Lynda Weinman and the Early Days of Computer Animation

For those of you interested in trivia from the early days of computer animation, I have a somewhat interesting story.

When we were founding degraf/wahrman, a variety of people helped us out. One of them was (and still is) a truly delightful and wonderful woman who helped us in dozens and dozens of ways including, among other things, helping us set up our office, helping us set up our finances, and spearheading and completely owning the early use of the Mac for previsualization, in this case for Star Trek V and Ralph Winter, which got everyone a lot of publicity. She was/is also an animator, a friend of many people in animation, and I have no doubt that she was in part responsible for the good vibes surrounding our startup.

She was also from the earliest days a complete believer in the idea that computers such as the Mac could transform peoples lives for the better and enable their creativity. Her idealism motivated everything she did to a remarkable extent. After Star Trek V she had bigger fish to fry and probably most of the people who later worked at dWi did not even realize she had worked there. But she went off and among other things started doing conferences about Flash, and then started an internet company to help people learn to use their computers.

Apparently, a few weeks ago, she sold that company, Lynda.com, to Linkedin for 1.5 billion. It is hard to believe that someone who is so idealistic and so well-meaning would do well in such a practical way, but Lynda Weinman is really that amazing. Anyway, I wanted to publicly congratulate Lynda and thank her again for her help long ago and far away.