Turning a (Big) Page

These are the notes I had prepared for my retirement party on May 14. In the end, because the room configuration and noise didn't seem to lend themselves to a formal speech, I left the printed copy in my pocket and gave a somewhat less formal version of it, still touching on almost all the same points.

Hello.

It’s a pleasure to see so many friends and colleagues here tonight – actually, some friends who became colleagues, many colleagues who became friends, and even some colleagues who remained friends after working for me, working with me, or tolerating my working for them for so long.

It is rumored that we have a Travel Ban right now. Well, I can tell you, based on the number of people who bailed out from this event in the last week, saying that they had to be at the other end of the world tonight, that either we don’t really have a travel ban… or they didn’t like me as much as I thought.

I really want to thank Susan Rosenbaum for putting together this event for me tonight. What would we do without Susan? Well, for one thing, the people in Sugar Land within a 100-foot, no, make that 100-meter, radius of her laughter would be more productive. But she’s been wonderful to work with, and for, and I can’t say enough good things about having the privilege to have her as my last manager in Schlumberger.

A lot of people seemed shocked when I announced that I was going to be leaving. Some of that was the courtesy of pretending that they believed that I am younger than passport states I am. So to set the record straight, I am 57, I am only 8 months short of the famous 85 pension points, and I was already thinking of taking early retirement in a couple of years.

And then I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and the fortune cookie read: “A golden handshake is better than a kick in the butt with a steel-toed boot.” I took that home and thought about it. And then Personnel called. Actually, I just made up the whole Chinese dinner thing. But the idea is still pretty much the same.

After these pleasantries, I do want to say a few things that maybe, just maybe, you’ll take home and think about.

I’ve had an interesting career in Schlumberger. One of the most interesting aspects is that I only wrote two resignation letters in my life. This shows that I must have a high tolerance for pain, but other than that, wait for the twist on that story. The first resignation letter was in 1977, I had worked for Sema for 2½ years as a slav… er, as a software contractor. I resigned to join Schlumberger in Clamart, to write what was, in fact, our very first interpretation program based on the concept of inversion. Yep, 1977.

But in 1987, while I was a research lab manager at Fairchild in Palo Alto, I was “sold with the furniture” to National Semiconductor when we decided that we didn’t know how to run a semiconductor company after all.

So in 1993, after 6 years at National, I resigned for the second and last time in my life… to join Schlumberger again – in this case, the Automatic Test Equipment division in San Jose.

So in fact, I only resigned twice… and both times it was to join Schlumberger. I can tell you that when I have had a chance to tell this to students during recruiting trips (yes, there was a time when we recruited), it impressed the heck out of them, although I was never sure whether it gave them a high opinion of Schlumberger or a low opinion of me.

Well, I’ve learned a few things over those “ten plus sixteen” years of work for Schlumberger. To illustrate them, I will tell you of three “big” things I am proud of having done. But I want to start by telling you about two things I’ve clearly failed at, in part because it’s better to start with the failures and finish with the successes.

First, IT and software are not given the regard they should have given their criticality to Schlumberger’s business. We’ve had that discussion on and on and on… but it hasn’t converged to where I think it should have. And now, we don’t even have a CIO anymore, and our new VP of IT doesn’t report to the CEO. I’m an IT Advisor, so this is in part my failure. It doesn’t help to consider that many other companies are in the same situation. It is still not what Schlumberger should be doing, but I can’t say “Schlumberger” like it’s a third-person pronoun, and “they” did it (well, on Saturday I will have earned the right to say “they” but not tonight). I have been part of IT in Schlumberger, and the improvement in the standing of IT that we had with Saad Bargach and then Sophie Zurquiyah has been reversed, and I regret that.

Secondly, I went to Paal Kibsgaard in December 2006 and explained to him that diversity cannot be sliced and diced, and we needed to look at the way the company treated all the employees who might face unequal treatment – not just on the basis of race and gender, on which we had a significant track record, but also on the basis of sexual orientation. Paal was interested and receptive, I opened his eyes to a number of issues, and he asked Jim Andrews, the Diversity Manager, to work with me on this aspect. The discussion took a while to start, then proceeded at a rather glacial pace. A few changes were made, in particular with respect to health care benefits for same-sex partners in the U.S., and with respect to relocation of domestic partners, whether straight or gay. But several other aspects have seen no progress. Two years later, Jim changed jobs and I had to restart the whole process with Mike Skibicki, who had very little background on these issues… and as you know, a few months later, we don’t have a Diversity Manager any more. I’m pretty sure I could have tried harder to convince the right people, and it upsets me that companies like Shell rate near the top of the Human Right Campaign’s scale of how companies treat their LGBT employees, and Schlumberger rates near the bottom.

I’ve told you about those two failures because I’m still a little naïve, and I think that some of you in this room can pick up the baton and carry on, especially with respect to an issue like the role of IT in Schlumberger.

And also, regarding the second story, because I want to impress on you that we’re not just technical or managerial beings, we’re also social and emotional beings, and it’s OK to bring that aspect to the workplace in order to improve the workplace. It took me a very long time to make up my mind that I could ask for a meeting with the VP of Human Resources, rainbow-colored slides in hand (I’m not kidding you), look him in the eye and say, “I’ve asked for your time because as a Schlumberger employee and a gay man, there is something I need to discuss with you about how Schlumberger handles, or rather does not handle, the issues we face.” But when I did, and notwithstanding the ensuing inertia, there was no problem per se with my doing so. So you shouldn’t abandon any important part of who you are when you walk into the office.

Now, I’ll tell you about the three successes I think are most significant over these 26 years.

First, in 1983, after I had formed the “Information Systems” research lab for Measurement & Systems in Montrouge, I plotted with two other rather undisciplined guys, Arnold Smith at Drilling and Production Services, based in Cambridge, England, and Claude Barbe, who ran the computer center for Wireline in Clamart, to connect our fledgling networks together and make a larger, interconnected, Schlumberger-wide network. There is a long story about the sneaky ways we did this, involving a dusted-off PDP-11/34 (think of a 100 kHz processor and you’ll get the picture – your microwave oven probably has a faster CPU) that ran a non-routing version of DECnet, which we connected to both the Wireline network and the non-Wireline one in order to overcome the security objections raised by Wireline. But I’ll fast-forward to the point when management got scared. Not about security, but about the cost of this thing we were building. So “they” took it over – there is another long story about this, for another evening – and as a result SINet was born, a professionally managed and planned company-wide utility.

The second story is that in mid-2000, after attracting me to Houston to start an IT Innovation Lab (which ended up not being funded), Xavier Flinois, who ran Omnes, the networking joint venture with Cable & Wireless, told me “there is this thing called Eureka, you must run the IT community.” My first reaction was, “what is Eureka?” and my second one was, “you’re not named to this position, you have to be elected.” Well, by September 2003, when I finally decided not to run again, we had built up that community from 650 members to 4,500. And of course it was a collective effort with Laurent Etur, Mohammed Rupawalla, Christophe Causer, Catherine Mifsud, all the other SIG leaders, and support from Henry Edmundson, Anh Kuhn de Chizelle, Gordon Shudofsky, and Susan in her role as Global Métier Manager.

The third story brings us to the end of 2006, when some vague discussions about Web 2.0 suddenly gelled into the concept of SPEEDIA. Here, the co-inventors are Sally Boyd, Fred Hugand, Louis-Pierre Guillaume, and the one who then really made it happen was Laurent Butré. As you know, two years later, we have 20,000 articles including 1,900 abbreviations, and 3,300 people have contributed at one point or another by adding or editing at least one article.

If there are any lessons to derive from this, for me they would be these:

1. You have to challenge the status quo. Our secret network connections between groups were not authorized, but once they became a fait accompli, they caused SINet to be invented. Some of you know some of the naysaying that accompanied the growth of Eureka, or the notion of a collaborative encyclopedia. In each case, there was a crucial moment when we decided to ignore the negativity and forge ahead.
2. Communicating and sharing knowledge has been a constant theme for me. And I hope it is for you too. To know how much energy it is worth expending on a project, always consider the communication and knowledge sharing impact.
3. It’s good to work with people you like, and to like the people you work with. It makes your day easier. So try to get yourself in that position.
   

By the way, in case you were wondering, since you’re here, it means that you all are people I liked to work with!

So finally, what am I going to do now? When Danièle Cuzin retired a few months ago, she proudly explained that she wasn’t looking to doing anything specific in the short term, other than arts and leisure. I’m not as good or sane as she is. My plan is to follow the well-trodden path of becoming a consultant, still in the areas of IT and KM, and trust me, I will keep you posted about what I do.

Thanks for tolerating me for 26 years, 2 months, 13 days… and the last fifteen minutes. Please stay in touch, and right now enjoy yourself.

Soldiers' Mass

I went to the Houston Ballet tonight, and as has often been the case, this is nudging me to post about it. The three pieces were programmed in the right order, going from the more classical ("The Leaves are Fading" by Antony Tudor) to the most contemporary, "Soldiers' Mass" by Jiří Kylián, on music by Bohuslav Martinů. The middle piece, "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude," choreographed by William Forsythe on Schubert Ninth Symphony, was a nice transition piece, the most recently premiered of all three, yet not as modern as Soldiers' Mass, and in comparison just a nice little academic exercise.

Instead of writing my own review of Soldiers' Mass, though, I found this one written after the first New York City performance by the Nederlands Dans Theater (a year after the premiere in Scheveningen, Netherlands), and it is so good that I can only bow in deference to Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times, 7 July 1981), and quote:

In some respects, "Soldiers' Mass" might recall Antony Tudor's "Echoing of Trumpets," a great antiwar ballet to another Martinu score, "Fantasies Symphoniques." That ballet, however, was inspired by the German massacre of Czech civilians at Lidice in World War II, an event that also spurred a Martinu work.

Like Antony Tudor, to whom he dedicates another ballet this season, Mr. Kylian is an expressionist and a romantic. He is, like Mr. Tudor, interested in the weighted gesture, the broad, abstracted emotion. He is not a step-oriented choreographer.

In "Soldiers' Mass," known otherwise as the "Field Mass," he is not concerned with civilians but with very human fears and youngsters called to duty, conscripts. His approach is generalized, and in this faceless mass of 12 men, the individual's predicament surges all the more poignantly.

The men, dressed in stylized khaki outfits, are seen in a typical Kylian pose, with their backs to us. Just as typically, they will tend to move in a mass. One of the glories of Kylian choreography at its peak is its choral sweep. And here the actual male chorus in the pit, conducted by David Porcelijn with Bernard Kruysen as the touching baritone soloist, is at one with the dancers onstage.

The images are not all unfamiliar -- men cringe and fall. They die multiple deaths, and their mutual consolation and isolated fears are all clear. When one small figure -- Chris Jensen -- breaks out for a solo, the picture of wasted youth becomes embodied in the very energy he displays and that we know will die out. There are also stereotyped movements, using Martha Graham's floorwork. But there are also sensational theatrical moments. At one point, the dancers sing, as the condemned, along with the chorus. Another time, they rip of their shirts. Mr. Kylian's horizon decor, which disappears and reappears, is just as dramatic. In the end, the cross and the firing squad become one: A ballet that moves the mind and the heart.

She said it all -- the passion, the humanity, the tragedy, the stupidity of war. It was beautiful and moving. I believe that the solo piece mentioned above was the one danced by principal dancer Connor Walsh tonight -- a dancer I have (app)lauded in this blog before (see the entry for 23 February 2008, about Swan Song). And yes, the venerable New York Times spelled "Kylian" and "Martinu" without the diacriticals on the "a" and "u". Shame on them.

Great Men Theory

A couple of weeks ago, TIME Magazine mentioned a survey on who was the greatest Russian leader. Of course, this was a survey run in Russia. You couldn't run such a survey in the U.S., where most people wouldn't be able to locate Russia on an unlabeled map of the world, let alone name one of their past leaders.

Reading the results, which are immaterial to my point, I tried to classify those leaders in my head. I came up with this: there are the feckless ones, the sinister ones, the dour managers, and the transformers. Arguably, the latter category included the Great Catherine, who brought Russia in contact with Europe and pulled it away from its Central Asia roots; Lenin, who upset the old order and ushered in the great and ultimately failed laboratory experiment of Communism; and Gorbachev, who closed that parenthesis. Note that I am not saying that their transformations were good or entirely successful: I am just saying that they were enormous, in some way "inspired," changes of direction. Whether Putin is just one of the "dour managers" à la Krushchev, or ranks among the sinister ones (Ivan the Terrible, Stalin) is yet to be seen, although it would be a stretch to compare his behavior to the degree of malevolence of those two.

After I had finished thinking of Russian leaders, I realized that it is a lot easier to start with another country, assuming one knows something about its history, than with one's own. For example, most French people learn about Napoleon in school in a very biased way. While he created a set of institutions and legal principles that endure to a large extent today, he arguably had a disastrous impact on all of Europe, not just France, through fifteen years of incessant wars. And to start with, he was basically a dictator who seized power in a coup, ostensibly because the previous governments were so dysfunctional that only a "providential man" with full powers could save the day. Which brings to mind the debate on whether Pétain, 140 years later, was a sinister or a feckless leader, a conscious ally of the fascists or a half-senile grandfather who was abused and manipulated by his ministers.

My model is too simple in many cases, for sure. If you look at U.S. leaders, what was Nixon? At home, he was sinister, but overseas, he was practically a transformer, considering that he ended the war in Vietnam and dealt constructively with China. For Bush No. 1 and Bush No. 2, the verdict of history will probably be one of double fecklessness, the second case being worse than the first because of the presence of some sinister puppetmasters named Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice. Now we shall see if Obama is a transformer. If his presidency is anything like the speech he gave the night of his election, there is a good chance of that.

A Perfect New England Day

So many things have happened in the past six days, including the real beginning of the end of the Bush presidency, and the slap in the face we got in California with the success of the discriminatory Prop. 8, that I was in danger of glossing over what was a perfect day in Boston, last Saturday.

It was warm in the morning, I had breakfast at Crema Café in Harvard Square, then chatted with my other half for a long time, mostly about the election, while sitting on a brick ledge at the corner of Brattle and Eliot Streets. Being able to sit outside on Nov. 1 in Boston is a hit-or-miss proposition. It can still be Indian Summer, or it can be winter. Actually, two days earlier, it had been 36°F (2°C) in the morning. And now it was in the mid-sixties (18°C).

I went to the Symphony box office to buy a ticket for that night, then I walked over to my old haunt, Aquitaine on Tremont St., for brunch. I got the best table in the house — in the corner, in the back, facing the whole restaurant — and a very good server named Rebecca. And they had not run out of the pressed duck sandwich, my favorite brunch dish there.

After brunch, I walked through the Public Garden and the Boston Common to get on the T at Park Street. There were musicians everywhere, including an accordionist, a jazz duo that was rather incongruously made up of a young Asian couple, with the girl playing the trumpet and the guy playing the bass, and a lone saxophonist playing a little farther down.

I Don't Get Richard Strauss

I went to the Boston Symphony last Saturday, Nov. 1. The first part of the program was Brahms' Violin Concerto, the second one was Richard Strauss' Symphonia domestica. I don't "get" Richard Strauss, except perhaps the famous and soaring Also sprach Zarathustra. I probably would nickname this piece the Cacophonia domestica, and that does not even take into account the gross narcissism of the whole thing, which is supposed to describe an entire day of the life of the Strauss family. If you want to describe "A Day in the Life..." of anything in music, give me the Pastoral Symphony anyday.

The program notes were very smartly written. About the Brahms concerto, they did not just focus on that piece, but contrasted it with the other great violin concertos (the Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Bruch — I have no idea why it omitted the Tchaikovsy). Some of the criticism made by others in the past, and reported in these notes, was rather shocking. For example, von Bülow said that other concertos were written for the violin, but Brahms had written his against it. And the reviewer contemptuously dismissed the Mendelssohn as an easy and gentle piece. I can't say anything about the ease aspect, but I have always found that concerto to be very moving, starting from the first bar (one of the earliest entrances of the solo instrument in the repertoire, I'm sure).

Rendez-Vous 2010

After the success of California Proposition 8 on the ballot three days ago, which writes into the Constitution of California that same-sex couples are not allowed to marry, my friends and I seem to have been shellshocked for a couple of days — even though the polls had actually predicted that we would lose this fight.

We're finally emerging from this catatonic state, and some of us have been exchanging messages. I wrote this today to other Board members of Stanford Pride, and I don't think I could paraphrase it better again, so I'll just quote myself here (I know it sounds arrogant the way I just said it):

"We need to lick our wounds a bit, but I think that this accident teaches us a lesson: we need to be proactive, and not wake up a month before the election, suddenly realizing that the polls are against us, and do a rearguard fight in the last couple of weeks to come back.

This being said, we can all be immensely proud that we did come back from a 10% deficit in the polls a month ago, to only 4% (and perhaps less once all the ballots are counted) in the end. This is still a tremendous improvement over the 22% spread from elections on this topic years ago.

History is on our side. In 2010, there will be about 3% of the voters who are currently between 16 and 18 years of age. While they are not all on our side, I think it is clear that young people are much more liberal on social issues, and much more used to studying and living side by side with "out" LGBT people whom they wouldn't think of hurting on the basis of their sexuality. Conversely, 3% of last Tuesday's voters, out of the older age range, will have passed away, and while I don't wish anyone dead, this is how the electoral base shifts over time even if you don't convince anyone else to change their vote.

I really believe that if we organize better, and maintain the effort throughout the period from now to the next election, we can reverse this unfortunate vote. And if not in 2010, then surely in 2012 (but 2010 must be our immediate goal).

I also welcome the idea that Stanford Pride should play a bigger role. I wonder if we can meet with our counterparts at Berkeley, UCLA, etc… the larger universities in the state. I also notice that one of the first Facebook groups about "repealing Prop. 8 in 2010" was created by UC Davis students. An intercollegiate consortium could be very effective in terms of its outreach. Everyone in the state must be at most 2-3 degrees apart from an LGBT alums from one of these colleges. Well… perhaps not in the boondocks, but the people in the boonies are not really a very useful target audience for us. The primary audience are the people who are educated and intelligent enough to change their vote once we explain to them what's really at stake and that some of the things they were told are lies."

I don't yet know if we will succeed in our resolution to be activists about this. Two years is a long time to maintain a level of engagement such as that which may be required here. But we must try.

Icing on the Cake

I'm just back from seeing Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal at the Wortham Center, home of the Houston Ballet. Interesting program with two resolutely contemporary pieces, Toot and Noces, the latter on the eponymous music by Stravinsky.

I enjoyed the program, but the icing on the cake was the chance encounter with Connor Walsh during intermission. Mr. Walsh is a principal dancer with the Houston Ballet, with whom I had a very interesting conversation after a very moving performance — see my "Art and Politics" entry dated February 23rd. While I was buying a snack at intermission tonight, I saw a man rush through the line to order a pasta dish and sit down with it at a table. I thought I recognized him and chose a table that gave me a chance to observe... and got convinced that it must be him. Dancers can of course be hard to recognize in their street clothes, without makeup, and in his case with the beginning of a beard. He was obviously totally wolfing down his food to make it before the end of intermission, so I didn't interrupt then, but I kept staring and got worried that he'd be offended, although I would assume that he get stared at a lot!

Finally, he shoved the last bite into his mouth, it was high time to go back to our seats, but I went over and asked him if he was Connor Walsh. He was very gracious, we chatted for a second, mostly so I could remind him of the performance of Swan Song I had liked so much, and off we went our separate ways. I felt a bit like a groupie. Artists in general humble me, and people like him who personify the union of art, beauty and grace (I know this is multiply redundant to some extent) are exceptional. When I shake their hands, I wish that some of those gifts would rub off a little on me.