Today was the last day of my trip to the Technical Leaders Exchange mmeeting in Anaheim and boy am I glad to be traveling home. I’m missing my family so much.

 I’m on a 3 stop (LAX-SFO-ORD-BTV) red-eye which will get my home at 10ish tomorrow morning.. It’ll be a tough night.. but heading home is always easier.  It’s been a good trip.. Over the last 3 days I’ve had the chance to spend hours talking with some very good friends.  I love this part of my job.  

   Today our meetings started at 7:45. The first speaker was Gini Rimetti  a Sr. exec in our Global Services group. She’s a great speaker, funny, natural and convincing. I liked her talk.. Then came the guest speaker Maestro Ben Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic.  I satyed for the first few minutes of his talk   he seemed funny and engaging.. . but I had arranged to  meet my friend George to catch up. I walked out to meet without thinking much of it.. more on that in a bit… 

  It was very good talking with George.. George’s wife Anika died last May. He and I have spoken several times since Sam died about our healing process. I’ve written about our conversations a few months back Even though our circumstances are very different, it’s been very helpful sharing stories. Our work situations are somewhat similar. Last fall George was having trouble getting his head back into his day job so he worked with our senior management to get a sabbatical in research. He gave me an update about how that’s going.. It seems to be working out well for him. George’s sabbatical is another example where the company really takes care of people when they need it most. It’s comforting to me to know tht a sabbatical is an option if I should ever really need it… but for now, I’m staying put..   George and I spent a very good hour or so talking about his situation. My situation,. Our families and our work. It turns out that thatere might be an interesting pint of collaboration between George’s new role and my day job.. Finding opportunities to work with new folks is one of the coolest thing about these cross disciplinary conferences.

    After the hour was up. George and I wondered back into the arena and Maestro Zander was still at it..I could tell something amazing had happened to the crowd.. everyone  in that auditorium was  absolutely in love with this guy… The most telling thing was that  there was not a single laptop open  or blackberry going.. These people were hooked. Zander was just about to lead the nearly 5000 people in the room in the choras to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.. . He took the crowd through it 4 times, coaching the crowd on how to do it with more feeling each time.. by the fourth time this crowd of geeks sounded like angels.. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen a group that large do…   I was speechless.. I’ve tried to capture it on this movie.. but it doesn’t do it justice..

First Verse of Ode to Joy in Beethoven’s 9th,

German original

Freude, schöner Götterfunken
Töchter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

 Joy, thou glorious spark of heaven,
Daughter of Elysium,
We approach fire-drunk,
Heavenly One, your shrine.
Your magic reunites
What custom strictly parts;
All people become brothers,
Where your gentle wing alights.

   After the music died down, Zander told a short story and the crowd filed out.. everyone seemed to be floating.. some folks were aactually crying.. and.. I had missed nearly nearly all of it..    For the next 2 hours I had tons of  folks come up to me to ask me what I thought of this or that part of Zander’s presentation. No-one could believe I missed it..   I picked up bits and pieces of what he’d said through other people.. the basic message was about the wonderful possibilities presented by everyday life.. even in times of adversity.. I can cetaily relate to that..  The story I heard most often was that he played a Chopin piece twice.. first briskly.. then he played it again asking everyone to think of the loss of something they loved.. more than 30 people came up to tell me that they were thinking about Sam and our family I was so touched… and sad that I had missed it…  

    I eventually made my way down to lunch. Everyone I met was still talking about Zander’s talk.. I was getting more and more bummed about missing it..   I walked into the lunch room, and there he was. I went up to him and told him how sorry I was to have missed his talk. We started talking and I mentioned how many folks had thought about Sam during his Chopin piece.. He started asking me more about Sam and sat down and had lunch with me.. He was an amazing guy.. interested in everyone and everything.. distracted and focused at the same time..  We talked a bunch about Sam… I gave him a SamStone.. he dug into his bag and gave me one of his CD’s and a book that His wife and he had written called ‘the Art of Possibility’. .then he hugged me..  The morale of this story is… what ? I should pay attention to schedule better ? .. that all things work out in the end ? dunno.. I was very moved by the whole exchange.  Here’s Maestro Zander  on the left with another IBM guy, Jerry

   On the topic of hugging.. I lost track of the number of folks who came across crowded rooms over the past three days to give me a hug and ask about my family..  I feel emotionally recharged… at the same time it was surprisingly hard to re-tell the story so many times.. about Sam’s accident.. about how our family is doing… Sometimes when I talk about it , it seems like I’m hearing it from a distance.. like it’s someone else’s story.  Every time I say something like.. ‘when my son died’… I think.. ‘what did I just say !? ‘.. I will never get used to that….  You never do..

   Diane told me that today is the one year anniversary of the day Amanda Emberly died in a car accident  Amanda lived in Bolton and went to MMU . I remember so vividly how I felt the night she died. Our thoughts are with her family tonight…

    Looks like our plane is boarding.. I’ll upload some pictures and that video of the Ode to Joy tomorrow when I get bandwidth.. It’ll be good to be home…

I love you my family…  gnite

-jc

Ps. Happy birthday Jessie