Richard Raymond (publisher)

• Comment: this will need re-writing in a dry neutral tone. Theroadislong (talk) 17:13, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

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Richard "Dick" Raymond (30 November 1923 — 16 September 2015) was a social and economic instigator who mentored, supported, or established many projects. According to the New York Times, Raymond's Portola Institute "was Silicon Valley’s first true incubator." Raymond was a key figure in Northern California environmental and cultural developments, in his roles as publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly), co-founder of the Briarpatch Network in support of small-business entrepreneurialism, and co-founder of the POINT Foundation to fund the organization of environment- and community-related projects.

Early life and education

Raymond was born in Newark, Ohio in 1923. His father worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Growing up, he moved with his parents through a lot of the Midwest. He graduated from Miami University, served in the U.S. Navy Air Corp during World War Two, and afterwards earned an MBA at Harvard.

Early career

Raymond moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and gained experience in a few start-up companies, including co-founding Rayturn Machine which developed the Irrigage soil-testing instrument. He worked in urban planning at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), in Menlo Park, California where his specialties included land use, recreational economics, and community development. At SRI, one of his clients was the Century 21 Exposition (the Seattle World’s Fair, 1962); Raymond convinced the organizers to plan buildings that would remain on the site as part of the city's heritage.

During his stretch with SRI, he worked as a consultant to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. At Stanford, he met the aspiring photographer and journalist Stewart Brand and was able to offer Brand a photography job on the reservation. Raymond was enthusiastic about emerging possibilities in alternative education” He left SRI in 1966 and, using his own funds, he founded the Portola Institute to explore and support education projects. By 1967 he believed that computers could contribute a valuable ingredient to education, even though personal-computing equipment was at that time known to few people. He sponsored some early educational technology projects including the Homebrew Computer Club. University of Nevada history professor Andrew Kirk wrote that "The Portola Institute was one of the best examples of how creative communities were coalescing around a loose set of shared social and cultural goals in an effort to create new means for achieving personal and community success."

Portola Institute and POINT Foundation

Stewart Brand conceived of something he thought of as an "access catalogue" to help people locate useful information and tools to facilitate translation of their ideas into reality. Raymond provided mentoring and connected Brand with other local advisors. With Brand investing some of his own money, supplemented by backing from Portola, a trial issue of the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was produced in 1968. PBS's "American Masters" series called the publication of of the WEC as a milestone in the history of environmentalism.

In 1971 the Whole Earth Catalog's financial success enabled Dick Raymond and Stewart Brand to found the POINT Foundation., purposed with providing grants for promising ventures. They invited a group of board members with varied viewpoints but united by concern for the natural environment. Early board members included Bill English and Huey Johnson. Johnson was influenced by POINT to found a new park-creation and land-conservation advocacy organization, the Trust for Public Land, for which he was funded subsequent to serving on the board for two years; the Trust's projects took root nationwide. Portola Institute transferred the publishing of WECs in 1980. Among varied other projects, POINT published the eclectic CoEvolution Quarterly starting in 1974, and in 1985, launched The WELL, an early online discussion community.

Briarpatch Network

Michael Phillips was a Bank of California vice-president, and had been the organizer of Mastercard. When Raymond came up with the "Briarpatch" concept in 1973, Phillips (his friend) worked with him to assist small business; together they co-founded the Briarpatch Network, which opened a Bay Area office in 1974. The network functioned as a consulting and mutual-support organization providing free or low-cost services to small-scale entrepreneurs. According to Phillips and co-author Greta Alexander, "The outwardly visible characteristic of the people who run Briarpatch businesses is that most are under 45 years old, [and] there is a high proportion of women owners." Eventually, the Network's records listed over a thousand people who had been members.

Later Life and Death

Dick Raymond relocated to Portland, Oregon and became involved in solar-energy development. After disappearing federal-grant funding decelerated activity in the renewable-energy field, he pursued projects related to unmanned flight and cold fusion. Dick Raymond died at age 91, on September 16, 2015 at Lake Oswego, Oregon.