Happy Birthday, SD Times!

We don’t aspire to be the next Industry Standard, Release 2.0, Fast Company or Wired. We simply want to be your favorite newspaper. The only paper that reports on what is happening in our growing, fast-moving industry—the software development industry. We’re Luddites of a sort, hoping to bring you the best in handcrafted journalism and reporting on the business of software development and what it means to you.

Those are a few words written by Ted Bahr, the other co-founder of BZ Media, in the premier issue of SD Times. We’re celebrating its 10th anniversary this week.

That debut issue of Software Development Times came out on Feb. 23, 2000, and was succeeded by the Mar. 15 issue. We’ve published on the 1st and 15th of each month thereafter – and have just come out with the 240th issue.

What a wild time it was! When we were setting up BZ Media (the publishing company behind SD Times) in late 1999, the dot-com market was roaring. When the first issue of the newspaper appeared, stocks were at or near their all-time highs – led by the red-hot technology sector.

A few weeks later, the dot-com bubble popped. I’ll tell you, that was a scary time to have poured your life’s savings into a startup media company covering the high-tech industry. Yet here we are ten years later, still publishing a print newspaper that’s more popular than ever. (Naturally, you can also read SD Times in a digital edition or on the Web.)

Help us celebrate SD Times’ 10th anniversary. Checking out the current issue (Feb. 15, 2010), which contains a special photo spread on pages 16-17 with some priceless old memories. Download it as a PDF here or as a zipped PDF here.

Then, join us down a walk through the past. Read the Feb. 23, 2000, debut issue of the newspaper. In some ways SD Times has changed a lot – but in other ways, it’s the same newspaper we publish today, Download it as a PDF here or as a zipped PDF here.

Thank you for your support of SD Times. We look forward to serving you in our second decade.