The Story of Simon the Savvysaurus

Simon hatched on October 11, 1994.

But his story really began a few months earlier when a young woman named Jen graduated from an art and design college in Toronto, but couldn’t get a job. It seems that nobody will hire a graphics artist until they have a portfolio, and the only way to build a portfolio is for someone to hire you.

That someone turned out to be me, Paul Jacobson. You may remember that 1994 was pretty much in the middle of the Client/Server revolution. I was busy introducing mainframe programmers to their new computing paradigm. Otherwise known as trying to help IT dinosaurs recycle.

I needed an appropriate dinosaur recycling graphic. While whining to a colleague in Toronto about how I just couldn’t find appropriate Harvard Graphics clip art dinosaurs, she told me about her newly-graduated daughter who was nearly suicidal about her inability to find a job. Our mutual solution was obvious.

Jen and I spent a long early October Sunday afternoon on the telephone discussing the characteristics of IT dinosaurs. A few days later, two great pen-and-ink images appeared in my mailbox. On paper in my REAL mailbox… this was pre-web, after all, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

Here they are: The original Simon and his older cousin.

By the way… once Jen had dinosaurs in her portfolio, it only took her 3 weeks to land a real job. Talent and perseverance will prevail.

No problem naming the older cousin… he’s Cobolasaurus. He represents the past and the old ways of doing things. Not necessarily bad ways, just old ways.

Simon represents a fresh way, an object-oriented way. His has definite attributes and behaviors, and he polymorphs: He’s smaller, nimbler and more adaptable… and he does everything with an aggressive, assertive, confident, maybe even arrogant, attitude.

Simon, happily, turned out to be an evolving dinosaur. Pretty soon he and his cousin got some color and hooked up with their buddy, Screaming Eagle, to create the I/S RESOURCE GROUP dinosaur recycling logo.

I’ve always liked this logo because it accurately sums up our education and training mission: We help IT dinosaurs to continually recycle. Which means that they continue to evolve. And, as I say in every class and presentation, evolving dinosaurs never go extinct. And, that’s what we’re all about- Preventing IT dinosaur extinction.

The problem was that the person I hired to color the dinosaurs and build the logo never sent me the files of the colored dinosaurs by themselves- she only sent the complete logo, and she’s long gone. So, anytime I wanted to use Simon or his cousin individually, I had to use the original uncolored versions.

That finally changed in the fall of 2001 when my friend Ruby, who does desktop publishing for a living, opened her own business. Her first I/S RESOURCE GROUP assignment was to individually recreate in color Simon and his cousin.

In April 2002, we prepared to launch a new series of classes, Fast-Track Training Solutions, and I wanted a new version of Simon that conveyed the Fast-Track idea. In other words, Simon with running shoes.

I mentioned this to Andrea, who builds and maintains the www.isrg.com web site. Andrea has a day job providing technical support for an upstate New York Board of Cooperative Educational Services. She suggested that we run a contest in one of the high school Visual Communications classes and ask the students to design Fast-Track Simon. What a great idea!

Eric Brown, of Otselic Valley High School, and Nate Hill, from Norwich High School, collaborated and submitted not one, but two designs, which earned each of them $25 (officially starting their portfolios) and a donation for the Visual Communications Activity Fund to support the students learning to communicate via graphics. Nice work, gentlemen.

But Simon still didn’t have a name. While he has always been about objects, “Objectasaurus” just doesn’t work. He has had several other temporary labels over the years, but none seemed to stick. (Except one too politically incorrect to use publicly.)

Until May 8, 2002. On that day, Donna Chirash-Templeman, of the Nabisco Division of Kraft Foods, named Simon the Savvysaurus.

Quoting Donna:

“Simon because he’s simple, as in Simple Simon, who supposedly was a great pieman, as in Simply the Best.

Savvy because he’s computer savvy, business savvy and people savvy. He looks and feels confident, up-to-date and knowledgeable. Has it goin’ on. Pretty fly for a reptile!”

Simon says, “Thanks, Donna.” And so do I.