Paul Zucker

I was drawn to think of Paul again after settling on my 2024 #MARCHintosh project – preserving a couple of articles I wrote while working for him.

But this is actually a pretty hard post to write – how do you do justice to a friend, a mentor, a great boss, and a larrikin like Paul?

Words were his life (after his family), but words fail me to truly capture him.

It’s a testament to Paul that 30+ years after meeting him, 7+ years after bidding him farewell, his loss still hits hard, and the words I have seen regarding his life and his passing have drawn laughs, groans, and tears.

Paul could elicit those reactions…not infrequently at the same time.

I first met Paul when I worked at an inner City Sydney desktop publishing bureau, Creative Computer Company, which Paul then utilised for International Technology Publishing artwork output.

He tried to head hunt me – but at that time, I was happy where I was, so I said no.

Things change of course, and I became unhappy and asked Paul if he still had a position for me, but by then he had hired someone in the role he was originally seeking me for. He suggested another bureau, which ITP had moved to outputting their artwork through, and so I worked for Lyno’s at Artarmon for a few months, holding the fort over the Christmas Holidays of 1989.

During that time, when discussing an ITP output job for Paul, he asked out of the blue if I’d be interested working with him after all – the person he’d hired had not worked out – I jumped at the opportunity, and have never once regretted that choice.

We slotted in very well from the start – I laughed at his jokes (not as a sycophant, they were funny!), we had the same pedantic nature, and we had the same love of technology – he was way more outgoing than me, though.

I never witnessed him getting angry (passionate about things, yes, but never angry), but I saw evidence he could get angry – namely, a blemish in the carpet behind the “third seat” in our office.

That seat had been my predecessor’s (I think he made me use the second seat for a reason), and to say there was a clash of cognitive styles between Paul and Gavin would be putting it mildly. That blemish was the result of Paul becoming so frustrated with Gavin once he went to the back room of the office, where his workbench was, grabbed a hammer, and hit the floor behind Gavin’s seat in utter frustration.

That strike was so forceful, the concrete below the carpet exploded like a meteor-struck landscape, blasting the carpet fibres outwards. While not a tall man, Paul was a strong man, a barrel of a man, and that small blemish in the carpet reminded me always how he was not normally prone to physically striking out in any manner, despite his strength.

That was the prompting for Paul reaching out to me again, so, I guess I need to thank Gavin – thanks, Gavin!

Working with Paul was an utter joy. He prodded and encouraged me to extend myself. He always offered positive and insightful advice/criticism of my work.

He encouraged my writing, first with Newsbytes (archives available on the Internet Archive Site), then with MacNews, a Newsbytes customer who, through its incarnations as MacNews, then MacUser, then Australian Macworld saw me writing features and regular columns for over a decade. I had pieces published in PCWorld, Computing and Desktop after he introduced me to them.

Paul instilled in me a love of writing which endures to this day, but which I now seldom get the chance to indulge – I think Paul would probably encourage me to “take up the pen” more often, and he’d be right.

He regaled me with stories of his childhood (full of pranks) – like the time he survived the making (and detonation) of a pipe bomb, with all 10 fingers and both eyes remaining!

How his father was captured in WWII after bailing from his stricken aeroplane, and the Germans were bewildered someone with a German name would be fighting against them.

He was overjoyed to meet Nigel Planer (of The Young Ones fame) at his parents’ house on the Central Coast – Nigel’s parents were neighbours of Paul’s parents.

He loved trying to pull a joke on others. He was excited to try a new one when he got his first fax/modem card for his PC. He was going to fax someone with an intro from a fake stationery company extolling the virtues of their fax paper, with the promise of a free sample to follow, then he’d send pages and pages and pages of vertical text saying

But he wasn’t sure it would work, so he did a trial run to his own fax number first – but he couldn’t stop the whole file sending and ended up with metres of his practical joke on his own office floor.

He literally burst out laughing, and couldn’t wait to explain to me about how he had pranked himself. As far as I’m aware, he didn’t prank anyone else that way.

If someone sent SPAM faxes despite repeated requests from Paul to stop, before leaving for the weekend he would start to fax the page/s back to the sender late on Friday night, but tape the top of the page to the bottom as it went through, so the SPAMmers would arrive on Monday morning to a floor covered with their own SPAM. We rarely got more SPAM from them.

Once, when visiting the US, he posted back a slingshot (illegal in Aus) with a “child’s toy” customs declaration – it actually arrived at the office and he started a campaign of terror on a neighbouring business.

We overlooked the car park of the Pennant Hills Shopping Centre, and at the diagonal corner of the car park was the Pennant Hills Hardware Store.

Paul made special efforts to arrive early, and, with the vertical blinds turned to just allow enough of a gap, and the window slightly open, he would wait for the manager to start bringing out the external display items (wheelbarrows, brooms, that sort of thing) at 7am, and use his slingshot to shoot a 1¢ piece at the metal awning above the shop entrance (he had a pile of “ammunition” at the ready).

It would make an almighty bang, understandably startling the manager no matter how many times it happened, but Paul in his “blind” (he’d love that pun) was never discovered. He revelled in the mayhem.

NDAs were occasionally times for him to play word games. I remember him coming back from an Apple-paid trip to Cupertino, and he said, “I’m afraid I signed an NDA, which means I’m not allowed to tell you that Apple is about to release a laptop which fits in the paper tray of a LaserWriter!” (which is literally how they revealed them to the pack of journos in attendance). I think that must have been the PowerBook 100 series.

Working with Paul was the most fun job I have ever had, but all good things come to an end. ITP decided not to renew their production contract, which was Paul Zucker Computing’s bread and butter. This meant he couldn’t afford to keep me on staff, and I ended up moving to a print shop in Liverpool.

I kept writing for years after, though, and always appreciated Paul’s encouragement on that front.

Learning Paul was no longer with us hit me hard.

Despite his pranks, he was one of the most generous, loving people I have ever known. He valued family above all else, and was overjoyed as each of his children joined his tribe.

But he expressed his passions for other things, most especially technology and journalism, every day of his working life.

I think I would have been pretty pleased just to know him – but to have worked with him for two years was definitely an honour.

While I don’t think of him every day, when I do, it’s always with gratitude that he brightened my world.

After he passed, I wrote my “last” (despite that service’s demise/amalgamation decades past) Newsbytes post as per its house style. Here it is, as my final tribute to Paul:

(EULOGY)(IT JOURNALISM)(SYD)(00001)

Australia - Veteran IT Journalist Paul Zucker Farewelled 12/09/16
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, 2016 DEC 9 (NB) -- Long time Australian IT journalist Paul Zucker was farewelled today by family, friends and colleagues at a well-attended ceremony in Sydney’s north-west.

Paul had been a mainstay of the Australian IT news industry for decades, and wrote for and/or edited many local IT publications, and also for Newsbytes News Network as Sydney/Australian Bureau Chief.

The list of publications Paul was involved in was testament to his skills as a journalist and editor: he wrote for and edited International Technology Publishing titles, was Sydney Bureau Chief of (and contributor to) early online IT news service Newsbytes, was Founding Editor of Australian Reseller News, and wrote for PC World, PC User, Computing, to name a few.

Paul passed away suddenly on 29 November 2016 at age 64.

He is remembered by all as a fun-loving prankster, pedant, considerate boss and devoted husband and father. He will be sorely missed by his family and those who knew or worked with him.

(Sean McNamara/20161209)