Stories from the Wall: the Dutch Auction Clock Adventures - racing against time

Last month, I decided to drop into “OFG”(Ontario Flower Growers) in Mississauga for the first time in 15 years, even though I have often been working with clients in the area. The clocks are not in use there now, but they are proudly displayed in the warehouse.

OFG had become a customer in 1984, when they wanted an electronic “Dutch auction clock” to replace a mechanical one that a group of local growers had been using to sell flowers to retailers since 1972. The goal of an electronic clock was to be able to connect it directly to the computer, capturing each transaction as it was made. OFG’s growth plan called for a 2^nd “Dutch Clock” in the same auction gallery, and that necessitated the introduction of keypad bidding stations, which was an entirely new way of communicating with buyers. Buyers sitting in a single auction gallery would be purchasing products from 2 different auctions at the same time.

Between 1983 and 2013, the company I co-founded was the North American leader in these kinds of auction system solutions for perishable products. The company had designed, built and deployed systems for flowers, fish, tobacco and even fur. But, the biggest, and longest running of these auctions are the three flower auctions in Canada: OFG in Mississauga Ontario, “UFG” (United Flower Growers) in Burnaby BC, and “IFM” (Interprovincial Flower Market) in St. Laurent QC.

I had the pleasure of designing the initial systems for these auctions in the mid-80’s and then designing the ‘new’ systems that replaced them in the late 90’s, just ahead of ‘Y2K’. They were, beyond a doubt, the most complex challenges of my career. The PCBs and keypads that I have on my Wall are from the second, late 90’s version of the systems.

The auction systems are a largely unsung story in the company’s long term success. The functional objectives of the first systems (in the mid-80’s) presented many challenges and problems that had not been solved by any other technology company or perishable product auction at that time. We took the first two auction opportunities on largely because we didn’t have much else going on, and they couldn’t find anyone else that was willing to do it. (It’s a common theme in these “Stories from the Wall”).

The first design “epiphany” (breakthrough) came at a company barbeque. We were very small then, perhaps just 6 or 7 people and we frequently had these types of spontaneous backyard events. We were a close knit group. I sketched an idea out on a napkin. I referred to that key solution idea as a “bus arbitrator” because it would connect a bank of bidding station controllers to two different auction clock processors that were each running independently. In hindsight, the napkin sketch looked a lot like the flux capacitor drawing from “Back to the Future”. I was confident it would work. It was the last piece of the puzzle.

The next day, I went to work to find the right components and create a complete schematic of this final, key piece of the puzzle. We manually etched the prototype boards for the bus arbitrator, and over the next few weeks, we put it, and everything else together to see if it would work.

In those early days, we often took on jobs that were way over our heads, and this was no exception. In fact, for me, it was like being a small fragile pipsqueak staring up at a towering two headed goliath. We took on a job where we had to design and deliver a system that would run two independent auctions in a single auction gallery, enabling 280 buyers to bid on products being sold by 150 growers – in an auction format, item-by-item to get the best price for each item – and facilitate 4000 transactions in a two-hour auction. It was 1985, and this had never been done before. Anywhere.  

This story has dozens of chapters I could write about of near-misses, moments of surrender, and moments of victory. I had a few teammates that journeyed through these adventures with me, and for them and for those times I am very thankful. It was their ultimate triumph as much as it was mine.

But for the company, it was far more than that.  These opportunities pushed the envelope more than any other project had. The “heart” of the first system was designed around our “da-48” product, but when it couldn’t do the whole job, it was completely resigned and became the “da-68”. The da-68 was the heart for our snowmaking systems, which landed us many prestige jobs, including the Olympics in Calgary in 1988.

The modular displays designed for the clock faces became the foundational digit design for the scoreboards the company now sells around the world, including to NHL, NBA and NFL venues, local schools, and major schools and division colleges across North America.

The distributed control architecture and the related communications protocols and schemas developed for those early Dutch Clock auction systems evolved and became the initial foundations for the design of the UV3000 control system for Trojan.

And if staring down the challenges of the two-headed monster in the mid-80’s wasn’t enough, we decided to do it again in 1998 – but this time, it would be a four-headed monster for "UFG", the United Flower Growers in Burnaby, BC; there would be four auctions running concurrently in a single gallery, with 640 buyers in the actual gallery, and the possibility of any number of people competing remotely.

But this time, we were a bigger company, with better and more resources. We had been down this path – and many just like it – before. We had more experience, more resources, and more people seasoned and tempered by previous adventures, where we imagined things beyond what we could do at that moment, and then set out in pursuit of doing it.

And more often than not, we did.

The components on my wall are from the 2^nd generation – the late 90’s systems. To me, they represent the epitome of the company’s technology capabilities at that time. The company continued to advance and progress from there, but at that time, this was our state-of-the-art. And for me personally, these were the last significant projects I was involved in directly as a developer.

Much of the company's long term and continuing success can be traced back to a few critical epiphanies experienced and a lot of hard earned breakthroughs achieved bringing these auction systems to life. Over their 30 years in operation, they were the central system that connected hundreds of growers selling their perishable products to thousands of retailers needing to fill their shelves, facilitating millions of individual grower to buyer transactions.

As much as I'm excited about reminiscing over the thrilling technology journey we took, I'm even more grateful to remember the great people that I met and got to know at the auctions - the growers, the buyers, and the auction staff. And I remember the great community feeling, and the market style buzz, that happened there 2 or 3 mornings every week.

It was a rush, a great adventure. They were great times.