Michael Pickard

Why would I slave over a pile of cardboard, crumpled newspaper, a lightbulb, tape and glued-on felt pieces to construct a dodo bird?

My first job in the real world after graduating from college was as an entry level programmer for a new computer system built from scratch, my dream project. The team was composed of a few phone company veterans supplemented by a group of college hires, including me. The name of the system was so generic as to be meaningless. What does a Data Administration Control System do, anyway?

I learned that it would replace an existing manual process, improve service representative productivity and eliminate waste, all good things. Yet the team seemed almost bored with the work. On the other hand, I was as excited as a Northwestern cheerleader at a tied game with two minutes to go in the fourth quarter.

What the DACS team needed was a mascot, like Willie the Wildcat, to provoke team spirit. And since DACS would be rendering an existing business procedure extinct, I knew exactly what kind of mascot to create.

DACS the Dodo sat in a place of honor above all of the programmers’ cubicles and made them smile. When I left the team years later, my colleagues argued that DACS the Dodo needed to stay, but I took him with me. He makes his home with me to this day, a memento from the earliest days of my career.