In the 1990s and 2000s, I ran TECSoft, an AppleScript and FileMaker Pro development shop in New York City. Our specialty was database publishing – the powerful ability of Apple’s AppleScript technology to intelligently extract data from FileMaker databases and to format it ready-for-print in page layout applications such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign.
We worked closely with Apple and Claris, the predecessor of FileMaker Inc., to showcase the abilities of their technologies. In 1994, growing – and needing additional developer talent, we asked our pal Eric Silver, the then New York area sales rep at Claris, to be on the lookout for us. He told me about a FileMaker wizard he knew named Mark Munro working at Jack Morton, an AV production company in New York.
Mark’s work was amazing and I immediately realized we had come across FileMaker gold.
Mark was responsible for organizing Morton’s production project data and managing their workflow. We met and he explained their workflow and showed me how he had organized it in FileMaker so that management was able to track projects from start to finish, track the various assets involved, and track and accurately bill their clients for the time and materials involved.
Mark’s work was amazing and I immediately realized we had come across FileMaker gold. All aspects of his company’s workflow were logically organized in a functional workflow management tool – and most impressively of all – was clearly presently in an easy-to-follow interface. It is mind-bending to realize that Mark had accomplished this before FileMaker was a relational database.
Mark’s passion makes him eminently qualified to pass along his mastery of FileMaker’s powerful organization tool. He just had to write this book.
We began working with Mark as a freelance FileMaker Pro and AppleScript gun slinger. We threw our most complicated and demanding projects at him – a huge workflow management and catalog publishing project at Sony Music, a very complex and mission-critical graphic file creation project with drop-dead deadlines for Associated Press, to name just a couple.
In short order, Mark had more than enough work to go out on his own as a full-time FileMaker and AppleScript developer. As TECSoft’s focus turned to working with Apple delivering AppleScript seminars and training sessions, we created the TECSoft Developers Consortium (TDC) to handle the huge demand for FileMaker and AppleScript integration projects our seminars generated. With Mark as TDC developer #1, we were able to create an international referral network of FileMaker Pro and AppleScript developers that became the largest FileMaker Pro and AppleScript brain trust on earth.
Mark has now been running his own successful development company, Write Track Media, for over 20 years. What Mark possesses, more than any other developer I’ve worked with, is a true talent for organization. Mark’s passion makes him eminently qualified to pass along his mastery of FileMaker’s powerful organization tool. He just had to write this book.
John Thorsen Jr.