My First VM Workshop

Anyone who has been in the VM Community for a significant portion of time has probably heard of the Original VM Workshops. These summer events held on university campuses across the United States and Canada were more like reunions than they were conferences, and always brought out the child in each of us. I was glad to see the rebirth of the Workshop last year at The Ohio State in Columbus.

Attendance at the original VM workshops wasn't as strong by IBMers as it was customers and vendors. Remember, those were the days of customer interaction involving dark suits and white shirts. However, shortly after Casual Friday was invented, I was able to go to my first VM Workshop at Notre Dame.

The flight to South Bend wasn't all that long. However, it felt like one of those moments after a very long flight where you land in a strange land, jet lagged, and and feeling like you've been immersed into a very different culture.  People are wearing shorts and sandals and ugly Hawaiian shirts. I don't mean just Hawaiian shirts, but the bold and the ugly kind. The ones that make you feel like Mom is about to tell you, "It's not polite to stare."



Tim Metcalf, mastering a unicycle.

The sight that really floored me was of the VM product owner at the time, Tim Metcalf. There were often 'fun' things going on at the Workshop. At Notre Dame, someone had brought a unicycle with training wheels. And someone else had convinced Tim that he should try to ride it. For those that don't know Tim, he was lineman in football in his younger days. I'm not sure there has been anything else that I've seen in my career which told me it was ok to relax with our customers more than seeing this man of a certain stature and authority (I think he was my third or fourth line manager at the time) attempting to ride a unicycle. I appreciated many things about Tim's management of the product in the 1990s, but my memory always returns to this.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for the entire Workshop as I needed to be in Europe for another event, which was exciting, but didn't have unicycles.



I look good here, but the ride didn't last long.

Another tradition of the Workshops was the T-shirt for the event. The Notre Dame one continues to be one I treasure for it's unique blend of creativeness and theme. You might not be able to see it well in the pic, but those are the four teddy bears (aka four horsemen).

Today I left at 6am, on my way to Univeristy of Kentucky, and the 2012 VM Workshop. Will I see you there?