As we celebrate ABI's 25th Anniversary, it is important to look back at a number of "milestones" that have made ABI an amazing organization. We plan to have an article in each Journal during our 25th year to both describe the milestone and why it was so important. This is the first in the series. Others that will follow include:

•creation of ABI Newsletter (now known as ABI Journal),
•first television broadcast of an ABI event,
•creation of the Chief Judge Conrad B. Duberstein National Bankruptcy Memorial Moot Court Competition and the ABI Law Review,
•creation of the Business School Competition,
•creation of the Annual Spring Meeting and Winter Leadership Conference,
•creation of regional conferences,
•creation of the American Board of Certification,
•the 1991 Professional Compensation Survey, and
•the by-law changes to implement term limits.

We hope you enjoy this glimpse into ABI's past because it shows how our members' contributions really made a difference. Most importantly, we hope to inspire you to "Get Involved" so that ABI's next 25 years will be even better. Members with wonderful ideas and the determination to bring them to fruition are out there waiting to come together.

It is hard to imagine that ABI's Web site is really only now coming into its 10th year. We use it for so much these days, remembering what life was like without it (and all of the other handy sites we use daily) is a challenge in its own right.

Many will recall fondly the days when you could reach people either by only mail or telephone. Voicemail started creeping into people's offices, allowing messages to be left more reliably than hoping that an assistant wrote down exactly what you said. Then you either got a call back or went into a game of "telephone tag."

It was also well before cell phones. The cell phones of that time were large because they had substantial (and heavy) lead acid batteries that needed to operate on an analog basis.

In the early days of our use of the Internet, we plodded along to see how it might develop. ABI Online began in 1994 as an "electronic bulletin board service," or BBS as it was known at the time.

It started slowly (14.4 kps to be precise) as a service that required a paid subscription and special software to dial into a local number that would then connect you with the file server. The service offered a rudimentary e-mail account as well. Graphics were plain, and animation was something you watched on Saturday morning television because none was available on this service.

A Journal article in 1995 described it: ABI Online started as an idea of using this amazing yet common technology (computers and modems) to connect ABI members to each other and provide immediate access to ABI's resources. A working group was formed and a number of options were explored before ABI Online began to take shape. In the summer of 1994, a group of eight explorers launched the test version on a "shakedown" cruise and then it was opened up to all ABI members. As expected, there were a few wrinkles that had to be ironed out. Once that was done, a corner of cyberspace was handed over to the ABI members...

You will have e-mail among the members and anyone with an Internet address, discussion groups...and the ABI Law Library of seminar materials, committee work papers, the ABI Journal and the ABI Law Review. In coming issues, we will explore each of these resources in much more detail... Hopefully, you will not wait until the next article to subscribe to ABI Online and miss all of these benefits during that delay. If you are already a subscriber (or become one), I would appreciate hearing from you. My e-mail address is ABIJPenn.

By today's standards, it was not much to brag about, yet it provided a valuable service for our members. We provided many with their very first e-mail address when they signed up for the service. ABI Online provided our first electronic conversations where members could ask other members about issues they faced.

As basic as it was, ABI Online was at the cutting edge of what was available at that time. It established our electronic bankruptcy beachhead. By 1996, technology was developing and we switched to the world wide web and launched ABIWorld.

With ABIWorld, ABI began its effort to dominate the electronic information about bankruptcy. We have never wavered from our determination to be the daily source of bankruptcy information for both members and non-members.

Today's ABIWorld is light years ahead of where it began. While ABI Online was available only to subscribing members, much of ABIWorld is open to the world and its traffic numbers are proof of that. Between June 1, 2005 and Feb. 28, 2006 (nine months), ABIWorld had nearly 1.25 million visits from more than 660,000 visitors (an average of 4,574 visits per day), including over 142,000 who visited more than once.

The amount of information available to our members (including almost 10 years of publications and conference materials) is absolutely unbelievable. If you have not been to ABIWorld recently, you should check it out; run a search and see what it can do for you.

Editor's Note: In 1994, John Penn volunteered to lead the ABI Online project. He continued his leadership as ABIWorld was launched. His work on ABI's electronic communications, along with his writing for the Journal, allowed him to become ABI's Vice President-Publications, the Journal's Executive Editor and, eventually, ABI's President.