I was a 13-year-old growth hacker
My daughter found my journal. We just sat at laughed at many pages; one of my favourites is this entry I wrote when I was 13 (1994):
Hello! Life is good! I have be the co-systems operator at Alberta Future BBS for nearly 3 months. I do mostly artwork as well as some other tasks. With my help the BBS has jumped from 35 users to 236 (in 3 months!). It is largely because of my graphics and all the advertising I do for it.
Absolute Future BBS was based in Edmonton and was run by Shawn Logan. It was also one of the first local boards to use a GUI (Roboboard/FX). Bulletin board systems (BBS) were really the precursor to the web the way we know it today: a hobbyist (the “SysOp”) would run BBS software on their home computer, and allow outsiders to connect via a phone line and modem. Popular boards would have multiple phone lines so more than one user could connect at a time. Once on the board you could use message boards, play games, and download files (known as “warez”).
As a teenaged geek who loved computers, being asked to be a co-SysOp was a big deal. I remember working really hard to advertise our re-launch: I posted on usenet groups, on FutureNet, invited people personally on message boards, and did ANSI and Roboboard artwork for other BBSes in exchange for advertising.
I was probably a little high on myself (exemplified by my last sentence above), but I do remember feeling proud when we jumped from 35 users to 236 in our first quarter. A 574% increase! Did that make me a 13-year-old BBS growth hacker? 
This is awesome and made me think about a few things. As you know, I too ran a BBS but it was the distributed messaging that interested me. These groups (with names like Worldnet, Fidonet, etc) were a precursor to technologies like newsgroups & Google Groups. (Except messages took days instead of seconds to get around the globe.) But I worked pretty hard at it and eventually my BBS was promoted to a ‘hub’ which meant that I was shipping batches of messages across Western Canada. So while you were “growth hacking”, I was “community hacking” which seems to have carried on into our present-day lives!
Very cool! Online vector art in the early 90′s!
Is this the *real* Seth Hamilton? The guy who created Roboboard? If so, I’m honoured that you’re here!
The cross-BBS messaging system was impressive.
It is funny how I’m basically still the same person: I love building things, promoting them, and serving users.
probably not him
It is him! Crazy.