FedEx Fact:

How time flies and goes full circle.About 32 years ago, my sister in law Margie married Scott. My 5 year old son Josh was in the wedding. My 2 year old son Jonathan was there too. Scott works for the MOCC @ FedEx. Jim Bentley was the professional photographer.About six years ago my son Josh married Cathy. Josh is a programmer in the architecture group at FedEx. Jim Bentley was the photographer.Last year my son Jonathan married Jane. Jonathan is the Manager of Marketing's IT. Jim Bentley was the photographer.There is no telling how many weddings, kids and family photos that Jim has taken of the FedEx families....and Jim's son Chris also works for FedEx..not sure who shot Chris' wedding

FedEx Trivia Answers:

Quiz Answers

i D01 -1982 Project to capture zipcodes from overnite letters on a conveyor belt; Images were captured from overnite letters and sent to keyers remotely to enter zip code; project prototype was successful, but main contractor went bankrupt during 1st phase installation. That is how we inherited 2 Perkin Elmer computers to use in the Superhub.

q COSMOS IIb -Program to scan all packages at customer loc Using SuperTracker to scan packages and transmit via DADS or Smartbase for processing by COSMOSb RED- mid 1980's project to scan airbills and send by satellite to remote locations for data entry; Poor regions of the country like coal mining areas were envisioned for key locations; project did not meet schedule and was the last of the projects to be named a color.

s COSMOS IIc Palm sized device developed for low cost Cust Automation device by SIS; code named Sally B after Jim Barksdale's wife; it was successful, but prices of PC's had dropped so fast, there were just a few hundred dollars diff in buying one of these vs a fully functioned PC

j MSDS- Capture airbills and dimension of packages and upcharge One of the most financially successful projects ever.

k ZAPMAIL- Program to transmit customer letters in 1 hour; not a financial success. Volumes never went over 55,000 per day.

m STAR- time card entry and reportingo PowerPad- Replacement of the SuperTracker with more powerful dev. Project championed by Winn Stephenson. Initially DGO wanted to use a Palm, a Newton or anything off the shelf, but eventually Motorola won the bid over Symbol

p GOCC-Integration of flight and operations data on one screen/unix One of the first major Unix and router projects at FedEx. Used SUN.

g COSMOS - Mainframe app for central dispatching & Call Center functiond GENESIS-Program to scan airbills at station & OCR overnite in MEM I believe the corresponding proj to scan the airbills in Memphis for billing was DCI

r COSMOS IIa- Program to scan all packages @ station & HUB First ever project to use bar codes for tracking packages. Used the Norand HHT

f DADS - System to dispatch drivers by computers in Vans A major project of the 80's championed by Jim Moore. It put FedEx over 15 years ahead of UPS technology

l COSMOS Squared- System that would proactively track packages on routes thru FedEx system and know when they are misrouted

a Polaris - Early system to capture airbill info and key in Memphisc MARS- First system to put intelligent modems and system in Network Championed by Ancel Hankins to keep availability up in stations

h ZODIAC-Proj Name to put overhead scanners in MEM and capture zip code so keyers weren't needed. SIS project to increase capacity in the SuperHub. Proj cancelled when it was decided to fix capacity in Mem

n SUPER- System to consolidate info for HUB; it used Tandem computerse DIAMOND- Proj Name to integrate capture of all Package data before midnite to plan flight and sort operations and deliveries for the next day

For those of you who ever programmed, a Timeline of Programming Languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_programming_languages ----------------.

.and interesting history notesaround 1981 Chuck Deiotte who worked in COS, and had worked at Boeing, reviewed COSMOS under ACP and recommended that they put a version of Unix on the mainframe and start writing in C; no one took that seriously at the timearound the early 1980's Jim Barksdale made the decision to rewrite COSMOS from IBM assembly language under ACP to COBOL under IMS FastPath so that software changes could be done faster , & IT could keep up with the business changes.around 1983 approx, Jim Moore contracted w GDI to rewrite the DADS software in C under DEC's RSX-11M and then transfer the application to COSaround 1985 I think it was Jim Schmideke(Sp) who was MD over Automation mktg? hired Chuck(who had his own micro business in COS) to train the Automation group in Lattice C & to rewrite the BASIC application which was then running then on NEC APC's.Around the end of the 80's Chuck's replacement, Herman Derbort put out a recommendation for everyone to start using Modula -2(pascal type language) on all micro and minicomputers; no one did that thoughand I guess the next big change after the SUN/HP/IBM projects under C, was the migration to JAVA in the 90's

10 Thing you did not Know about Fred Smith

1. Frederick Wallace Smith was born on Aug. 11, 1944, in Marks, Miss. Smith's father, for whom he was named, was a businessman—founder of the Dixie Greyhound Bus Line and the Toddle House restaurant chain. He died when the younger Smith was 4 years old, but left the family financially well off.

2. As a child, Smith had Legg-Calvé-Perthes Disease, a birth defect that causes arthritis in the hips. He used crutches and leg braces when he was young but outgrew the condition by the age of 10, and by the time he was in high school, Smith was playing basketball and football.

3. Long interested in flying, Smith began piloting small planes when he was still a teenager.

4. While in high school, Smith and a group of friends started Ardent Records, a small recording studio, in a garage. Local rock and R&B acts began to record there, and after Smith left the company in 1962 to attend college, his friend, John Fry, expanded the business. Still in business today, Ardent became a nationally known studio where dozens of hit records by artists from Sam and Dave to the White Stripes have been recorded or mixed.

5. As an undergraduate at Yale University, Smith wrote a paper for an economics class in which he described a concept for overnight package delivery by air freight—very similar to what his company, FedEx, would later do. An often-repeated legend holds that his professor gave him a C for the paper, but Smith later admitted that he could not actually recall what grade he had received and had just guessed that it was his "usual gentlemanly C."

6. Smith was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society while at Yale. One of his closest friends in that group was John Kerry. Another Bonesman with whom Smith was acquainted was George W. Bush, who was also Smith's fraternity brother in Delta Kappa Epsilon. Years later, Smith said that because of his connections to the two men, he felt "kind of like the Forrest Gump of American politics."

7. After graduating from college in 1966, Smith enlisted in the Marine Corps and went to Vietnam as a second lieutenant. He served two tours of duty—one in the infantry and one as a pilot—and received a number of medals, including a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts.

8. In 1971, Smith started the Federal Express Corp. He chose the name, in part, because he was hoping to get a contract transporting checks for the Federal Reserve system. He didn't get that contract but kept the name.

9. Smith played himself in the 2000 movie Cast Away, in which Tom Hanks played a FedEx employee who was stranded on an island.

10. An avid reader of history, Smith has said that he has learned more about business by studying history than from modern leadership books.

My Clinton story:

At the Officer/Dir meeting in Orlando, Brett Bonner & I got Five Star Awards for the MSDS project. That night buses were going to take everyone & families on an hour drive to Cape Canaveral to watch the Shuttle take off around midnite. I think they had 7 or 8 buses. Ted Weise came to my room, congratulated me on my award and invited me to fly on the Corp jet with him to Cape Canaveral, instead of taking the bus. They had arranged to meet Hillary Clinton & the Women's U.S. Soccer team, who had just won the world championships I think. I found out the jet was only for employees and I had my wife with me, so I thanked him, declined and told him I would go with Stephanie...and thus preserve my marriage. He then found Brett and asked him.....Brett didn't hesitate...and went on the jet...where his wife went...I know not The shuttle didn't launch due to a bad sensor that night...but Brett received an autographed 8x10 photo of himself & Hillary to proudly display. It was a simple choice for me....Hillary or the wife