About

Black Tar was founded in 1997 in Stavanger, Norway by Vidar Andersen.

The Founder

Vidar Andersen Founded Black Tar in 1997

Clients since include everything from governments, global corporations and educational institutions

He is one of the Plone founders

Vidar Andersen started out in Norway as a Film Science Major drop-out in 1997, plunging head first into the then relatively un-chartered territory of web based applications and services.

Since then he has been involved in a variety of web based projects from e-learning, commerce, intranets, portals and content management systems (CMS), CRM and ERP to games, enjoying the privilege of working together with nationals, multinationals, private and public institutions, governments, government agencies and iconic global brands.

He co-founded the popular open source Plone CMS in 1999 with Alan Runyan and Alexander Limi.

Over 10 years, bubbles, booms and busts later - Black Tar and Vidar Andersen are still here.

Vidar maintains a blog at http://stopmebeforeiblogagain.com

The Philosophy

The philosophy of Black Tar has always been simple. Listen very carefully to the customers, their users and their customers. Engage in conversation and learn, learn, learn.

We here at Black Tar believe in the good conversation. An open minded, transparent and honest, respectful and down to earth approach is the key to success.

Reliability, satisfaction and a measurable return on your investment is how we define success.

We believe that the combination of good usability and a pleasing visual experience is a prerequisite for a successful product.

We apply heuristic testing, scientific methodology and a user centered approach. We combine the latest in research and old established best practices with a healthy dose of common sense.

Black Tar strongly supports open standards, interoperability and open source software in general.