Well . . . this isn’t really a beginning, but more like a new beginning. TCG has been around (sometimes more in spirit than in actuality) for quite a few years.

I started the effort because I wanted to use web-tech to support ministries, clubs and small businesses with whom we were already involved. I was a member of the local soccer board, the local pregnancy center, our church, mom & dad’s B-n-B,a homeschool co-op, etc. Each of these activities could use web initiatives, but none had anyone who could provide the comprehensive package of services they needed.

At that time I was employed as the Director of New Business Development with a company in Rochester. I have always been somewhat “techie” oriented (maybe my BS in Systems Engineering has something to do with it?). Anyway, I had all these ideas for using the internet to make my job easier and our business more profitable, but no-one to implement them. My employer liked my ideas, but wasn’t willing to pay for the development to be outsourced, and also wasn’t willing to send me to training to do it myself. So . . . I started self teaching myself what I needed to know.

After a series of events (including using Frontpage to devlope sites and then back-engineering the code to learn it) I found myself acting as a webspace reseller. I started buying space on servers in Dallas and Chicago, and using it for the different activities we were supporting.

It was during this time as well that blogging and pod-casting started to become the dominant content delivery mechanisms on the web. I had several site that used hacked guest logs as defacto blogs. They worked, but it wasn’t nearly as pretty as what we have now.

I joined the Rochester e-Business Association, and started networking with others who saw the communication potential (both good and bad) of corporate and NFP ministry blogging and podcasting.