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Last week I was very sad to learn one of my mentors and favorite people Tom Williams had died . I’ve known and worked with Tom four nearly 30 years\u2026 No more I think about it it’s probably closer to 40. He was a bigger than life person\u2026 Brilliant, funny, adventurous\u2026 And super kind. He was one of the worlds foremost experts on the testing VLSI chips\u2026 He Coinvented level sensitive scan design (LSSD) that has been used by chip makers all over the world.\u2026 tom Spent large part of his career and IBM was the senior test guy in the whole company\u2026 Eventually left and became a fellow at synopsis. Tom was very well-known industry and served on many IEEE boards.\u2026 he got a lot of recognition including recently the Coffman award\u2026 Which is the highest award for someone in electronic design automation. \ufffcHe was always flying somewhere in the world to gift tax meet new people etc.\u2026 He was Such a role model technical skill and give back for me and for so many others\ufffc<\/p>\n
Tom was the biggest extrovert I have ever met\u2026 And that’s saying something. You would walk into a room with Tom \ufffcand He would Either already know everyone in the room \u2026 Or he would get to know them before he left . Not only that but he remembered\ufffc\ufffc and could tell you about their jobs their interests, their kids… It was really amazing the guy had the biggest Rolodex in his mind that I have ever seen. And he truly loved people\ufffc !<\/p>\n
Tom Was an fantasric mentor\u2026 I truly cannot count the number of times I’ve run into him at some city in the world and we sat down for a good meal\u2026 Usually Italian\u2026 With good wine\u2026 Usually Amarone…. An eaten good food generally ..no make that always\u2026 Covered with garlic\ufffc. He was always so generous with his time, energy and expertise\u2026 I remember right before Sam died Tom and his wonderful wife Candace Lent us there condo in Canmore Canada\u2026 It was such a wonderful gesture\u2026<\/p>\n
What made Tom such a great mentor is that he would give you really straight advice\u2026 He more than anyone helped me professionally corral all my energy and make sure that Even though I was having fun I needed to\ufffccontinue to patent and write papers\u2026 whenever I saw them he would ask me about papers and patents\u2026 Almost like a parent.\u2026 Will it work out very well for me. I remember Tom was the guy who cut me elected to the IBM Academy\u2026 A group inside IBM that was has been very important to my technical and social groups.\u2026 In a matter of fact when I got into the national Academy a couple of weeks ago I made a mental note that I had to reach out to Thom to tell him\u2026 He would’ve been quite proud\u2026 But sadly I never got a chance to do that\ufffc<\/p>\n
Tom was a friend and mentor to so many people in our industry\u2026 When I heard he died I started reaching out to old friends and they all have the same sort of stories and feelings about time that I do. I took it upon myself tonight to put together as many of toms friends from IBM\ufffc. Like many things in the past couple years we decided that virtual was better\u2026 But that also allowed us to pull in friends from all over.\u2026 At 8 o’clock tonight we gathered by zoom to toast our friend and mentor. We each had our own bottle of fancy wine\u2026 I have managed to find a bottle of aMarone at a local liquor store\u2026 And we all had garlic of one form or another.<\/p>\n
I didn’t really keep count but we had at least 20 people on there many my thoughts decades. It was very touching to hear all of the stories we shared\u2026 It was remarkable even though each of our relationships With Tom were unique\u2026 The overall story was the same\u2026 Great technical magic with amazing humanity. We swap stories and toasted him for nearly 2 hours\u2026 We had a lot of fun telling Tom stories\u2026 He was notoriously bad at spelling\u2026 Quite mischievous\u2026 And damn hard to manage.\u2026 (in other words \ufffcA man after my own heart!)<\/p>\n
\ufffcIt was so wonderful to be together even for such a sad occasion\ufffc<\/p>\n
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I recorded the meeting so that if anyone out there is a friend of Toms and would like to see it please let me know\ufffc<\/p>\n
After we hung up I had a good long cry\u2026 Hadn’t done that in a long time.<\/p>\n
I left them call feeling pretty good\u2026 I’m feeling very committed to try to be the kind of mentor time was to me there’s many other people as I could\u2026 If we all would pay that forward the worlds be a pretty good place\ufffc<\/p>\n
Hey Tom You are loved and missed\ufffc ..<\/p>\n
Nite all, nite sam\ufffc<\/p>\n
\ufffc-me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I was very sad to learn one of my mentors and favorite people Tom Williams had died . I’ve known and worked with Tom four nearly 30 years\u2026 No more I think about it it’s probably closer to 40. He was a bigger than life person\u2026 Brilliant, funny, adventurous\u2026 And super kind. He … Continue reading Wednesday night Dash remembering Tom Williams<\/span>