I’m a sucker for meaningless milestones, and believe it or not we are experiencing one right now. Seeing that we’re approaching the summer of 2010, that means we’ve hit the 10-year-mark of the bursting of the dot com bubble.

Let’s take a trip through time, shall we?

It’s spring/summer 2000. The NASDAQ is hitting the 5,000 mark. The print (chuckle…) magazine the Industry Standard is as thick as a phone book and practically bursting with ads for start-ups – all of which are as graphically confusing as their company’s business models. AOL and Time Warner just completed the “merger of the century.” Everyone has a Motorola Star-Tac cell phone and uses them for phone calls (really!). If you worked in advertising then, you were working on at least one goofy dot com account (most likely doing traditional advertising for them, ironically) that acted as if they had more VC money than BP, pre-spill. You sat through PowerPoint presentations in their downtown offices staffed with private chefs and furnished with billiard tables, table tennis, foosball and some archaic video game from the 80s. Every presentation showed how the company was going to “change the way we _____ ______”, and was followed by a slide of future profit projections represented by an arrow, pointing ever-upward.

Didn’t exactly turn out that way, did it, class?

For us in the ad biz, 2000 was the beginning a long process of downsizing and constriction, leading up to today. Agencies began to shrink. Layoffs began. Expense and production budgets were slashed. Then came 9/11 and things got worse. The housing bubble that excited most of America didn’t reverse the downward spirial of traditional advertising agencies. Years of steady decline continued with the rise of digital media. Then came 2008, and the rest is history.

The immediate aftermath of the 2000 crash was quite a shock. First of all, our sugar daddy dot com clients disappeared. No more hanging out in hip downtown lofts. No more lavish dinners/bar tabs on the company dime. However, if you wanted a deal on used ping-pong tables or Aeron chairs, just name your price. Second, people who left advertising, finance, law, etc., for dot com glory and riches soon returned to advertising, finance, law, etc. They were somewhat humbled that they had to return to Career Path Plan A in order to make a living like normal folk. Lastly, creativity in advertising took a hit. Creatives had the run of the land in the dot com boom in 1995-2000. Don’t believe me? Look up TV spots of that era for outpost.com (hamsters shot out of a cannon), pets.com (a fucking talking sock!), the initial yahoo ads (talking dolphin, especially), the initial Etrade ads (money up the wazoo)…I could go on. The point is it was a time when outrageousness was expected and demanded. These companies needed the attention of consumers and investors alike, and you didn’t get it by being quiet or humble, so it was thought. After the burst, creativity took a hit and most companies wanted conservative messaging. The pendulum had swung. 9/11 made it worse. Then we had to be conservative and patriotic. Don’t question it, do it. We’re at Code Orange, for chrissakes.

Ten years after, here were are. Many of us are still in advertising, and to us those days of the dot com bubble are as distant as those from the Mad Men era. It’s a very different business now. Some say that’s the last time advertising was fun. They may be right.

What were you doing in advertising in 2000? What accounts were you working on? What was the most outrageous/excessive assignment you found yourself doing? When was the moment you said to yourself, “this is BS and is going to fall like a house of cards one day”?

Please comment. The time machine is on.

Brad Mislow is a freelance senior copywriter who’s worked on…oh I think you know me by now.

The following is a guest post by Winning At Business, a satirical blog that actually interviewed Seth Godin

I’d like to ask you all a favor. And when I say y’all, I mean everyone in the United States, no Hawaii, no Alaska. It’s time for some continental solidarity. Alaska and Hawaii are quite honestly and without knowledge of their history whatsoever, separatist assholes in my book.

So here is my plea. Please. Invent something cool, so we can all quit freaking out at how horrible things are.

It’s incredibly easy to focus on the negatives all around us. Billions of jobs are being cut every second of the day. Illegal immigrants are sneaking into our country through Alaska from Russia and stealing what jobs are left. And do I even have to mention that Jon and Kate are heading for splitsville?

But it’s for these very reasons that we’re ready for some amazing — even mildly amazing — things to happen.

And here’s the key, it doesn’t even have to be that good. Take for example, the RunPuncher 5000. This invention is mediocre at best. But because I have launched it recently, I have gotten 6 million pre-orders, and it doesn’t even ship for another four years.  I’ve only got one working model of this thing, and no idea how to get it manufactured. Yet I am literally flush with cash.

Clearly, the entire nation wants to glom onto any mildly positive invention these days because our minds are grasping for anything that’s not bad. We NEED that glimmer of hope.

What do they say? Necessity is the mother of invention?

As a matter of fact, they do. And I’m sure we’ve got it in us. What do the telephone, the light bulb, the Allstate, PFTA and the RunPuncher5000 all have in common? ALL OF THEM were invented during recessions, and all in the continental US.

And where would we be without each and everyone of those? I don’t care to imagine such a world.

I’m begging you. Don’t just hunker down and quit doing anything that costs money. It’s the time to innovate like a rabid raging bull, but not a normal dumb bull, one with a much better brain than most bulls have. Like, if a bull had RoboCop’s brain.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with.