Community: To Everything there is a Season

When I started working with customers, I remember one of the more cynical IBMers warning me to be careful that I didn't fall into the Stockholm Syndrome. At first it didn't register, because I confused it with the Helsinki Formula which was a new breakthrough in treatment for thinning hair at the time. After I got over the idea of being self-conscious, I realized he was really talking about hostages becoming attached or feeling positive about their kidnappers. I still found it odd because I hadn't been threatened or tied up by customers. I will acknowledge that I have become attached to customers, partly in the simple partnership of doing business and in other ways by learning they are human, real people just like myself.

I have celebrated various events with customers. The VMSHARE conferencing discussed yesterday had a couple of forums, called MEMOs,  related to this: ITSABOY and ITSAGIRL. At one SHARE I even wrote a rap (oh, I let that history out) for Anne Marie Marcoux's first child Annick:

I was oh so very blue
But then I heard a baby's due
That really made me smile
For more than just a while
Cuz babies are so cool
They never call me fool
Their hair is very short
A look I do support
They may get in predicaments
But never write requirements
But the very biggest thrill
is when they call me Uncle Rapmaster Bill

Today we celebrate more grandchildren than children, but the new generation is still working at it.

It seemed the VM Community had a knack for finding reasons to celebrate. Marriages were announced in MEMO ITSATHEM. People leaving one job, joining another, earning a degree; all would be celebrated.  At SHARE there is a tradition of honoring someone who has been serving as a rep or volunteer for a long time when they step down, or step up to a new position. The traditional gift is a teddy bear. My joining the IBM Quarter Century Club was sweetened by reading congratulatory letters from many of you.

Perhaps a more telling aspect of the Community is not the happy times, but the sad times. These have included the down times of business, with people looking for work. And various times where the VM Community faced powers within IBM that didn't see the value they saw in it. While those were rally points in the VM history, there have also been more serious moments. The concern shown the VM lab in Endicott during the floods of  2006 and 2011 warm my heart. I've been even more proud watching the group rally around those who lose a loved one. Thomas Fuller wrote, "No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend until he is unhappy." This is why I know the VM Community is full of friends.