shrunk, though it's now past its minimum!). Only my screensize has grown.

Time for my computer to get packed now...Off to the next (hopefully also prime) 17 years from Monday--a new era for Wolfram Research Europe Ltd.