It is about seven years ago now that I crowded into a meeting room in San Mateo, California, and was introduced to the entire staff of MarkLogic.
I was in the midst of a negotiation just up the road in Burlingame to sell my company to Outsell, but I had been energised by a conversation with Dave Kellogg, the very charismatic CEO of the young MarkLogic, to pay them a visit. Presuming that he meant European publishing, rather than the Alps and the Pyrenees, I began a halting description of a market in slow digital transition, but was soon overtaken by other voices.
Apparently, MarkLogic was the latest thing in database technology, and apparently the primitive nature of the market I had been apologetically describing, was pure opportunity lurking in the shadows and waiting to be turned into the stardust of a new age of media management.
I drove away feeling that we might have gone an adjective too far in our enthusiasm but that something here had to be watched. This week I found out what that was.
Since that meeting I have had a long and pleasurable association with the company, and last week its annual user show arrived in a Europe it now knows intimately, with MarkLogic World conferences in Amsterdam and London. Alongside these events a dinner for publishing people took place, and I was able to attend and speak at both.
