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From Matt Goldberg, Editorial Director — Tripod in Print:

I.

Whether by sheer coincidence, or some grander, cosmically resonant confluence, my turn to pen a Letter from Tripod comes on the eve of my second anniversary working for the company. That it's taken so long for me to lose my Letter from Tripod virginity is an interesting fact, especially since we had less than half the number of employees when I was hired than we do presently.

You see, when I joined this estimable New Media juggernaut I was agreeing to serve as a sort of guinea pig. This was true in more ways than one. To begin with, I became Tripod's first ever Virtual Employee. Instead of following in the footsteps of my distinguished colleagues — for whom the inevitable move to the Berkshires signaled the definitive start of Tripod employment — I stayed put. Literally. My glorified shoebox of an apartment, located on a fairly nondescript street in lower Manhattan, became Tripod's initial New York City office. And with my PowerBook, external modem, and AOL account in hand, I had to shift my position on the couch nary an inch to start my workday. (This, of course, is what working from home is like for most of us. The difference is that there was no other office from which I was absent and could return to — for more copy paper or some social interaction — if and when I desired.)

Not working from Williamstown was condoned by the Powers that Are (a phrase I lift from Tripod's Executive Producer Scott Walker) because I had been charged with the task of launching the company's college magazine (called Tools for Life and published once each semester for the past two years), a project I insisted could only be handled from the Big Apple, where the concentration of freelance writers, illustrators and designers, not to mention color separators and all manner of publishing-related service bureaus, is the highest of any place in the world.

Beyond this need to be physically near the folks who'd help me get this project off the ground, there was a something of a Lewis and Clark-tinged element to my setting up shop for Tripod in New York. It was as if CEBo was Thomas Jefferson, inaugurating this precipitous journey of mine to insure life would be safe for future New York-based Tripodians, an adventure during which isolation, a dearth of postage stamps and an utter lack of anyone to buy me lunch would be not mere possibilities but bankable eventualities.

And so it went for about six or so months, until the folks in Williamstown deemed it safe for us to embark on a more ambitious attempt at southerly colonization. More employees were hired (none of whom still work here), an office was leased (one we've since moved out of), and the days of passing out business cards with my home address printed on them became an ever-dimming memory.

II.

As I sit writing this missive, Tripod's New York presence is currently in what might be termed its adolescence. We're inhabiting out second office down here — a huge and suitably hip maze-like suite in the heart of SoHo — and we're on the verge of reaching "double digits" in terms of our number of employees. Now San Francisco is where our newest office is, and the staffers out there have inherited the pioneer's mantle, one that I'm happy to have relinquished.

Though in a sense I haven't entirely left my trailblazing spirit behind. For while I'm no longer publishing Tripod's college magazine, I'm still engaged in the ongoing mission to push Tripod into arenas in which we as a company have no previous experience. To wit, we are currently three months (cross your fingers) away from completing Tripod's first foray into book publishing, a project with which you may be familiar if you're one of the roughly one thousand Tripod members who've contributed items for possible inclusion in the book (done by visiting the book's homepage and simply telling it like it is).

When the inimitable Randyman sent around the Letter from Tripod schedule last summer, we'd just sold the book idea to Hyperion (the adult book publishing arm of Disney) and I longingly imagined the time, then half-a-year hence, when I'd be able to casually reflect on the status of the tome, which then consisted of nothing more than an unsigned contract, a huge pile of outlines, and a lot of nervous anticipation. But lo and behold, my letter writing moment is nigh, and accompanying my computer on my desk is a crisp and white 450-page manuscript, comprising the over three dozen pieces that make up the book.

While the book project is not necessarily the first thing one thinks of upon hearing the word Tripod, it is unmistakably the product of a new kind of media company (okay, a New Media company) and, moreover, it is undeniably a true collaboration involving many different people (and divisions) of our company. The very fact that we're inviting our members to serve as co-authors of the book, contributing thousands upon thousands of words of copy regarding everything from homepage building to homebrewing, is evidence of our having entered another kind (non-geographical) of uncharted territory and is a feat we've only accomplished by getting folks from Membership, Design, Administration, and Site Management to pitch in. This in addition to the more visible contributions made by Tripod's editors and our other writerly staffers (Ethan, for one).

So even if you didn't know it, there's a lot happening out here on the edge, a lot of Tripod-related things going on outside the snowy hills and valleys of Williamstown. Before retiring Tools for Life, we'd printed and distributed over 4 million copies of the slim publication. (For what it's worth, 4 million is more than 25% of the total number of college students in America.) And all of the advertising Tripod sells, the revenue from which keeps the company afloat, is sold from non-Berkshires locales.

When the Tripod book is published (which is supposed to happen in September), it may, as a result of publicity and promotion and other such machinations, assume a more central role than it does now. But even if it's really successful, I for one won't forget that it's the product of working quietly (and feverishly) away on the periphery ,where the light doesn't always shine but where things can nonetheless (like some plants) manage to grow.

Or as Johann von Schiller (the dude who wrote the "lyrics" to Beethoven's Ode to Joy) asked rhetorically in 1787, "Who knows what slumbers in the background of the times?"

— Matt Goldberg (1/30/98)

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.