ediary
Joanna Kramer
London, United Kingdom

As Lucy waved goodbye I remembered many good times with her. We were together for several years and had shared many secrets. Now she was moving overseas, leaving me with memories, pictures and songs from what would probably be some of the best days of my life.

But the sad thing was that they were all over the place, in albums, diaries, letters, and tapes. I wished I could put them all in one place, on my PC. That morning, I decided to buy software that would do it. After going to several stores, I found that there was nothing available. I also checked the Internet. I found many diaries, but not what I had in mind.

That evening I read an inspirational article about Grace Hopper of the US Navy during WW II, the first computer programmer ever. So I decided if the software is not available why not make it? I would develop a program that did it all: a diary, email, and an organizer for music, pictures, and video, all in one.

I had taken a couple of courses in programming and but did not find it easy. I was not a geek. But I vowed I would do it.

The first question was what language? I had heard about Java and decided to learn it. I got a self-study book and a CD and tried to figure out what is a class, a method, and all the other stuff about object oriented programming. It sounded simple at first but got complicated pretty quickly.

As I was starting the programming, I spoke to a couple of boys in the neighborhood who were studying computer science at college. After they heard my idea, they asked, "how much software have you developed before?" I said that this was my first serious try. They said this was for professionals, way above my head, and to forget it.

I knew it was an excellent idea and knew it could be done. But how? No one in our family was well versed in computers. The family that to moved to Lucy's place had a girl my age, Janet. We became friends quickly and I found out that her father was a computer programmer with a company called Infotech.

One afternoon as I was in their house, I asked her father a few questions and told him about my progress, how I had learned Java, and written a lot of code but now was stuck. He was very helpful. "This is not an easy project. It is a big project. Bring over the software and let's see what we can do", he said.

It was great. He was really cool and patient. From then, almost every night I used to go to Janet's home and tell him the about the progress I had made and he told me what to do for the next few days. I thought everything was under control. Not!

I realized that two things were needed that I had not done and could not figure out: password protection to protect my diary from little brother, and attachments: I love music, video and pictures. Without them, my diary would be incomplete. Janet's father became very busy and he could not help much. I had spent hundreds of hours programming and had incomplete software. I did not want to give up, but did not know what to do. That felt awful.

One evening, I saw Janet's father and waved to him. He said: "Joanna, how is it going?" "Not too well," I replied. He asked whether I had thought of what I would like to do with the software besides use it myself. I had never thought about it. He said he could probably invite me to his company and let their experts take a look at it. They might be interested in finishing and commercializing it. Great idea!

The day I went to the company's business office was one I will never forget. All these managers, waiting for me in the boardroom to present my software. Janet's father introduced me. He sat next to me and I began talking about what I had done. As I finished, I was expecting a lot of tough questions

"What can we do for you?" the top manager asked. That was the last question that I had expected. Janet's father jumped in and said it would be nice if Infotech would assign a couple of programmers to help me out to finish the software and get it to the market. A moment of silence. The answer: they would think about it and get back to me.

The next day the phone rang. It was Infotech. They liked the idea and wanted to go ahead. I handed the project over to them and worked with two of their programmers over a period of three months.

Then, a focus group of teens was to evaluate my software. All the girls were only a few years younger than me and I was nervous about their response so I gave the program another test. With every click, my heartbeat went up but everything worked fine. Those two hours of testing were the longest two hours of my life. Happily, the teens in the focus group liked it.

We named the software eDiary, standing for electronic diary and that was my decision. I had it figured out for teens like myself. These are some of the best years of our lives and eDiary is there to record them.

Then we put the software on our web-site (www. teenediary.com) and I downloaded it. Guess what were the first pages of my eDiary filled with? My memories of developing it. And who got the first email from the built-in email? Who else but Lucy.

Now that it is over, I don't know if I want to do it all over again. But I guess I would. I love challenges.

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"Joanna Kramer is a teenager living in London England. While a student she began the adventure that led to the creation of a commercial software product, ediary. It could be downloaded at www.teenediary.com."
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