Phil Flaxton isn't an engineer and he wasn't educated in computer science. He likes to work on his PC at home, though he doesn't do programming. He is, however, a good businessman. Flaxton is a publisher by trade who happens to head one of world's largest and most influential open systems organizations.
Born in the resort city of Southend on Sea on the north side of the Thames estuary, Flaxton grew up in the county of Essex and was educated until age 18 in Essex schools. Wanting to be a journalist, he enlisted in a training program for one of London's Fleet Street publishers, Associated Newspapers, which published the Daily Mail and Evening News. It was a tradition for publishers then to put aspiring newspapermen through their own educational programs. With Flaxton, it didn't completely take. "I quite liked the idea of being a journalist, but it quickly became apparent to me in the first year that I had more of a commercial flair for getting into a marketing role," he says.
After trying out ad sales, he joined Reed Publishing, a business-to-business publisher of trade magazines, including computer and construction titles. From there it was a swift rise up the ladder to advertising manager. At a publication based on the London suburb of Croydon, he became advertising director, and at age 26 was promoted to publisher. "I started to get a reputation for launching magazines," he says. He spent the next six years starting a number of new titles, including a do-it-yourself magazine, and managing Industrial Products, one of the UK's largest industrial publications with a 112,000 monthly circulation.
All that was groundwork for Flaxton's move into UNIX publications. In 1983 he was headhunted by Eaglehead Publishing, a small subsidiary of a commercial printing group. "They wanted someone who knew how to run a publishing company to go in and launch new titles, which was why I was approached to do it. They had this thing called UNIX, and they wanted to be ahead of the game in the UK and be the first to launch a UNIX publication. I had never heard of UNIX at the time and had never even worked in the IT arena. My knowledge of the computer market was limited to say the least."
The magazine was UNIX Systems, first published in 1984, and it was soon after that launch that Flaxton approached a one-year-old user's organization, /usr/group UK, with a proposal. "I said 'You're a new user group dealing with this new operating system, UNIX. We are a new monthly magazine. I would like to put it to you that we become the official monthly magazine of /usr/group UK.' That's how I got involved in /usr/group UK." UNIX Systems was the official magazine of the organization for five years with a top circulation of 10,000.
In the meantime, Flaxton was starting other publications, including Graphic Repro, a magazine for printers. In 1986 he launched the UNIX Systems Yearbook, a product directory, and a monthly called Computers in Defense. After running Eaglehead for seven years, Flaxton faced a change in the economic climate. "At the end of the 1980s, as we started to go into recession, the competition in computer magazines got very hot indeed. Until 1990, the UNIX/open systems market in the UK had only two magazines catering to it-UNIX Systems and Multiuser Computing. In 1990 three other publishers launched into the market and we went from a two-book market to a five-book market. The open systems vendor community reacted very badly. They were not prepared to support five magazines and there was a tremendous amount of competition, cost-cutting, and rate reductions. It became very cutthroat."
Eaglehead found that it was too small to compete with larger publishers in the recessionary climate. "The view I had at the time was that the company that owned Eaglehead was a commercial printer and didn't have the revenue to inject into staving off strong competition from multinational companies," Flaxton says. "I felt my job was really done and I was looking for the next challenge, if there wasn't going to be the funding to take these large conglomerates on. That coincided with UniForum UK [the organization had changed its name in 1989, following UniForum's lead] approaching me to come on board."
At the time, UniForum UK "had started to stagnate somewhat," Flaxton says. "The membership wasn't growing and the feeling of the board at that was that it needed a new injection of ideas and some new revenue streams. It needed a complete rejuvenation." The organization decided to hire a new executive director and a commercial director to handle relationships with partners and revenue sources. Flaxton joined UniForum UK as commercial director in January 1992 and became executive director in 1993.
One of his first tasks in his new position was to draw on his publishing expertise and launch a magazine. Open Forum, the official magazine of UniForum UK, was started in 1992 and is mailed to 10,000 open systems professionals, including members. In addition, Flaxton has established a semiannual joint publishing project with the Financial Times of London featuring an eight-page supplement to the 310,000-circulation international edition of the newspaper.
In its 12 years of existence, UniForum UK has grown and changed. "In the last three years, we have looked to develop lateral partnerships with organizations that are perhaps not directly involved in the IT arena," Flaxton says. "We see ourselves as an independent forum for open systems professionals. We are a membership organization, and therefore we exist to provide an unbiased service of information to our members. We address wide-ranging topics, from things like client/server and data warehousing to the information superhighway.
"The role of UniForum UK has changed significantly over the last 12 years, and that will continue, as the market continues to develop and change. We no longer promote ourselves as a UNIX user group, although, technically, we are. I think our role is predominantly to act as an information provider, and to present our vendor members with specific marketing opportunities.
"We are currently reviewing the mission statement, because part of the mission statement we have says we are here to assist British business and government with the adoption and use of open systems based on international standards. We don't see ourselves now as an organization that's here to bang the drum for open systems. I wouldn't say the UNIX or open systems wars are over, but our role needs to change and is changing."
Another achievement Flaxton points to is the adoption last fall of the Trading Standards Code of Practice, a set of rules for doing business that vendors agree to voluntarily and that users can look to for assurance that the companies will deal with them in a standard, accepted way. "It's really designed to assist the user and vendor to understand each other's requirements -- the user when procuring IT and the vendor when selling IT. It's important to point out the pitfalls and to restrict the user's risk when procuring IT," Flaxton says. Since the code was adopted, and because of it, the UK's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has announced a two-year Buy IT campaign. "Because of our work with the trading standards initiative, the DTI approached us and asked if we would like to be one of the three sponsors of the Buy IT campaign, launched in January," Flaxton says. "We're very pleased about that because it's now been recognized by our government. Our sponsorship of this government initiative is going to benefit us greatly.