GUI Computing Information

GUI Computing was founded by Mark Trescowthick in 1991 as a specialist Windows development house. GUI's goal was to provide boutique development services in the then-nascent Windows environment, using the just-released Visual Basic. Over more than 20 years, and peaking at a staff of about 30, GUI forged a name as the developer of choice when the problem was a bit more than just average and boasted an array of clients from BHP and Ford to small startups, across all sectors and covering a breadth of applications. As Visual Basic broadened its scope to the web, so GUI also moved there and, amongst other achievements, was the webmaster for Melbourne Water Corporation for over 15 years, most of those with Mark firmly at the helm of day-to-day webmastering operations. In addition to its development activities, Mark realised very quickly that Visual Basic addons (the ubiquitous "VBX") distribution in Australia was almost non-existent. Within only a couple of years, GUI became Australia's largest distributor of addons. As an adjunct to both development and distribution, GUI founded Australia's first Visual Basic developer magazine, Australian Visual Developer's Forum in 1993. Eventual (paper) distribution was over 3,000 bio-monthly by the time the magazine was taken exclusively on-line in 1997. GUI was also responsible for the first Visual Basic developer conferences in Australia. GUI's business was acquired in 2007 (ironically by a startup "spun out" of GUI some few years previously) and the company effectively went into hiatus from 2012, when Mark took an extended leave of absence. It was revived in 2015, and now serves as the basis for Mark's independent consulting business.