1992
Age nine. Not a tenure claim.
The first computer course, paid for with yard work
Tony Paris takes summer computer courses as an extracurricular and pays for them himself. He does yard work and odd jobs through the year to afford the next summer and to help support his family. This is the earliest date in the record and it is deliberately not a tenure figure. It is recorded here as a milestone and never as a count. The years figure on this site is the 29+ years of practice since 1997.
How it is corroborated:
Owner-stated. No third-party artifact exists for a nine-year-old's summer course and none is claimed. It is recorded as attested, not as evidence.
1994
Self-taught. Not a professional claim.
The interest begins
Tony Paris takes up the industry and starts learning it on his own time. This is where the interest started and it is not a tenure figure: no work was being offered professionally yet. It is recorded here because an archived appwt.com footer carried 1994, and a date with no explanation reads as a contradiction.
How it is corroborated:
Owner-stated, and consistent with an archived appwt.com footer captured in 2014.
1997
The tenure year. 29 years.
Paid work in the field begins
Paid web work begins, in Flint, Michigan. He was about fourteen. The word "professional" is deliberately not used for this year: in his own words that belongs to 2005. What 1997 carries is the tenure, because this is the only date that answers "how long have you been doing this", and every years-of-experience figure on this network is computed from it rather than typed in, so it cannot go stale.
How it is corroborated:
Owner-stated. The Better Business Bureau profile also records a business start of 1997-07-01, though BBB published that profile in 2020, so it is corroboration rather than independent proof.
Check it yourself: Better Business Bureau profile →
2005
The trade name, and the first professional year.
The professional practice, under the AppWT name
The practice starts operating under the AppWT name. The name is younger than the work, which is ordinary and worth saying out loud: a practice does not lose its first eight years because it had not settled on a name yet.
How it is corroborated:
Owner-stated, and AppWT was publishing this same 2005 date in archived client-site credits as far back as 2013, long before any of it was in question.
2011
2011-10-08. A registry record.
appwt.com registered
The domain is registered and has never lapsed. This is the oldest hard fact in the set: a registrar creation date is not an editable profile field, and the Internet Archive holds at least one capture of appwt.com in every calendar year since.
How it is corroborated:
Domain registry (WHOIS) creation date, plus continuous Internet Archive coverage beginning 2011-11-19.
Check it yourself: ICANN registry lookup for appwt.com →
2020
2020-02-13. The legal entity.
AppWT LLC incorporated in Michigan
The practice incorporates as AppWT LLC. This is why some directory profiles show a 2020 founding date: they are reporting the ENTITY, correctly. The entity is younger than the practice, and both facts are true at once.
How it is corroborated:
Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, entity ID 802415009, filed 2020-02-13. Publicly verifiable.
Check it yourself: Michigan LARA Corporations Division, search entity 802415009 →
Why the dates are published together
A reader who sees one number and then finds a different one somewhere else concludes
somebody is inflating. A reader who sees all six, each labeled, can check any of them.
The 29-year figure on this site is calculated from
1997 every time the page loads, so it is never a typed-in number that
drifts out of date.
1994 is deliberately not used as a tenure figure anywhere on this network.
It marks when the interest started, not when the work was being sold, and claiming
otherwise would add three years that were never professional.
Public records anyone can check
