Paul Terry Walhus. Born St. Louis, December 1944. In Austin since 1980. Building on the web since 1996.
He ran PC support at the founding of Sematech, the consortium that revived American chipmaking, hand in hand with Robert Noyce. He founded The Spring, an Austin online community, in 1990 and put it on the Web in 1996. He was the original king of Twitter. Now he builds and runs the WholeTech network, two engines that build and market it, and the questions on Office Hours.
It started with a cold call. Jay Cash, Sematech's purchaser, rang Paul, then selling computers and networks for ComputerLand, as the consortium was setting up in Austin in 1988. That one call became the account of his life: about 700 IBM PS/2 Model 70 and Model 80 computers, Compaqs alongside them, HP and NEC printers, Sun workstations, more than $10 million of equipment in all, for a research consortium that did not yet have a building full of desks. Then Sematech hired him to run it.
Sematech (Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology) had been formed in 1987 by fourteen American chipmakers with matching funding from the Department of Defense, at a moment when the United States looked to be losing the chip industry to Japan. Austin won the site in 1988. Its first CEO was Robert Noyce, the co-founder of Intel and co-inventor of the integrated circuit, who led it in Austin from 1988 until his death in 1990. Paul's office was next door to his.
As Manager of PC Support from 1988 to 1991 he worked hand in hand with Noyce to devise the hardware, software and network platform for more than 700 assignees from a dozen member companies, Intel, IBM, AMD, Motorola, Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor among them. He established the first Sun Microsystems dealership in Austin to serve the account ("a lot of paperwork", he says) and ran a team of seven service technicians who kept the PCs and the network running. By the early 1990s the consortium was widely credited with helping American manufacturers regain the lead in chipmaking. In his words: we succeeded. Paul was the hardware and IT backbone at its founding, working alongside a legend.
Austin had two great research consortia in those years. MCC, the computing and AI consortium formed in 1982 under Admiral Bobby Inman, and Sematech, the chipmaking one. Charles Petrie was the first hire of MCC's AI Lab; Paul kept Sematech's machines running. In 2026 Paul built charlespetrie.com, a tribute to Dr. Petrie, who saw it and wrote back to say thank you.
Paul Terry Walhus is a web builder in Austin, Texas. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in December 1944, he came to Austin from California in 1980. When Sematech, the consortium of American chipmakers and the Department of Defense that revived U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, set up in Austin in 1988, he was its Manager of PC Support from 1988 to 1991, working hand in hand with Robert Noyce, the Intel co-founder and co-inventor of the integrated circuit who was Sematech's first CEO, to build the hardware, software and network platform for 700-plus assignees from a dozen chipmakers. He founded The Spring, an Austin online community and ISP, in 1990, put it on the Web as spring.com in 1996, and rebuilt it in 2026 as austinspring.com. In 2007 BuzzFeed News profiled him as the original king of Twitter. Today he builds and runs the WholeTech network, about 198 registered domains and 534 public sites, with two engines behind it: AME, which markets a site, and AWE, which designs and builds one. The Whole in WholeTech is the Whole Earth Catalog: in the 1970s and 1980s he lived on The Farm in Tennessee and in Bolinas, California, and wrote reviews for the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Software Review, and he named his network after that ethos, access to tools. Since its early days he has been a producer and question writer for Alex Lindsay's Office Hours Global, 1,420-plus episodes and counting.
That is the short answer; the biography gives the year-by-year version, and the questions at the bottom of this page cover the usual follow-ups.
Six things, all of them live and linkable.
About 198 registered domains and 534 public sites from Austin, flagship wholetech.com, with family hubs for reach, SEO, Austin, Texas, voyages, home building and magnetics. The whole map.
This month: a rebuild for Leadville Offroad Adventures and its next-generation sister Sledville, with a trip planner and an in-browser concierge.
AME points at any website and produces a marketing department. AWE designs and builds a site to the house design bar. Its Concierge is free and runs entirely in the browser.
Sourced, credited fan sites: Charles Petrie, Colin Firth, Jane Austen, Ryan Holiday, Ted Nelson, Tosca Gruber. Dr. Petrie saw his and wrote back.
Producer and question writer, since its early days, for Alex Lindsay's Office Hours Global, the free daily show for media and event professionals: 1,420-plus episodes. He writes the questions; the pros answer. More.
afterhours.party, his own scrappy, unofficial "outlaw" side project, run by someone who has an awkward time keeping up with the media pros over on Office Hours (not affiliated with it); ATXbbs, open-source BBS software; the AWE Concierge, $0 per question; and Agents First, the standard every site on the network is scored against.
From St. Louis to a desk in Austin, in six stops. The biography has the rest; the career page is the resume.
Paul Terry Walhus was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in December 1944. The rest of that story belongs to the family and is not published here.
Between the planning offices and Austin he lived in San Rafael and Bolinas, California, in Wisconsin, and on The Farm, Stephen Gaskin's intentional community in Summertown, Tennessee, founded in 1971 by a caravan of buses out of San Francisco. He wrote reviews for Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog and, in 1984 and 1985, the Whole Earth Software Review. The Whole in WholeTech comes from there: access to tools, whole-systems thinking.
Jay Cash, Sematech's purchaser, cold-called Paul as the consortium set up in Austin. Paul supplied more than $10 million of equipment, about 700 IBM PS/2 Model 70s and 80s, Compaqs, HP and NEC printers and Sun workstations, then joined as Manager of PC Support, 1988 to 1991, working hand in hand with Robert Noyce, Intel co-founder, co-inventor of the integrated circuit and Sematech's first CEO, on the platform for 700-plus assignees from a dozen chipmakers. He established the first Sun Microsystems dealership in Austin and ran a seven-technician service team. His office was next door to Noyce's.
Founded The Spring at International Computer Systems, where he was technical support manager: a dial-in server, a website, and a virtual community that grew to 5,175 members by 1996.
Senior web developer and consultant at AustinSpring.com from 2007, 250-plus websites since, with austen.com reaching more than 8 million hits a month. Founder and managing member of TexasCoworking.com in Cedar Creek, Texas, from 2007: a 5,000-square-foot live-work-cowork facility about six miles from SpaceX, The Boring Company and Starlink. And, the year Twitter launched at SXSW, the original king of Twitter: BuzzFeed News later recorded that Slate, The New York Times and Salon had named him the most popular man on the service.
On April 1, 2026 the WholeTech network went live with 108 websites. By September it had grown to about 198 registered domains and 534 public sites, built Agents First, with two engines behind it: AME to market a site and AWE to design and build one.
The Spring is back. In 1996, I started a BBS in Austin called spring.com. Before Facebook, before Reddit.
Spring.com was my answer to well.com. I was basically the Austin clone of that West Coast BBS.
A lot of paperwork.
Real sites, live now. The Now page keeps the running list.
Two recent recordings. The videos page has the rest.
The Austin Claude Code Community Meetup, recorded and published on Paul's channel. The June meetup at Capital Factory has a full recap on wholetech.com.
On his YouTube channel, 2026-08-12. Plays through youtube-nocookie.A walk through the nine layers of an autonomous agent, the way the network's own engines are built.
On his YouTube channel, 2026-07-10. Plays through youtube-nocookie.Paul Terry Walhus is a web builder in Austin, Texas. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in December 1944, he came to Austin from California in 1980. When Sematech, the consortium of American chipmakers and the Department of Defense that revived U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, set up in Austin in 1988, he was its Manager of PC Support from 1988 to 1991, working hand in hand with Robert Noyce, the Intel co-founder and co-inventor of the integrated circuit who was Sematech's first CEO, to build the hardware, software and network platform for 700-plus assignees from a dozen chipmakers. He founded The Spring, an Austin online community and ISP, in 1990, put it on the Web as spring.com in 1996, and rebuilt it in 2026 as austinspring.com. In 2007 BuzzFeed News profiled him as the original king of Twitter. Today he builds and runs the WholeTech network, about 198 registered domains and 534 public sites, with two engines behind it: AME, which markets a site, and AWE, which designs and builds one. The Whole in WholeTech is the Whole Earth Catalog: in the 1970s and 1980s he lived on The Farm in Tennessee and in Bolinas, California, and wrote reviews for the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Software Review, and he named his network after that ethos, access to tools. Since its early days he has been a producer and question writer for Alex Lindsay's Office Hours Global, 1,420-plus episodes and counting.
A family of about 198 registered domains and 534 public websites that Paul builds and runs from Austin, Texas. The flagship is wholetech.com. The family hubs are wholereach, wholeseo, wholeaustin, wholeatx, wholetexas, wholevoyage, wholehomebuild, wholemagnetics and wholetx, with clusters across local Texas, media, realty, magnetics, coworking, travel, robotics, tributes and more. Every site is built Agents First, so it is as readable by an AI agent as by a person.
He was Sematech's Manager of PC Support from 1988 to 1991, working hand in hand with Robert Noyce, Sematech's first CEO, to devise the hardware, software and network platform for more than 700 assignees from a dozen chipmakers: over $10 million of equipment (IBM PS/2 Model 70s and 80s, Compaqs, HP and NEC printers, Sun workstations), the first Sun Microsystems dealership in Austin, and a seven-technician service team. It began with a cold call from Jay Cash, Sematech's purchaser, while Paul was selling for ComputerLand. His office was next door to Noyce's.
City planning in Louisville and Minneapolis (1970s); BPI Systems (1977 to 1987); ComputerLand, Entre and MicroAge sales (1987 to 1990); Sematech (1988 to 1991); International Computer Systems and The Spring (1990 to 1996); Haystack Labs (1996 to 1997); TradeWave (1997 to 1998); IBM/Tivoli (1998 to 2000); Unix administration for clients (2000 to 2002); WholeTech.com (2002 to 2007); AustinSpring.com and TexasCoworking.com (2007 to now). The career page has the resume.
After the Whole Earth Catalog. In the 1970s and 1980s Paul lived on The Farm in Tennessee and in Bolinas, California, and wrote reviews for Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Software Review (1984 to 1985). Its ethos, access to tools and whole-systems thinking, is the ethos of the network; he registered wholetech.com in 1999 and named the network after it in 2026. The WELL grew out of the same community, and The Spring was his Austin answer to the WELL.
For 2006 to 2007 he was the IT guy at the Hotel San José on South Congress in Austin, working for its owner, Liz Lambert: the hotel's wifi, its reservation system, the point-of-sale systems at both Jo's Coffee locations, and Liz Lambert's own Mac and iPhone. Rock bands stayed there, the Talking Heads among them, and he ended up at parties with the cast of The L Word. Pretty wild, in his words.
In 2007, the year Twitter launched at SXSW in Austin, Slate, The New York Times and Salon named him the most popular man on the service, and BuzzFeed News later profiled him as the original king of Twitter. He is @springnet.
The Spring began in 1990 as a dial-in community and ISP he founded (5,175 members by 1996) and went onto the Web as spring.com in 1996, before Facebook or Reddit; it ran until 2014, later as spring.net and austinspring.com. In 2026 he rebuilt it at austinspring.com on ATXbbs, open-source BBS software written for the job, with the original archive alongside a live community.
Yes. Small businesses are the heart of it: this month's example is Leadville Offroad Adventures and its sister site Sledville. The Automated Web Engine (AWE) is how a site gets built to the house design bar, and its free Concierge runs in the browser with no cloud costs. Start on the contact page.
Austin, Texas. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in December 1944, and came to Austin from California in 1980.