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Our name - Cognitive Metaphors - is something I came up with back in 1994 while taking a C++ class and working at General Research Corporation. I had just read a book by Donald Norman called Things That Make Us Smart. After reading that book, I fell in love with the field of study called Cognitive Science. Let's look at the two words by Dictionary.Com's definition.
Cognitive - Having a basis in or reducible to empirical factual knowledge.
Metaphor - One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol
Put it together and you come to understand that a Cognitive Metaphor is a decision support/information system which in turn is just a symbol to represent what human beings know and are trying to accomplish with that knowledge.
As far a I'm concerned, I invented the term in 1994. However, a cognitive metaphor now has its own wikipedia entry.
Our logo was originally created by my friend Ariel. We modified it to have all the colors of the American and Philippine flags. The EKG signal was also added. It explains our goal to help all sorts of communities bring their online identities to life.
We have two slogans. Communities By Definition is a play on Drupal's slogan Community Plumbing. When they are done, our projects take on a life of their own. They are adopted by the community and grow and thrive into something very real. Know How It Works comes from some advice a mentor of mine, Michael Kamfonas, used to tell me. It means a lot of things but for me, it's a mantra that speaks to trying to see a thing from many different points of view. From there, you build a community website or a decision support system that works the right way any way you look at it whoever you are.
Our team spans Conshohocken,PA, USA (just outside of Philadelphia) and Plaridel, Bulacan, Philippines (just outside of Manila).
Back in 2006, I started to seek out a way to help the town where my parents were born. I also wanted to build the company of my dreams with mixed U.S. and Philippine resources. This story traces back my steps up to where Cognitive Metaphors is today.
