After fifteen years as a professor of classical languages and honors at the University of Houston, William Porter gave up the comfort of tenure to pursue other interests. In the late '90s, he spent a couple of years building database-driven web sites, and later, gave a little coaching help when the oldest newspaper in Texas, the Galveston Daily News, decided to build its own web site. In 1999, with the help of Chris Dulin, a former student who was then assistant circulation manager at the Houston Press, Will wrote the first version of CMAssistant - then called EXTRA! The rest is hysterical, er, history. Will took on many interesting consulting challenges - helping Ant & Dec keep track of all the tapes need for its hit television show in the UK, building for Houston law firm Moriarty & Leyendecker a database that managed all the data used in a mass tort case in California, to mention just a couple projects. In 2005, Will teamed up with talented programmer Daniel Taylor (who had done Apple Computer's south/central American web site a year or two earlier) to do a large project for the Chicago Public Schools (FileMaker Pro + PHP), an expert system for renowned makeup artist Robert Jones's Simple Beaute (using FileMaker Pro and Adobe Director), and building a web application for Dallas-based Worldwide Incentives. At the same time, Will has been writing regularly for computer publications such as Tidbits, MacTech, and Macworld. He has also continued to develop CMAssistant (which is now used by bulk-distribution / alternative newsweekly publications across the USA and Canada). In 2008, he added a new product to Polytrope's menu: Goodbooks, a fundraising management program designed to meet the special needs of religious communities such as monasteries and convents.
"Polytrope" comes from the Ancient Greek word "polytropos" or "polutropos." The basic meaning is, "(a man) of many turns;" the epic poet Homer (8th century B.C.) uses it to describe his hero Odysseus's versatility and resourcefulness. That's the "what." The "why" has something to do with the fact that William Porter, Polytrope's owner, is a former classics professor (Ph.D., Classics, Boston University; Mellon Foundation Fellow in Renaissance Studies, Brandeis University; Visiting Associate Professor, Classical Languages, Syracuse University; Assistant/Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Honors, University of Houston).
A Roman mosaic showing Ulysses (= Odysseus) listening to the sirens.
"At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning. At thirty, I took my stand. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the will of heaven..." (Confucius, Analects 2.3, trans. Simon Leys)
Want to know what's been on the left half of WP's brain? Of course you do. Click here.