Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Right?

In the spring of 2005 I wrote the “screenplay” for AmazonBay and we launched DrKW Revolution on July 1 2005 – I still have the t-shirt to prove it. So I must admit I had to laugh when my old colleague Stu pointed me to the Morgan Stanley Matrix I nearly fell off my chair laughing: it was deja vu all over again…

Don’t get me wrong, it looks pretty useful and I completely endorse the vision. In fact I sort of have to given that it is exactly in line with the vision we had for Digital Markets at DrKW over 5 years ago! (Although not quite as comprehensive as far as I can tell…) But what I love most is that in terms of look and feel – the hexagons, the music, the video (but I can re-assure you I didn’t wear a tie or speak from a teleprompter!) – it is Son of Revolution. Amazing. Actually feel quite proud that we at least left an impact, even if it didn’t happen to be at Dresdner Kleinwort.

I just spent a few minutes digging around on the wayback machine but unfortunately couldn’t find any good links. Really too bad because the Flash intro page was very cool and would have loved to be able to look at it side-by-side with MS Matrix. (Any current Dresdner folks would be great if you could dig this code out of the archives if it still exists!) Fortunately, I did have an old marketing card brochure hanging around:

DrKWRevolution Brochure (Cover)

(The rest of that brochure is here.)

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I can’t help but feel a little proud seeing some of my vision start to come to life, especially at such a blue chip conservative firm like Morgan Stanley, but I would also be lying if I said I didn’t feel like screaming ‘I told you so’ to all the senior executives at DrKW who refused to stick their necks out and support what I was trying to do. Let’s just say I’m not surprised at how it all ultimately turned out there. Karma. The good thing is that this bad feeling is way more than offset by remembering all the truly exceptional people I got to work with while I was at DrKW and the support I received from so many of them especially since it wasn’t necessarily politically correct to do so. It meant and still means a lot to me. Anyhow, it would be cool if Hishaam Mufti-Bey, the guy behind MS Matrix would add us as a little historical footnote on his About Us page, as I imagine it won’t be long until all the old DrKW links have disappeared; it’s important to remember!

Just one final point though. What the hell is it with traders and black Bloomberg-looking web design??? Every bloody website I see focused on institutional capital markets customers seems to use this look. Get over it! It was fantastic for Mike (and rooted in a real engineering problem by the way) but when other people copy them, well… it just makes you all look dumb. Hire a designer. Do something original. Your content and you customers deserve it.

“The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.”

- William Gibson, Author

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