Audio amateurs

Before we get to today's topic I wanted to offer an opportunity to sign up for Copper, Journal of Music and Audio. It's free, I think you'll find it really interesting, inspiring, and different than anything you've yet seen or read. Click here to be amongst the first subscribers for the premier issue launch, March 7. Amateurs, as defined by Wikipedia:

An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science in a non-professional or unpaid manner, often having little or no formal training in their pursuits, and many are autodidacts (self-taught).

Does that describe our industry? And for that matter, are we even an industry? It's been suggested many of us started out as a ragtag group of hobbyists and surely that's true. Certainly in my case and many others who have dedicated their lives to this venture we like to call industry, yet I wonder. I am not sure our community qualifies as industry. Industry smacks of big heartless corporations, something not worth aspiring to (at least to me). Our community of manufacturers seem anything but heartless. And amateurs? Haven't most industries, businesses, and rock stars started out as amateurs? Brin and Page in their dorm rooms, Hewlett and Packard in their garage, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr in sleazy bars. I think great industries are founded by passionate amateurs. I, for one, am proud of my humble roots.