40 years in 40 stories:
Around England with fifteen floppy disks
Today, software updates can be sent at the click of a button. In the late 1990s, it was a very different story. When a group of customers in England needed an update to their UNIFORM software, Harm-Jan van der Beek got on a plane.
The internet was not really an option yet. Updates could not simply be sent to customers, let alone installed remotely. And the software would not fit on a single floppy disk.
“I think we had about fifteen customers in England who needed updating. And each update took around fifteen floppy disks.”
When he arrived in England, another surprise was waiting for him. Almost all the hire cars were gone. There was just one left, a red Mini Metro. Harm-Jan was lucky. The person behind him in the queue had been hoping to get that same last car.
Floppy disks containing software updates
Red Mini Metro, the type of car Harm-Jan drove around England.
It may not have been his first choice, but that Mini Metro took him all over the English countryside. He drove from farm to farm, installing the update at each one.
The routine was the same every time. Insert the floppy disks one by one, make sure everything had transferred correctly and sort out any problems along the way. It was slow work. Very slow.
That also meant Harm-Jan often had no idea until the last minute when he would reach the next customer. “I would call the next customer from the farm I was at and say, ‘I think I’ll be with you around four.’ But I never knew exactly what time I would get there, or whether I would manage to finish everything that day.”
That was usually followed by a second question. Was there a hotel nearby? Or perhaps a spare room? Quite often, the latter turned out to be the easiest option. “A lot of people had a guest room in those days.”
And so his route developed as he went along, with very little planned in advance. He spent his days installing software, joined the family around the kitchen table in the evening, and set off for the next farm the following morning. Harm-Jan stayed overnight with several customers. Not because that had been the plan, but simply because it was the most practical solution. “You had dinner with the family, sat around chatting and got to know each other. It was as simple as that.”
Years later, he would bump into some of those farmers again at trade shows. “They would come over and have a chat. After all, I had stayed in their homes. You don’t forget something like that.”
What started as a trip to update the software for a group of customers in England became one of UNIFORM’s first international service visits. A red Mini Metro, a stack of floppy disks and a route that took shape along the way.
