Boardwatch/EVTV Founder Jack Rickard Dies at Age 65 (semissourian.com) 23
I've only paid for a magazine subscription once in my life — to Jack Rickard's Boardwatch magazine, which through the late 1990s was the geekiest read in town.
You can still read 70 issues of the magazine from more than 25 years ago at Archive.org. But this week the small Southeast Missourian newspaper reported that the magazine's original editor/publisher Jack Rickard has died at age 65: Following his graduation in 1973, Jack enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He proudly served aboard the USS Midway as an aviation support equipment technician. Following a distinguished tour in the Navy, Jack enjoyed a career as a technical writer in the defense industry.
Jack was a Mensa member and an early adopter of new technologies. His keen intelligence helped him to see the value of the internet as early as the 1980s. He started Boardwatch... Supported by a strong team, Jack developed Boardwatch into a successful magazine, which he sold in 1998.
Following his initial professional success, Jack proudly returned to his hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. While in Cape Girardeau, Jack continued to pursue his interest in innovative technologies, including aviation and electric cars. In 2008, Jack established EVTV, an internet-based platform that taught individuals methods to convert gasoline-powered vehicles into electric-drive vehicles. As electric cars became popular, Jack expanded EVTV to focus on solar power storage.
Jack always felt like an old friend, even as his role in the tech community kept evolving. (Rickard's editorials at EVTV always featured a black-and-white sketch of the author — a tradition he'd continued through more than three decades of writing.)
Even Boardwatch "began as a publication for the online Bulletin Board Systems of the 1980s and 1990s," explains Wikipedia, "and ultimately evolved into a trade magazine for the Internet service provider (ISP) industry in the late 1990s... Boardwatch spawned an ISP industry tradeshow, ISPcon, and published a yearly Directory of Internet Service Providers. In 1998, Rickard sold a majority interest in Boardwatch and its related products to an East Coast multimedia company, which was then acquired by Penton Media in 1999 and moved to other ventures...
This week fans left testimonals on his funeral home's web site. "What an inspiration to mankind," read one. "Always enjoyed his views on any subject. We could use more people in this world with his wit and knowledge."
And another just wrote "Jack you were the most insightful speaker on the topic of electric vehicles. I enjoyed every second of your wisdom and videos and will continue to watch them for years to come. Rest In Peace my YouTube friend."
You can still read 70 issues of the magazine from more than 25 years ago at Archive.org. But this week the small Southeast Missourian newspaper reported that the magazine's original editor/publisher Jack Rickard has died at age 65: Following his graduation in 1973, Jack enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He proudly served aboard the USS Midway as an aviation support equipment technician. Following a distinguished tour in the Navy, Jack enjoyed a career as a technical writer in the defense industry.
Jack was a Mensa member and an early adopter of new technologies. His keen intelligence helped him to see the value of the internet as early as the 1980s. He started Boardwatch... Supported by a strong team, Jack developed Boardwatch into a successful magazine, which he sold in 1998.
Following his initial professional success, Jack proudly returned to his hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. While in Cape Girardeau, Jack continued to pursue his interest in innovative technologies, including aviation and electric cars. In 2008, Jack established EVTV, an internet-based platform that taught individuals methods to convert gasoline-powered vehicles into electric-drive vehicles. As electric cars became popular, Jack expanded EVTV to focus on solar power storage.
Jack always felt like an old friend, even as his role in the tech community kept evolving. (Rickard's editorials at EVTV always featured a black-and-white sketch of the author — a tradition he'd continued through more than three decades of writing.)
Even Boardwatch "began as a publication for the online Bulletin Board Systems of the 1980s and 1990s," explains Wikipedia, "and ultimately evolved into a trade magazine for the Internet service provider (ISP) industry in the late 1990s... Boardwatch spawned an ISP industry tradeshow, ISPcon, and published a yearly Directory of Internet Service Providers. In 1998, Rickard sold a majority interest in Boardwatch and its related products to an East Coast multimedia company, which was then acquired by Penton Media in 1999 and moved to other ventures...
This week fans left testimonals on his funeral home's web site. "What an inspiration to mankind," read one. "Always enjoyed his views on any subject. We could use more people in this world with his wit and knowledge."
And another just wrote "Jack you were the most insightful speaker on the topic of electric vehicles. I enjoyed every second of your wisdom and videos and will continue to watch them for years to come. Rest In Peace my YouTube friend."
Great guy (Score:1)
Re:Great guy (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously. I used to catch all his videos on YouTube; always incredibly long, but always packed with great commentary. He seriously knew his stuff (including every bit of nuance of industrial-scale battery manufacture), and when he talked, he had the weight of experience behind it (random example - when everyone was speculating about Tesla putting supercapacitors in EVs, he pointed out that he had already done so - the little buffer weighed and cost more than the entire pack and the extra weight actually made the car go slower). Also if he didn't like something, he was never the sort of person to try to sugar coat it. One of my favourites of his was on the topic of Ford switching to alumium bodies for their pickup trucks; Jack dubbed them "princess wagons" ;)
Over time, people got increasingly concerned for his health; he always brushed it off. When he was finally diagnosed with lung cancer, he - at least outwardly - took it with an amazing amount of acceptance, and a real "I'm going to make use of the time I have left, and when my time's up, so be it" attitude. Went downhill so quickly after that. :( He'll be missed by a lot of people.
(BTW - was he actually a religious person? Because I tuned in to his funeral to hear people talking about him and his life, but could barely watch it because of the endless religious speeches having little to nothing to do with him as a person. At least as I knew him from his channel...)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Unlikely. You "never heard of the guy" yet you are willing to make that presumption. Fucking amazing.
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Re: (Score:2)
So what?
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Apparently. Watch the beginning of this video from 30s - 60s. This may have been the last video he recorded - his breathing was very labored.
Model 3 Battery and Sandi 30kW inverters. No more 48v Sigineer [youtube.com]
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Delayed News (Score:1)
I would have gone to his funeral had I known sooner. I've watched and enjoyed Jack's EVTV videos for years.
Inspiration - 65 and still too soon (Score:3)
Re: Inspiration - 65 and still too soon (Score:2)
I tried to watch Jack's long videos on EVs to the end. I'm an engineer and I appreciated his presentation style. I will miss him, RIP.
Loved Boardwatch (Score:1)
I always appreciated the honesty in Boardwatch under him. He didn't care if you were an advertiser if he thought your product was garbage he said so. This in a time when the major PC magazines were clearly rating the products of big advertisers above better products. I missed it when he sold it and it vanished from the shelves locally.
Value... since the 1980s? (Score:2)
"His keen intelligence helped him to see the value of the internet as early as the 1980s."
Impressive, considering the Internet hadn't been invented yet.
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93 Escort Wagon sneered:
"His keen intelligence helped him to see the value of the internet as early as the 1980s."
Impressive, considering the Internet hadn't been invented yet.
Uh - yes, it had. The cutover to pure IP happened in late 1982. That, in turn, led users to more and more frequently refer to it as the Internet, rather than the ARPAnet. The history section of its Wikipedia article is poorly- and confusingly-written. It makes it seem as though it was suddenly renamed in 1990 - which was merely when the NSFnet backbone was decommissioned. Everybody called it the Internet by then - at least, everybody who actually used it back then called it that ...
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I was using ARPAnet, NSFnet, Bitnet, etc. at university, back in the 1980s. People were not using the term "internet" at all.
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93 Escort Wagon averred:
I was using ARPAnet, NSFnet, Bitnet, etc. at university, back in the 1980s. People were not using the term "internet" at all.
That's funny. My first exposure to the ARPAnet was in 1977 - and by 1986 or '87, the people I associated with certainly were calling it the Internet.
Of course, that was in the Bay Area, and those people merely used the 'net in their day-to-day working lives at various major chip manufacturers and technology companies, so it's basically anecdotal evidence. But, hey, so is yours ...
Re: Value... since the 1980s? (Score:2)
You are confusing the World Wide Web (www http) that formed the first websites in the mid 1990s with the Internet IP based network technology which came in the 1980s. Websites use the Internet.
This really hurts (Score:5, Interesting)
In early 1997, I got an unanticipated phone call from Jack Rickard. He came right to the point, by offering me a spot on the Boardwatch masthead. It was a welcome opportunity, since I was then-currently-unemployed, but I wasn't familiar with his publication, despite my having been part of the BBS scene since the late 1980's. So I asked him what had prompted his call?
A month or so earlier, I had authored a long piece on the formation of the IAHC, and the inception of the process that led to the formation of ICANN for a different publication - and had submitted it to my editor there early in the morning of the very day the publisher pulled the plug on the magazine and announced the layoff of the entire staff. (But that announcement was not officially made until noon, so, theoretically, the parent company was still on the hook for my fee for the story.) The problem, from my perspective, was that the death of Internetworks Magazine had left me no outlet for what was essentially a breaking news story. (Which is to say: the longer it went without being published, the less current the information it provided, and the less worth reading it would become.) So, I had sent out an unsolicited copy of the thitherto-unpublished story in an email to a group of fellow industry journalists, all of whom were friends of mine from my time at LAN Times. Apparently one of them had forwarded that email to Jack - I never did learn who, although I owe him or her a huge debt of gratitude for doing so - with my .sig (which included my phone number) still attached.
"Thom," he said, "I'd like to publish your story in Boardwatch."
And, for those of you who have never had the experience of hearing Jack Rickard speak, let me tell you that he sounded - and I mean exactly - like W. C. Fields. (Returning to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to care for his aging parents eventually restored the Southern twang he'd all but elminated during his years in Longmont, Colorado, where he started Boardwatch, so you don't hear that resemblance as much in his EVTV videos.) Honestly, for the first few seconds of our conversation, I thought the call might just be a huge prank. But what he had to say swiftly convinced me otherwise.
"I'm flattered, Jack," I replied, "but Cardinal owns first publication rights to that story. It'll be out sometime in June or July in a different Cardinal mag. I only sent it to friends because it's going to be old news by then, and I hated to see the reportage effort go to waste. On the other hand, if you're interested, I could write a new story on the subject specifically for you." He promptly agreed to my proposition (and that story would be published in the May, 1997 edition of Boardwatch [archive.org], along with my first @internet column - but I'm getting ahead of myself here).
"I've read your Internetworks columns," he told me. "I've read your LAN TImes stuff, too. You can definitely write. And you're way more technical than any of the folks you've been working with. If you're interested in coming to work for me, I think you'd be a much better fit here than you ever were there."
I can be amazingly foolish at times, and I am far too often my own worst enemy, so, instead of immediately jumping at the offer, I responded, "Honestly, Jack, I'd be more comfortable saying 'yes' if I had a better idea what I was saying yes to. Could I persuade you to send me a recent issue or two of the mag, so I can at least get some kind of feel for what Boardwatch is all about before I give you my answer?"
"Absolutely!" he agreed. "I'm certain you'll like what you see. I'll send those out this afternoon and give you a call next week."
We said our goodbyes and hung up. The next day, a FedEx box arrived at my door. Inside were the three most recent issues of the magazine, a Boardwatch coffee mug (which I still treasure), and a 2'x2' poster of the iconic Billgatus of Borg cover - which instantly sold me on joining the Boardwatch masthea
Oh Jack (Score:1)
BillGatus of Borg (Score:1)
Boardwatch Changed My Life (Score:1)
My personal story about Boardwatch (Score:3)
Definitely way too young. I honestly thought he was in his 80s by now.
Boardwatch magazine and Jack had a large and direct impact on my life.
As a reader, it was basically the industry “bible” and everyone I knew and worked with in the ISP industry in the 90s read the magazine, including all the vendors. I read it cover to cover, and I learned a lot from those pages. Avi Freedman’s BGP articles were invaluable Scrolls of Wisdom for me.
One late night at the office, I read an editorial from Jack about the shortcomings of data over coaxial cable technologies and dashed off a late night direct personal email to Jack with my feedback. Unbeknownst to me, that personal email (which had he replied to) ended up published as a letter to the editor in Boardwatch a few months later, with the name of the company I worked for attached to it.
Page 13 & 14 here:
https://ia801904.us.archive.or... [archive.org]
Oops.
The publication of my email to Jack ended up causing quite a scene at work, especially with the board of directors, which had cable company investors on it. I was part of the management tea, and they were livid with me. I ended up being forced into resigning and got done by mid-January of 1998, during the worst winter ice storm of the century.
A few months later I attended ISPCON 98 in Baltimore, and got to met Jack in person. What a character! He listened to my tale of woe, and I think he was initially concerned I was going to sue him or something (it never crossed my mind). After some discussion, he offered me a column in the magazine to cover the nascent Internet over cable TV industry. I was floored, but ultimately declined due to my imposter syndrome issues at the time.
RIP, Jack. I will raise a glass in your memory tonight.