2008 Inductees:
 
Jessica Dewell

ASP Hall of Fame 2008 inductee Jessica Dewell joined the ASP in June 1998. She was one of the founders of RegNow, an e-commerce company, for which she directed operations, development, customer service, and sales. RegNow was later acquired by Digital River, with whom Jess played a significant role. She was a Supporting Member of the ASP for many years, and became a Lifetime Member in 2004.

In December 1999, Jessica was appointed ASP Secretary, where she was instrumental in establishing the ASP Welcome Committee. This group of experienced members volunteers their time to contact brand-new ASP members to provide them with basic information about the organization and where to start benefiting from membership. This initiative was successful, and the Welcome Committee is still active today.

It was also during Jessica’s time as ASP Secretary that she began writing the first of a series of member profile articles for ASPects, an idea that arose from the discussions about the Welcome Committee. She eventually went on to write more than fifty articles for ASPects on a variety of different topics. Jessica was nominated for a seat on the ASP Board of Directors, and in December 2000 she was elected as Director for 2001-2002, where she played a role in several significant changes to the organization. Near the end of her full year term, she nominated herself for another term and, again, was elected by the membership.

In January 2003, Jessica was selected to be the ASP Chairman of the Board. This was especially significant because this was during a time of uncertainty when the ASP needed strong leadership, and Jessica was willing to step up. She guided the ASP through the reincorporation process smoothly and successfully, and the ASP emerged stronger than ever.

Jessica served as Chairman of the Board until early February 2004, when she resigned to accept an appointment as ASP President. As she stated with her resignation note, she felt that it was important for the two positions to remain separated, and she used her time in each role to help establish the current ASP leadership distinction between policy and operations. Jessica continued to serve as ASP President through 2005. In addition to her efforts to benefit the ASP, Jessica was a Board member of the ESC (Educational Software Cooperative) for several years, and also served as its Editor.

Later, Jessica began volunteering for the ASP again, this time as the Website Content Manager, where she added content to the web site.

Harold Holmes

ASP Hall of Fame 2008 Inductee Harold Holmes first joined the ASP in May 1992, with his company, Lincoln Beach Software. Since that time, he has been one of the more prolific programmers in the software industry, producing software for developers, webmasters, and consumers alike. He was also a Supporting Member of the ASP for several years, and wrote a dozen articles for ASPects.

Harold’s first volunteer service for the ASP began in July 1992, when he joined the Author Membership Committee, on which he served through October 1993.

In December 1997, Harold was nominated for a seat as an ASP Director, and he subsequently joined the 1998 Board of Directors. The first act of this new Board was to appoint him as Chairman of the Board, where he was responsible for several positive changes for the ASP. One of his early published opinions showed that he was already contemplating the limitations of the VendInfo system that was then used to describe products available for download. In late October 1998, Harold resigned from his positions as Director and Chairman of the Board to accept an appointment as ASP President. Less than two months later, he was also appointed to the role of ASP Webmaster. He used the dual roles to advance the online presentation and marketing of the ASP during his tenure. At SIC 2000, he was recognized with a plaque for his outstanding service to the ASP as its President and Webmaster.

For many years, Harold has served on the Board of Directors for the SIAF (Shareware Industry Awards Foundation), which in responsible for the Software Industry Conference. In August 2000, he resigned as ASP President in order to concentrate on the following two SIC conferences in St. Louis, for which he was the local liaison. However, he continued to serve as ASP Webmaster through January 2002.

Harold attended the first several Shareware Schmoozes, in Columbus, Ohio. It was at the third Schmooze where he was approached by Rich Holler, who ran the ADDS file submission service, about the need for a better system to describe products that used online marketing. The two devised an improved solution, and Harold produced a prototype. They also quickly found that other authors were interested in the concept. By the middle of 1999, Harold’s “DizGen99” product was coming to fruition, and at the same time, the ASP leadership was discussing a potential replacement for VendInfo. The two plans came together as an opportunity to benefit the entire software industry, and the ASP, upon a committee recommendation, purchased the product, renamed the system to PAD (Portable Application Description), and made it freely available to software developers. Harold continued to maintain and upgrade the PADGen program, and also became PAD’s most vocal advocate.

2006 Inductees:
 
Kent Briggs
Kent Briggs joined the ASP April 5, 1993 and immediately became involved in the ASP message board and newsgroups, where he is still active today.

In 2001, Kent helped develop the first PADGen EULA and was one of the three original authors of the PAD FAW website. In 2002, as chair of the Download Site Committee, Kent proposed and implemented the official PAD-enabled ASP download site. Ken also served as the download site maintainer from its inception in 2002 until December 2005.

After the ASP download site was completed in 2002, Kent made the source code available to the ASP free of charge and it evolved into he first PADkit. PADkit continues to help download site operators integrate PAD support into their software repositories today.

Rob Rosenberger

Rob Rosenberger joined the ASP March 27, 1988, just before releasing his telephone analysis software. He quickly became active in the organization and by September of 1988 had developed a catalog of ASP products for posting on CompuServe. This project was adopted by the ASP and became known as the “ASP CIS Catalog.” In August of 1989 Rob expanded this project to include BBS systems and the “ASP BBS Catalog” was born. Rob featured ASP-member products in his reviews written for Amateur Computing Magazine and the St. Louis Data Times.

Rob became a sysop for the ASP CompuServe forum in November 1989 and continued in that position until the ASP left CompuServe and started their own newsgroups in 1997. In 1990 Rob was elected to a board seat and served a full two-year term. Also, in 1990, Rob organized a project to develop a stamp with the ASP logo on it that members could use to highlight the ASP mailed packages from members. Quite a few members used the stamp during the period disks were still being sent out. In 1991 Rob worked on the Vendor Welcoming Committee and was active in anti-virus work assigned to the ASP Virus Information Panel in March of 1992. A year later he joined and continued working with the ASP Publicity Committee.

In May 1993, Rob took the ASP Catalog compilation he had been maintaining since 1988 and published it as a 780-page book called The Shareware Compendium. This book advertised all ASP-member products in a national format.