The 1990s were a fertile but culturally awkward decade — the playground of Gen Xers and grunge and flannel. It was also the birth of the internet as we know it.
Companies like Yahoo and Google came of age during the dotcom boom, and so did a generation of IT professionals. They were the first wave of workers in the digital economy. Today, that generation is in charge. Information Technology is the backbone of practically every company, or perhaps an Achilles heel.
Christiaan’s guests today were part of that movement in the 90s and built some of Acadiana’s first technology enterprises. And they’re also brothers.
Wayne Lobb and his brother Doug founded Cloudgin, an IT solutions firm that helps local companies set up and maintain their computing networks. The firm is boutique, it does no marketing and offers round-the-clock concierge services for around a dozen clients.
Wayne went west in the 1990s and spent time in California during the dotcom boom, coming back to Lafayette to set up shop. Wayne is an avid kayak fisherman and has kept his operation small to keep an even keel in his work-life balance.
Wayne’s brother Doug Menefee struck a different path. After founding Cloudgin, Doug became an itinerant IT consultant, helping a string of local firms set up their IT operations and working fulltime as a CIO for hire under the moniker DyslexiCio —a nod to that fact that Doug is Dyslexic. Doug had a hand in the very first live streams of Festival International and was an early advocate for cloud computing.
In 2022, Doug took a job with Boulder GX, a Texas-based company working on ways to make medical lab testing faster and easier.
Conditions compelled us to record this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana on Zoom. Next week we hope to be back at our regular lunch spot, Tula Tacos on Jefferson Street in Downtown Lafayette.
Photos by Astor Morgan . And you’ll find more lunch table conversation about Acadiana IT businesses here.