Your questions, answered.

The Pen-Based Computing Alumni is the community side of the Pen-Based Computing History Museum. It is a place for the engineers, designers, founders, product managers, and writers of the stylus era to find one another again, compare notes, and put the story of pen computing on the record in their own words.

Reconnecting is only the start. The real purpose is to build the largest and most accurate oral history and public record of the people and organizations that shaped the pen-based computing era — told by the people who were there.

Taking part is by invitation only — joining the groups, keeping a profile, and posting all follow the museum record. But the forums are not walled off: every forum post is open for the whole world to read, published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0), free for anyone to quote and build on so long as the source is credited. The private side of the community — your profile, your messages, and the groups — stays among members.

The museum keeps the record of what was built — the artifacts, the companies, the timeline. This is where the people who built it gather. The museum is public and archival; the Alumni community is a by-invitation space for the people documented in the museum to reconnect and add their first-hand memories — narrow on who takes part, but open for anyone to read.

Once you have an account you can keep a member profile, find and message old colleagues, join groups around the companies and projects you worked on, and take part in the forums. Most of all, you can contribute to the oral history — the stories, corrections, and context that never made it into a press release.

No. Membership is free. It is limited not by price but by who belongs — the community follows the people documented in the museum.

Reconnecting with old colleagues is the start, but it is not the point. The point is to build the definitive oral history of the pen-based computing era — the largest and most accurate first-hand record of the people, companies, and products that defined it.

The press releases, the artifacts, and the timeline in the museum capture what was announced. They do not capture why: the decisions behind the products, the rivalries and alliances between companies, the deals that nearly happened, the near-misses, and the reasons things turned out the way they did. That knowledge was never written down — it lives only in the memories of the people who were in the room. This is where it gets set down, recollection by recollection, correction by correction, into an account that will outlast all of us.

Think of the forums as the workshop where the history is assembled. The best way to contribute is to start or join detailed discussions anchored to something concrete:

• A company — start a thread for a company you worked at or competed with, and walk through how it really operated: the strategy, the culture, the turning points, the people who mattered.
• A product — take a single device, application, or platform and tell its full story: how it was conceived, what shipped versus what was planned, why it succeeded or fell short.
• A moment in history — pick a pivotal event — a launch, an acquisition, a demo, a deal that collapsed — and reconstruct what actually happened from the inside.

One person rarely has the whole story, and that is the point. Post what you remember — even a fragment — and others who were there will add their piece, correct a date, name the person you forgot, or offer the view from the other side of the table. Over time each thread accretes into a layered, cross-checked account no single memory could produce. Half a story is better than no story; someone else will help you finish it.

One thing to keep in mind: this works because everyone treats it as a reunion among colleagues, not a place to relitigate old grievances. Our code of conduct comes down to four house rules — be polite, be fair, be curious, and share generously. Keep those in mind and the record we build together will be richer and fairer for it.

Because the whole point of an oral history is to be read, retold, and carried forward — not locked away. Everything in the forums is public: every topic and reply is open for anyone in the world to read, with no account and no membership required. (The groups are the exception — those are members-only and stay private to the community. The license below covers the forums only.)

Publishing the forums under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0) is a deliberate invitation. It tells researchers, journalists, historians, students, and fellow alumni that they are free to quote, excerpt, translate, and build upon what is written here — for any purpose, without asking permission first — on a single condition: that the source is credited. The more places these stories travel, the more complete the record of the pen-computing era becomes, and the more likely it is that someone who was there reads it, recognizes a name or a date, and adds the piece only they remember.

So think of the license less as a legal footnote and more as the mechanism that lets the history outgrow this site. You keep authorship of your words — attribution is the one thing the license requires — while the stories themselves are set free to spread. For the exact terms, what is and is not covered, and the preferred wording for crediting a contribution, see “Can I quote or reproduce material from this community?” under Permissions for use below.

Our recommendation is to use AI for light copyediting, and perhaps for some obscure research — but not to write your story for you. What makes this archive worth keeping is your own voice and your own first-hand memory; an AI asked to do the remembering will quietly smooth both away. Here is a workflow we suggest:

• Draft in an external text editor. For longer entries, write in a separate text editor rather than straight into the forum box. This lets you finesse a post at your own pace without accidentally submitting something you didn’t intend others to see.
• Use AI for a light copyedit only. Type freely and quickly without worrying about grammar or connective structure, then let a light AI pass tidy it up. A gentle edit keeps your distinctive voice and retains the points you want to emphasize.
• Start a topic in the appropriate forum, or reply to an existing post in a thread.
• Copy and paste your content into the forum.

We also encourage you to read other people’s posts and ask questions — perhaps to help you recall the name of a colleague, to learn some insider detail from that time, or to figure out something you’ve always wanted to know.

This is the most important distinction on the site, so here is the definitive rule: the oral history lives in the forums, not in the groups. They look similar at a glance, but they do different jobs.

• Forums are the record. A forum is a public, permanent, threaded archive organised around a company, a product, or a moment in history. Every topic and reply is open for anyone on the web to read, it stays put, and it accretes over time into the cross-checked first-hand account this whole community exists to build. When you set down a recollection, correct a date, or name the person someone forgot, it belongs in a forum — that is where it becomes part of the history.
• Groups are the lounge. A group is a members-only space for the social side of being here — a private room for people who shared a company or a project to catch up, organise a get-together, share a photo, or chat informally. Groups are visible only to members, not to the open web, and they are not the archive. Think of a group as the hallway conversation at a reunion; think of a forum as the oral history transcript that outlasts the reunion.

When to use which: if what you are writing is a story, a fact, a correction, or context that the historical record should keep — post it in a forum, where it is public and permanent. If it is informal chatter, logistics, or a catch-up among old colleagues that does not need to live on the public record — a group is the right place. A handy rule of thumb: if you would mind a stranger reading it years from now, it belongs in a group; if you would be glad they did, it belongs in a forum.

So by all means join the groups for the people you worked with — that is half the fun of being here. But when you have something for the history, take it to the forums. That is where it counts.

Anyone who was involved with the organizations documented in the museum — the companies, publications, and projects that defined the stylus era, roughly 1987 to 2007. This is an alumni community in the literal sense: membership follows the people already in the museum record. The about page covers who belongs in full.

Because membership is tied to the museum record, accounts are arranged personally rather than through open registration. If you were part of the era and would like to join — or you know a colleague who should be here — write to the moderator at [email protected] with a few sentences about where you worked and what you worked on.

Yes. If you were part of the pen computing or mobile data industry but the museum doesn’t document you yet, that is a gap in the record worth fixing. Write to the moderator and we’ll sort out both the museum profile and your alumni account together.

Visibility splits in two. What you write in the forums is public — open for anyone on the web to read, since the forums are where the oral history goes on the record (see Permissions below). Everything else — your profile, your direct messages, and the groups — is visible only to other members, not to the open web. The privacy page has the full detail on what is collected and who can see it.

Send the page URL and the correction to [email protected], with a source if you have one. The museum is built on primary sources and corrections are taken seriously — a wrong date, a misattributed product, or a role left out gets fixed directly.

That is the whole point of being here. Share recollections in the forums and groups, correct the record where you know better, and add the decisions, successes, and near-misses that only the people who were there remember. Together the alumni are assembling the definitive first-hand history of the stylus era, told by the people who lived it.

The same person behind the museum and Pen-Based Computing, The Journal of Stylus Systems (1991-1998), John Jerney. There is no support desk or ticket queue; an email to [email protected] reaches him directly.

Yes — the forums, freely. Every post and reply in the public forums is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). This is deliberate: the forums are where the oral history of pen computing is put on the public record, so what is written there is meant to be read, used, and carried forward by everyone, not locked behind the community’s door. Your profile, your direct messages, and everything inside the groups are private to the community and are not covered — those stay among members.

In plain terms, CC BY 4.0 means anyone, anywhere, is free to copy, share, quote, excerpt, translate, and build upon this material — for any purpose, including commercial use — with a single condition: that the source is credited. The license is irrevocable and worldwide, and contributions are made with that understanding. There is no need to ask permission first; the license already grants it.

The one thing CC BY 4.0 does not cover is museum material linked or embedded here from the Pen-Based Computing History Museum — artifacts, images, and records that belong to the museum carry the museum’s own terms, not this license. Questions about either can go to [email protected].

Whenever you quote or reproduce material, please include a clear and prominent attribution that names the member who wrote it — the words are theirs — alongside the community. The preferred wording is:

[Name of the member who wrote it], Pen-Based Computing Alumni (penbasedcomputing.net). Curated by John Jerney.

If the contribution carries no name, or you cannot identify the author, credit the community alone:

Courtesy of Pen-Based Computing Alumni (penbasedcomputing.net). Curated by John Jerney.