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48-461: The magazine was created to cover educational-related topics. Early issues include articles on the use of computers in the classroom, various simple programs like madlibs and various programming challenges, mostly in BASIC . By the late 1970s, it had moved towards more general coverage as the microcomputer market emerged. Hardware coverage became more common, but type-in programs remained common into

96-402: A talent agent and an actor. According to Price and Stern, during the overheard argument, the actor said that he wanted to " ad-lib " an upcoming interview . The agent, who clearly disagreed with the actor's suggestion, retorted that ad-libbing an interview would be "mad". Stern and Price used that eavesdropped conversation to create, at length, the name "Mad Libs". In 1958, the duo released

144-549: A "marketing wizard in Silicon Valley". A 1985 Los Angeles Times remarked, "McKenna is best known for taking the story of Apple Computer's founding in a Los Altos garage by two young entrepreneurs and weaving it into part of our national folklore." Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , McKenna attended Saint Vincent College and was a liberal arts graduate of Duquesne University . He later said that he "had

192-576: A DEC machine but were using Edu as a source of general information on computers in educational settings. This began his earliest thoughts about a non-DEC magazine aimed at this market. On 22 February 1973, Ahl was let go during a downsizing at DEC. Even before he received his last paycheck, he was hired by a different department to help develop new low-end versions of the DEC minicomputer line. During this period he collected many user submissions to Edu and convinced DEC to publish 101 BASIC Computer Games in

240-475: A broad-based marketing strategy firm servicing international clients in many industries. McKenna sold his interest in the firm in 2000. Andrea Cunningham , the firm's group account manager for Apple, told the Los Angeles Times in 1985, "This agency knows more about Apple Computer than Barbara Krause (Apple's in-house public relations chief)." Consultants at Regis McKenna Inc. pioneered many of

288-434: A canceled check proving they had already done so. When Ahl and his business manager began tracking it down, the police were called and found that two people in their company had embezzled $ 100,000 by sending some incoming cheques to their own account at a different bank. This was only discovered because one of the conspirators had forgotten to mark the bill with McKenna as paid, causing a second invoice to be sent out. When she

336-474: A cancer scare in 1985 he began concentrating his businesses, selling off many of the specialty magazines. Ziff ultimately ceased publication of Creative Computing in December 1985. The company also began publication of several other magazines at different times, but none of these were very successful and tended to have very short production runs. Among these were Small Business Computing , Sync Magazine for

384-490: A dispute with the university over credits" and that Duquesne "eventually sent me my degree." However "I went to four different universities to get that degree." He ended up receiving an honorary Ph.D. from Duquesne in 1990. He first went to Silicon Valley in 1962, where he worked in the marketing department of General Microelectronics, a spinoff of Fairchild that started developing MOS technology. He then worked as marketing services manager for National Semiconductor in 1967,

432-752: A firm that proliferated. He spent "half of my time on the road... in Europe and other places around the world... helping set up operations in Scotland ." He said there that he learned a great deal about marketing simply by doing it. McKenna wrote a 2001 article entitled "Silicon Valley Isn't a Place as Much as It Is an Attitude." Describing the Valley as "this near-mythical garden became the place where anyone could pursue and achieve his or her heart's delight," he said that its early "inventors and entrepreneurs...didn't set out to achieve wealth or even happiness" but "sought

480-454: A high school friend who was working as a publicist at the time, to continue publishing Mad Libs . Together, the three founded the publishing firm Price Stern Sloan in the early 1960s as a way to release Mad Libs . In addition to releasing more than 70 editions of Mad Libs under Sloan, the company also published 150 softcover books, including such notable titles as How to Be a Jewish Mother , first released in 1964; Droodles , which

528-504: A paper for the Harvard Business Review, and fleshed out the concept in the 1997 book Real Time. Among his influential observations: In 1986 McKenna became a partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers . McKenna is an investor and board member of several Silicon Valley firms, including BroadWare Technologies , Golden Gate Software, and Nanosys . He is on the advisory board of Xloom. He

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576-478: A threat to their own products and agitated against them, causing debates that eventually worked their way to the CEO. When the new designs were personally canceled by Ken Olsen with the statement that "I can't see any reason that anyone would want a computer of his own" Ahl quit DEC and took a position at AT&T . It was at this point that Ahl decided to move ahead with the educational-focused magazine. Reasoning that

624-454: A way of thinking and philosophy that requires businesses to meet the demands of an always-on digital world” and that “includes the convergence of search, social, and real-time content production and distribution, with an expanded definition of publishing that makes social conversation and interaction as important as actual writing and digital media development.” McKenna, it was explained, “laid the groundwork for real-time marketing back in 1995” in

672-488: Is a word game created by Leonard Stern and Roger Price . It consists of one player prompting others for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story before reading aloud. The game is frequently played as a party game or as a pastime . It can be categorized as a phrasal template game. The game was invented in the United States, and more than 110 million copies of Mad Libs books have been sold since

720-829: Is also on the International Advisory Board of Toyota Motor Company , and the Advisory Board of the Economic Strategies Institute. He is a founding member and chairman of the board of Advisors for the Santa Clara University Center for Science, Technology, and Society and a trustee of the University. He and his wife, Dianne, are founders and trustees of the Children's Fund of Silicon Valley. He

768-736: Is also on the advisory boards of the Technology, Innovation & New Economy Project of the Progressive Policy Institute and the Tech Museum . Since his retirement from active consulting in 2000, McKenna has lectured about many topics, such as “the social and market effects of technological change.” McKenna has written many articles for Forbes , Ink , Fortune , and the Harvard Business Review . He has also written poetry. McKenna won

816-468: The ZX81 , and Video and Arcade Games . The company also published several books. Among these were three volumes of The Best of Creative Computing Magazine (Creative Computing Press) in 1976, 1977, and 1980. The cover of volume 2 was illustrated by underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton . 101 BASIC Computer Games was ported to Microsoft BASIC and published in 1978 as BASIC Computer Games . It became

864-562: The Apple logo and put together their advertising campaigns." McKenna has said that the biggest mistake of his career was turning down an offer of 20% of Apple stock in lieu of payment for his services. "I was looking at my cash flow. And that's one of the reasons why I turned down Apple's offer." His letter turning down the offer is on display at Apple's headquarters. McKenna sold his advertising business to Jay Chiat in 1981 and his PR business in 1995. McKenna came out of retirement to work on

912-570: The Joseph Wharton Award in 1986. He received honorary Ph.Ds from Duquesne University (1990), Saint Vincent College (1991), Santa Clara University (2002), and Stevens College of Engineering (2002). In 1991, he won the International Computers & Communications World Leaders Award. The San Jose Mercury News included McKenna on its Millennium 100 list, a roster of the 100 people who made Silicon Valley what it

960-1025: The body". One player asks the other players, in turn, to contribute a word of the specified type for each blank, but without revealing the context for that word. Finally, the completed story is read aloud. The result is usually a sentence which is comical , surreal and/or takes on somewhat of a nonsensical tone. Stern and Price's original Mad Libs book gives the following sentence as an example: "___________!" exclamation he   said   ________ adverb as   he   jumped   into   his   convertible   ______ noun and   drove   off   with   his   _________ adjective wife.   "___________!" he said ________ as he jumped into his convertible ______ and drove off with his _________ wife. exclamation {} {} adverb {} {} {} {} {} {} noun {} {} {} {} {} adjective {} Regis McKenna Regis McKenna (born 1939? )

1008-445: The book invites the reader to choose words of different categories which then become part of a story. The nineteenth century parlor game " Consequences " and the surrealists' Exquisite Corpse game are also similar to Mad Libs. Mad Libs books contain short stories on each page with many key words replaced with blanks. Beneath each blank is specified a category, such as " noun ", " verb ", "place", "celebrity", "exclamation" or "part of

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1056-409: The company moved to a much larger 25,000 square feet (2,300 m) office building. Through this period, featured writers included Robert Swirsky , David Lubar , and John J. Anderson . The magazine regularly included BASIC source code for utility programs and games, which users could manually enter into their home computers. The April issues, starting in 1980, became famous for their parodies of

1104-523: The company's official website. Stern died at age 88 on June 7, 2011, and Sloan on October 14, 2012. More than 110 million copies of Mad Libs have been sold since the game series was first published in 1958. It is unclear whether the creators of Mad Libs were aware of existing games and books similar to their own. One such game is Revelations about my Friends , published anonymously by Fredrick A. Stokes Companies in New York in 1912. Like Mad Libs,

1152-457: The early 1980s, and especially with the launch of the IBM PC , the market began to shift from a hobby-and-educational oriented one to more and more business applications. Ziff quickly shifted the focus of the magazine to be more software-oriented, and the programming articles disappeared shortly after the sale. This attempt to refocus on business computing was not successful, and when Bill Ziff had

1200-436: The early 1980s. The company published several books, the most successful being BASIC Computer Games , the first million-selling computer book. Their Best of Creative Computing collections were also popular. Creative Computing also published software on cassette and floppy disk for the popular computer systems of the time and had a small hardware business. Ziff Davis purchased Creative Computing in 1982 and closed

1248-619: The education and microcomputing market. At that point, the magazine started actively looking for advertisers and the November/December 1976 issue was the first to be printed on coated paper rather than newsprint to provide better quality ads. By 1978 the subscriptions hit 60,000, and revenue was approaching $ 1 million. In July 1978, Ahl quit his position at AT&T to work at Creative Computing full time. This caused friction with his wife. In August, they purchased ROM magazine and two smaller newsletters and combined their content into

1296-416: The educational market would be of interest to public foundations and many companies, Ahl sent funding proposals to over a hundred companies and received nothing. Instead, he used his own funds to print 11,000 copies of a flier that he sent to Hewlett-Packard and other minicomputer vendors, which resulted in 850 subscriptions to a magazine that did not even exist yet. Instead of printing 850 copies, Ahl split

1344-442: The first book of Mad Libs , which resembled the earlier games of consequences and exquisite corpse . Stern was head writer and comedy director for The Steve Allen Show , and suggested to the show's host that guests be introduced using Mad Libs completed by the audience. Four days after an episode introduced "our guest NOUN, Bob Hope", bookstores sold out of Mad Libs books. Stern and Price next partnered with Larry Sloan ,

1392-551: The first million-selling computer book. This was followed by More BASIC Computer Games in 1979. It also published the first The Best of Byte collection, in spite of being friendly competitors with Byte . The relationship ended with the McGraw-Hill purchase. A number of home computer games were published under the Sensational Software banner, also known as Creative Computing Software . Their best seller

1440-687: The freedom to exercise their talents free of economic, cultural, or tenure constraints." The result was the unplanned evolution of a "new, egalitarian culture." In late 1969, McKenna left National and began to seek work as a marketing freelancer, helping Silicon Valley startups "with everything from research to training." He put together a "marketing plan," including a list of "the top ten companies" he wanted to work with, and ended up having them all as clients. The list included Intel, Spectra-Physics, Teledyne, Systron, and Donner. McKenna founded Regis McKenna, Inc. in 1970. He went on to work for Intel and then Apple. He later recalled that "Apple wasn't happy with

1488-449: The iPhone 4 antenna crisis. "Steve called me from Hawaii and told me he had a big problem," McKenna later explained. "He asked if I would meet him at Apple the next day...I thought it was a media-cycle issue and that they should address it with the data they had and be confident about the outcome rather than be apologetic. That's what Steve did. The issue vanished within probably ten days." McKenna felt that Walter Isaacson's book about Jobs

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1536-458: The magazine. In January 1979, the magazine went monthly from bimonthly. By 1979 the magazine had outgrown the single-family home it was being run from, and Ahl looked for a larger duplex home that would allow him to live with his wife in one half and run the magazine from the other. It was at this time that Regis McKenna , the advertising company handling Apple Computer , was asked to pay an overdue advertising bill. The advertising company provided

1584-411: The major computer magazines of the time. Larger publishers began taking note of the computer market. A watershed moment was in 1979 when McGraw-Hill purchased Byte . By 1982, most of the quality magazines had been purchased and only a few large ones remained independent, including Compute! , Interface Age , Family Computing and Creative Computing . Realizing they were being pushed out of

1632-554: The man who put Silicon Valley on the map. He has been called "Silicon Valley's preeminent public relations man", a "guru", a "czar", a "philosopher king", a "legendary marketer", Apple's "marketing guru", "the fellow that put Intel and Apple on the map", and "a pioneer in the semiconductor business in terms of the marketing side of things". Newsweek called him "the Silicon Valley Svengali" and Business Week has called him "one of high-tech's ace trendspotters" and

1680-488: The market due to the huge budgets and marketing power of these major players, in 1982 Ahl approached several potential buyers, including Atari , CBS and Ziff-Davis . In 1982 Ahl sold the company to Ziff-Davis, which at that time published 28 different magazines. Ahl remained the Editor-in-Chief. The magazine moved to Los Angeles, California. At their peak, the magazine reached about 500,000 subscriptions. Through

1728-544: The name Apple after they started growing. They looked at IBM and said, 'We don't look like IBM. We're not, you know, dignified.'" McKenna made a two-hour presentation to Apple's employees in which he said: “That's exactly what you do want. You want to be different from IBM. You don't want to be the same. You don't want to emulate them. You want to do all of the things that distinguish you from them.” He began working with Apple in 1976. That year, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak "approached him and asked for help in launching what

1776-486: The non-magazine endeavors. Prior to starting Creative Computing , in the early 1970s David H. Ahl was working in the educational department of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) where he started publication of their Edu newsletter in the spring of 1971. At the time, DEC had an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 machines being used in educational settings, so he was surprised to find the number of subscribers reach 20,000 after 18 months. He found that many subscribers did not have

1824-520: The same pattern for the next three issues. The trick worked, and subscriptions began to pour in. During this period the magazine was based in Morristown, New Jersey . By August 1975 the magazine had 2,500 subscribers. In January, the Altair 8800 had been announced and Ahl began looking for new authors who could write for the exploding microcomputer market. By 1976 the content was roughly split between

1872-467: The series was first published in 1958. Mad Libs was invented in 1953 by Leonard Stern and Roger Price. Stern and Price created the game, but could not agree on a name for their invention. No name was chosen until five years later (1958), when Stern and Price were eating Eggs Benedict at a restaurant in New York City . While eating, the two overheard an argument at a neighboring table between

1920-404: The subscription money in two; he kept one half for future operations, and used the other half to print as many copies of the new magazine as he could. This allowed for the printing of 8,000 copies of the first edition, which were completed on 7 October 1974. The subscribers were sent their copies first, but the rest were sent for free to a wide variety of companies, libraries and schools. He followed

1968-524: The summer of 1973. This was a hit, eventually selling over 10,000 copies in three publishing runs in July 1973, April 1974, and March 1975. By 1974, the team had produced two new designs, a PDP-8 combined with a VT50 terminal, and a briefcase-sized version of the PDP-8 with a small floppy disk that would be used with an external computer terminal . Other divisions within DEC saw these inexpensive machines as

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2016-508: The theories and practices of technology marketing that have become integrated into the marketing mainstream. Some of these include: McKenna wrote in 1990, "Technology is transforming choice, and choice is transforming the marketplace. As a result, we are witnessing the emergence of a new marketing paradigm.” In a 2002 article, he declared that “branding (as currently practiced) is dead.” A 2012 article entitled “How Regis McKenna Defined Real-Time Marketing” explained that real-time marketing “is

2064-451: Was "very negative...I never once had any of those confrontations that people talk about, and I knew him since he was 22 years old." Aside from Intel and Apple, among the startups that the firm assisted in their formative years included America Online, Electronic Arts, Genentech, National Semiconductor, Silicon Graphics, and 3Com Corporation. Over the years, the firm evolved from a high-tech outsourced marketing business focusing on startups to

2112-576: Was a version of Space Invaders for the Apple II . Ziff-Davis closed the division as they felt it competed with their advertisers. Titles included: The company briefly sold hardware under the Peripherals Plus brand. The main product was a music card for the Apple II, and they offered a plotter and other products. Ziff closed this division as well. Madlibs Mad Libs

2160-477: Was also created by Roger Price; The VIP Desk Diary ; and the series World's Worst Jokes . Price died in 1990, and three years later, Sloan and Stern sold Price Stern Sloan, including Mad Libs , to the former Putnam Berkley Group, which is now known as Penguin Random House . Mad Libs books are still published by Penguin Random House ; however, all references to Price Stern Sloan have been removed from

2208-735: Was an American marketer in Silicon Valley and introduced some techniques today commonplace among advertisers. He and his firm helped market the first microprocessor ( Intel Corporation ), Apple's first personal computer ( Apple Computer ), the first recombinant DNA genetically engineered product ( Genentech, Inc. ), and the first retail computer store ( The Byte Shop ). Among the entrepreneurial start-ups with which he worked during their formative years are America Online , Apple, Compaq , Electronic Arts , Genentech, Intel, Linear Technology , Lotus , Microsoft , National Semiconductor , Silicon Graphics , and 3Com . He has been described as

2256-441: Was to be the world's first personal computer." He agreed because he "liked Apple's vision." A 2012 article explains, "When a young Steve Jobs needed a marketing expert, he called Intel to ask who made their sharp-looking ads and was told 'Regis McKenna'". In addition to marketing consultancy, McKenna also owned an advertising agency and a public relations company. "So not only did we write their first business plan, we also designed

2304-410: Was told the story, Ahl's wife had enough and kicked him out of the house pending a divorce . He moved into the only unused room in the other side of the building. During this time, Ted Nelson , known for the invention of hypertext , was briefly the editor. Nelson would arrive at 5 pm and work all night, waking Ahl in the bedroom when he started printing on a Qume daisy wheel printer . In October 1980

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