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New CEO ahead for LizardTech, at
last
A breaking news report by PlanetDjVu, April 1,
2003
 Update
5-7-2003: The Management page at LizardTech has now been removed, so we
don't know who is in charge. Should we have titled this article "No CEO
ahead for LizardTech?" As an aside, we learned, sadly, that Luc Vincent,
who was the Director of Applied Research at LizardTech, was let go. We
wonder now if anyone is left at LizardTech who knows the DjVu code
base... Update
4-5-03: were it not for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer report, we would
not know that Scot Land has taken the helm as interim CEO. Now, three
weeks after his departure, the LizardTech website still lists
Bill Patterson as CEO. Reminds us of another phantom
President in the news these days... Update
4-11-03: While the above Management page is still there, it is now
detached from the rest of the LizardTech website. Rule of Thumb - when you
run out of managers, just jettison the management
page! April
1, 2003 The
SpatialNews
Daily Newswire reported last Friday that Bill Patterson
has left his post as CEO of LizardTech. SpatialNews reports that a key
investor is now the Acting CEO for LizardTech. The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer has confirmed this today, reporting
that Patterson is replaced on an interim basis by venture capitalist Scot
Land, who is a managing partner at Encompass
Ventures. SpatialNews reports of a planned refocus on GeoSpatial (MrSid), and
that of course begs the question of what will happen with DjVu,
particularly now that the staff of LizardTech is down to about 32 in
number, lower than when the DjVu format was first acquired from AT&T
Labs. Still, we
take this as potentially good news for the future of DjVu, which has been
going downhill since Bill
Patterson took the helm in August, 2001. Bill
Patterson was largely responsible, in our opinion, for implementing the
"page cartridge" pricing model for DjVu, for overpricing DjVu software,
for abandoning the retail market opportunities for DjVu and for
restricting or preventing third-party licensing of the DjVu SDKs and
libraries, all of which have contributed to the steady decline of the
format in the past one and a half years.
Our hope
now is that the new CEO will take a fresh look at DjVu marketing, and will
again invite the participation of outside resellers, integrators and
developers who were largely shut out during the tenure of Bill Patterson.
We also hope that LizardTech will again recognize PlanetDjVu as a portal
site for the DjVu user community!
It does
concern us that today, more than a week after Bill Patterson's reported
departure from LizardTech, he is still listed as CEO on the LizardTech website
management page.
Stay tuned
to PlanetDjVu! We will report on new DjVu-related developments at
LizardTech as we learn of them.
***
These
anonymous comments were received:
"Patterson was forced out. The
only common agreement is that now everyone knows he's a loser and that he
personally accelerated the company's swirling voyage down the crapper.
What is this "my contribution going forward" crap? Admit it, BP. You
failed. You took what remained of a very cool company and tried to apply
your IBMTHINK approach to a market of which you had neither knowledge nor
respect." "Yea. We lost 35 million with Grizz and only lost 10
mil or so with Patterson. Time to get ourselves another prez."
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