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Framing: Consulting is not new ground for Cedric, though it has been a long time. His path ran from early desktop publishing, through a transatlantic technology-scouting role, into independent consulting where he told founders building on an idea how to do it technically and what it would cost.
Where: In college at SUNY Binghamton, working at the student newspaper.
What: He used QuarkXPress, an early desktop-publishing tool, to create PostScript film output and print the newspaper. This hands-on desktop-publishing skill, still avant-garde at the time, is what started everything.
Discovery: Looking for a summer job in Paris, he found his desktop-publishing skill was pretty avant-garde there, and was hired by EasyDoc, a French company upgrading the French press to desktop publishing.
The Licensing Errand: As an American, they sent him back to the US to secure two things their customers needed: the license for an Apex-system software their customers still used, and the distribution rights for a monochrome swivel monitor that could be oriented vertically (portrait), which the press required. He brought back both, and was offered a job.
Summary: A technology-scouting and liaison role between the US and the French press.
A Memorable Sight: He watched large publications use desktop publishing to print films, which were then cut and glued back together by hand to preserve union jobs. He found it fascinating and loved the work.
Outcome: EasyDoc went bankrupt (not, he jokes, because of all his travelling).
Becoming A Consultant: After EasyDoc, he became an independent consultant, drawing on the contacts he had made on both sides of the Atlantic.
Came To US: During his consultant years, he came to the United States as captain of the French Ultimate Frisbee team for the world cup in Madison (see ./personal.yaml, the 1993 World Ultimate Club Championships).
Buffalo: He then visited a friend who was doing an MBA in Buffalo, and did some pre-press work there and in New York.
Las Vegas: From there he moved to Las Vegas, where his later hospitality-technology career would take root.
Client Geography: Over his consultant career, his client base tracked the same westward path: from France, to the US East Coast (his father lived in New York), then to Las Vegas, and on to Los Angeles.
Context: He started with the press, where he already had contacts and expertise.
First Project: An early system that let the press purchase and receive images over the nascent internet, connecting image providers in France with media consumers in New York.
Note: As the internet grew, so did his reputation and references, leading to a range of projects. Recalled from memory; it was a long time ago.
Era: Toward the end of the 1990s, an idea could attract investment largely on its own.
His Role: He was hired for about $20k to define HOW to build the idea technically and to estimate what it would cost: the technical plan.
The Pairing: Separately, a business-plan writer was hired for about $50k, who would multiply his numbers; on that basis, the founders raised money.
Economics: He was happy with $20k, but it was a lot of work, up to roughly three months per engagement.
Life At The Time: Until 1998 he was single and on a motorcycle; it was plenty of money and he loved the work.
How Work Came: Entirely by recommendation: investors across multiple products, lawyers, and friends.
Context: When the internet bubble crashed, investment into internet projects with no immediate revenue attached to them stopped. That hit the medical EMR: the surgeon whose idea it was discovered the firm funding it had closed without notice. He decided to fund it himself and asked Cedric to architect it and lead a team to build it.
A First In His Career: This was Cedric's first time actually overseeing development, going beyond architecture or coding proofs-of-concept himself, and his first time directing a remote team, in this case in India. It marks the end of his consulting years: taking the EMR on as its CTO to build it moved him from advising how to build things to building and leading the build. Everything from here (EMR CTO, then UrVenue) is the builder era.
The Environment: Much of the hospital network and systems were outdated, running on Telnet without encryption. It was the beginning of the digital revolution for hospitals.
Where It Ran: The system eventually ran in the surgery rooms of Cedars-Sinai and Providence Saint Joseph, and was the first online EMR to be CCHIT certified.
The Numerical Uuid: During this work Cedric designed his numerical UUID scheme, so patient records could move freely from server to server without having to reindex. This is the origin of the coordination-free distributed ID system that remains one of his signature strengths today (see ./profile.yaml, distributed_id_system_inventor).
Personal Timeline: He became a dad in 1998 and separated in 2000, moving to Burbank for this project and driving back to Vegas every weekend to see his daughter. In 2003 he returned to Vegas to become a full-time single dad, working fully remote, and left the project in 2005.
See Also: This is the EMR role recorded in ./resume.yaml (CCHIT-certified web-based EMR).
The Favor: Back in Vegas, a friend who ran a restaurant called Drai's (which became a nightclub after hours) asked Cedric to build a simple reservation system, so he could see who was sending bookings to the nightclub and the chef could see who was coming to the restaurant to staff and stock properly. Cedric had just built a simple booking system for patients at the doctor's, so he did it for him as a favor.
Scaling Up: In 2005, that friend partnered with a major Las Vegas casino resort to open its flagship nightclub, which became the highest-grossing nightclub in the world at the time, and wanted a similar booking system at a much larger scale. Cedric left the medical system to focus on it.
CTO Roles: At the same time he became CTO of Nightclubs.com and Travelnice, which were also going to distribute the system he was building. Travelnice was an OTA doing rooms, shows, tours, everything; Nightclubs.com was a highly specialized nightlife site.
The Crash And Founding: They went bankrupt in 2008 with the crash. One of the owners, Amy Van Hook, co-founded UrVenue with Cedric to commercialize the product he had built for the casino resort's flagship nightclub. Their head designer, Alex Hume, came with them. That is how UrVenue was formed.
See Also: Amy Van Hook and Alex Hume both appear in ./recommendations.yaml; the pre-UrVenue OTA + nightlife distribution platform is in ./resume.yaml. The UrVenue growth story that follows is in ./urvenue_years.yaml.
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