When Denver start-up Jabber.com (www.jabber.com) wanted to bring two dozen of its software developers together at a recent industry conference -- they received an unusual request. One of their software programmers, Julian Missig, asked to bring his mom.
He didn't have much of a choice. His mother wasn't about to let the 16-year-old go to a conference in California alone with a bunch of guys that he had only corresponded with via e-mail and instant Internet messages. "He had never met any of these people before," said Carol Missig, a 46-year-old homemaker from New Jersey.
So, Jabber.com booked airline tickets and hotel rooms for mother and son and chalked it up to another strange moment in its unusual history. Jabber.com relies on the efforts of dozens of programmers around the world to help it build its instant-messaging software. Some of them, like Mr. Missig -- a junior at the private Salesianum Catholic boys schools in Wilmington, Del. -- are volunteers who aren't paid because they are technically part of an open source software movement, but are "sponsored" by the company with free trips and occasional stipends.
It leads to some unusual moments. Mrs. Missig said she really liked the programmers she met at the conference, but she noted: "I was definitely the oldest person in the room."
from The Wall Street Journal, 2000-01-04 -- too bad they didn't mention the fact that Mrs. Missig won a "Jimmie" for best supporting mom!