Marc Canter is an American internet entrepreneur, speaker, technology evangelist and early pioneer of online software,LEFLER, LUKE (2015)
The New Stack Makers: Marc Canter and the Days Before Macromedia — Part One
". ''The New Stack''. Retrieved April 13, 2016. and is often called the "godfather of multimedia". Canter is a CEO of Instigate, Inc. Marc is best known for being the co-founder and CEO of MacroMind, the company that became

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...

Early life

Canter grew up in a political environment. His father was a Democratic politician and organizer of a

meat packer The meat-packing industry (also spelled meatpacking industry or meat packing industry) handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of meat from animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock. Poultry is generally no ...

s union in Chicago, and a mentor to political consultant David Axelrod. His grandfather, Harry Canter, was leader of the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

of Massachusetts, a translator for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, and later, a publisher of communism-related books as well as a leftist weekly, the Chicago Star, that he bought from

Frank Marshall Davis Frank Marshall Davis (December 31, 1905 – July 26, 1987) was an American journalist, poet, political and labor movement activist, and businessman. Davis began his career writing for African American newspapers in Chicago. He moved to Atlant ...

. Canter recalls marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. and being heavily involved in Chicago political campaigns as a child. A singer in childhood, Canter enrolled in Oberlin College intending to become an opera singer, and was exposed there to synthesizers, computer music, and building and coding computers.

Career

After college, Canter travelled to New York City to help his friends build a music studio called "Noise New York." During this time Canter learned about laserdiscs, laser light shows, NAPLPS, pro audio and video equipment, and a then-new technology called

videodisc Videodisc (or video disc) is a general term for a laser- or stylus-readable random-access disc that contains both audio and analog video signals recorded in an analog form. Typically, it is a reference to any such media that predates the mainstrea ...

s. Canter has also worked as a taxi driver. Canter dropped out of graduate school to work for Bally-Midway, programming music and graphics for video games. He coded one of the earliest pieces of licensed music content ("Peter Gunn" for Spyhunter). Canter co-founded MacroMind in 1984, the company that later became Macromedia, and began developing for the newly launched

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

.MACMANUS, RICHARD (March 29, 2004)
"Interview with Marc Canter"
. ''Read Write'' Retrieved April 13, 2016. Canter launched MacroMind with the idea of it being a "software rock and roll band", and the company created the first multimedia player, the first cross-platform authoring system and the world's leading multimedia platform. Partly due to his work with the company, Canter is considered one of the founders of multimedia. In the 1990s, he was the chairman of virtual technology company Canter Technology. At MacroMind, Canter was involved in one of the first known cases of a

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsk ...

being distributed via commercial software. According to the March 16, 1988 edition of the ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and pa ...

'', several MacroMind products shipped with virus infected media. Analysis later revealed that Canter's computer was infected with the virus while he was working on training material for the software products. MacroMind and Canter moved to San Francisco, California, where the company received

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

funding and was the third software-related investment of the firm

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

. To speed growth, Macromind engaged in a series of mergers and acquisitions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, renaming itself Macromedia in 1991. After leaving in 1991, Canter embarked on a number of online projects, including an online interactive band (the Mediaband), an online video series (the ''Marc Canter Show''), and an online restaurant operating system, Mediabar. It was designed to be a waterhole for shared music experiences. Through the 1990s, Canter was a "fixture of the local tech scene", described as a technology provocateur and advocate, part of a social and business technology community that included

Robert Scoble Robert Scoble (born January 18, 1965) is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, ''Scobleizer'', which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He later worked ...

Ron Conway Ronald Crawford Conway (born March 9, 1951) is an American venture capitalist and philanthropist. He has been described as one of Silicon Valley's " super angels". Early career Conway graduated from San Jose State University with a bachelor's d ...

Dave Winer Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web servi ...

Sean Parker Sean Parker (born December 3, 1979) is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and serving as the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also ...

Mark Pincus Mark Jonathan Pincus (born February 13, 1966) is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as ...

, and

Michael Arrington J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970) is the American founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in America and elsewhere. Magazines such as ...

, among others. He was a major proponent of the CD-ROM being a vehicle for interactive video, serendipitously around the time

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

operating system was released.Gillen, Marilyn A. (September 2, 1995), "High-RAM CD-ROM music video's future." ''Billboard''. 107 (35):74 In the 1990s and 2000s, Canter was involved in various startups in the formulative stages of product development and design. He was an early participant in Tribe.net and helped develop its "tribes" system, and early social network 'groups' technology. He consulted for

Ruckus Network Ruckus was a free ad-supported online music service available to students at all American colleges. The service was founded in 2003 by Vincent Han and David Galper. It was acquired in 2008 by Total Music, a joint venture between Sony and Unive ...

an
Visual Media
Broadband Mechanics has also collaborated with

Avid Technology Avid Technology is an American technology and multimedia company based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and founded in August 1987 by Bill Warner. It specialises in audio and video; specifically, digital non-linear editing (NLE) systems, video edi ...

. Canter and JD Lasica founded a video sharing website, Ourmedia in March 2005. Canter was founder and CEO of Broadband Mechanics,Soder, Chuck (March 28, 2011), "So, tell us what you really think, Marc?". ''Crain's Cleveland Business''. 32 (13):23 a digital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) company. Broadband Mechanics built tools and environments, including "People Aggregator", to enable

online communities An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...

. Burnt out on venture-funded companies, and described as having burned all of his bridges in Silicon Valley, Canter and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 2009. Intending to get out of the technology business. There, he became involved in

economic development In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and ...

projects involving teaching multimedia coding skills to unemployed workers. Canter later returned to San Francisco. In 2014, Canter launched Thingface, an authoring tool for developers to create Internet of things-related mobile applications. The company was later renamed Interface. In 2015 Canter, along with four other executives, cofounded Cola, a company that launched a messaging application designed to serve as a platform for messaging-based mobile applications. Canter described the company as "Slack for the rest of us." In 2017 Canter co-founded Instigate, an AI company that is a new way for Creators to tell stories with interactive features and real engagement. Instigate is available as a download. Canter is the CEO of Instigate based in Silicon Valley.

Internet policy and culture

Canter is a contributor to many

open standards An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definitio ...

efforts and advocates for end-user controlled digital identities and content - being a co-founder of the "Identity Gang", and a co-signer of the Social Web Users' Bill of Rights. He has consulted with global corporations including

PCCW PCCW Limited (formerly known as Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited) is a Hong Kong-based information and communications technology (ICT) company. The company is the majority owner of telecommunications company HKT Limited, and also holds a m ...

and

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

and has written on the

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

industry, micro-content publishing and social networking.

References

External links

Video interview with Marc Canter (English language, German intro and German subtitles)
* ttps://archive.org/details/DougKayeOurmediaslaunchwithMarcCanterandJDLasica Ourmedia.org launch interview with Marc Canter and JD Lasica {{DEFAULTSORT:Canter, Marc People from Chicago Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American Jews American technology executives American taxi drivers Berkeley Macintosh Users Group members