Diane and I got there around 9:30 after getting lost on the way there. Our GPS took us on some one lane unpaved roads for some reason.. I was sure we were dooooooomed .. until we came out in the tiny town of Marlboro. We found the theater just as they were rehersing the faculty on where to stand and what to say..

Meanwhile the grads were in the anteroom getting hooded and robed . The place had a great upbeat feel..

THey even gave me a robe, hood and mortarboard.. t was a cool moment for me, since I didn’t get to go to my graduation from CMU.. (Actually.. Diane had a surprise picnic for me on that day in 1992 .. She invited a ton of friends to the park, tossed my bathrobe around me and handed me a nice homemade diploma.. it was wonderful)

You can’t tell.. but I was wearing a tie… and birkenstocks to honor the distinctly hippy vibe of Marlboro.

Then it was go time.. Diane got a few pictures of the proceedings. Here we are walking down to the stage.

The ceremony started with some heartfelt comments to the grads and their families from the College President and the Dean of the Graduate college.

Then there were two student speakers.. Both had good remarks.. both had taken a pretty serious  tone..

And… then ther was me.. I began by congratulating the grads on their accomplishments and telling them how prefect their timing was for what the world really needed. I asked them to give  themselves a hand .. I through in the sparks from my tesla coil to add to the applause..  I went on to discuss the trends in technical degrees over the last 50 years. I talked about how Sputnik spawned a 150% rise in technical degrees.in the 3 decades that followed.. . but how that trend reversed int he early 90’s giving us a 15 % decline in the last two decades. I explained how the growing  worldwide consensus on  need for alternative energy, sustainability.. and environmental stewardship could be the worlds next Sputnik-like kick that got kids to consider technical careers.  I then asked the grads to use their freshly mented techncial degrees.. and their love of the technology and the planet to help witness to others how technnology could be a force for good in the world.. Somehow I segued that into how spending 58 days in a warehouse , eating rats and appearing naked on international TV helped me interest kids in technical careers. .. It was a stretch.. but the audience seemde to go with it.

I worked a couple of demos into my short 20 min talk.. and ended with a blast from my potato canon.. I was initially a little worried that I had taken too goofy a tone in my talk.. .. but I could tell it went over fine..   I sat down feeling good that my message had been received

Finally it was the main moment, The President and Dean said the magic words and the students became graduates. I was truly proud of them.. though we’d only just met..

THhe music started, We all filed out  and I got a chance to talk to the faculty and gads.. it was such an inspirign group of folks..

One very cool surprise in teh crowd was Suzy. a colleague from IBM Austin that I was extremely surprised to see. It’s a long funny story.. but Suzy and I were planning to meet on Monday to talk about a project that Suzy is working on. I had no idea that she was actually up in Vermont.. , less idea still that she’d be here at Marlboro.. She told me that she’s figured out where I was going to be by reading this blog ..

It was so cool to meet her in person.. ..   Diane, Suzy and I packed up my stuff, loaded the car..

I left a SamStone with Dave, the guy that ran the theater..

then we all headed over to the reception at the

Marlboro Cafeteria. The place was full with more than 150 folks celebrating the grads..

It was so much fun talkign to the grads and their family.. I was able to learn more about their studies and their plans.. I also got some good feedback on my talk which was nice to hear.  

We said goodbye.. then followed Suzy to her cabin just 2 miles away. Our idea was to see the place, Meet Suzy’s partner Sarah.. and get the demo I was to have had tomorrow. That would save Suzy a 5 hour round trip drive…

Suzy and Sarah live in Austin most of the year.. but spend their summers in this cabin in Marlboro. The cabin’s been in Sarah’s family for more than 50 years. It was such a cool and peaceful place.. ..
 Not only was it cool and peaceful.. but it had fast internet service. Suzy showed me the utterly awesome augmented reality application she was developing on Android. The demo was great and it got me jazzed to work with Suzy on making it work for soem real engineering applications.. It also got me jonesing to develop soem application code for my own android.. (Suzy doesn’t know it.. but she volonteered to tutor me on the development environment… Watch this space. )

It was so much fun meeting Susy in person. .. I’d only known here on Secondlife where whs is alternately a beautiful blue fish.. or a neat blue box. It was great meeting Sarah as well..

Around 3:30 Diane and I said goodbye and headed north for the 2.5 hour drive home..

It was a pretty uneventful drive home.. The one cool thing we did was to talk to Michael and then to Alison from last years Colony. Micheal has just had back surgery (ouch).. but sounded like he was on the mend. Alison was her normal wonderfully cheerful self. We tlaked to them abotu how strange it is to watch new folks go theorugh the trials of the Colony. We all agreed that the new crew had it rougher when it came to tools, supplies and attacks.

Speakign of the Colony.. I’m going to go watch episode four now that it’s out on Hulu..
More tomorrow..
Congrats again to the Marlboro Graduate class of 2010 !!!

Nite all, Nite Sam

-me