Interview Date: March 4, 2010
Denver, Colorado

Howard Besser

Summary:

In the late 1980s Besser and the Pacific Film Archive were way ahead in terms of technology and challenges. The hardest thing at that time was the fact that people did not have the software on their own machines to run the programs that could allow search and display of images. That problem was finally solved in 1993, when people started having their own web browsers. Besser saw very few challenges in terms of collaboration, mainly because the vice chancellor for computing at Berkeley oversaw the project. He was later fired for going way over budget on everything…all projects. But it was seemingly problem free…there was enough funding, enough staff and personnel, and the project was important enough to all of the stakeholders and players that people were enthusiastic. What Besser really learned is that if there are people who are devoting so much of their work time to a project that is centered away from their actual organization and primary responsibilites, then those people have to be listened to and respected. They had another full time job to do on top of this project that they were devoting 20 hours of their week to. So if they weren’t feeling good about the project, than the project wasn’t going to go anywhere. But people did feel good, so it went somewhere.