IBM centennial: in for the long... run

June 16, 1911: the Computing Tabulating Recording Company was born to become a leader in computing technology for many years. 100 years later, it is time to celebrate. Leveraging our size (more than 400,000 employees) and global presence (170 countries), our CEO, Sam Palmisano, asked each of us to consider volunteering at least 8 hours to make a huge and memorable impact in this special centennial year, and especially volunteer on the eve of June 16th. The response has been overwhelming with more than 2.4 million hours logged around the globe by current or ex IBMers so far. Personally, after visiting a school to promote Engineering to 5th graders a month ago and helping another association, I joined a dozen of other IBMers last Wednesday to install solar panels on the top of the house of a low-income family in San Francisco. The project was led by Grid Alternatives which is serving all California with such projects. Anyone can serve as volunteer and send some money too, please check their web site out. While IBM is celebrating 100 years, Grid Alternatives is celebrating their 1,000th solar installation this month!

As for the actual Centennial celebration, this was mostly it, just a cake at each of the IBM sites, not even Champagne; the elephant (as some people call Big Blue) learned to get frugal and focused on the business after the 1992 crisis which almost caused its death. Anyway, for the past 100 days, we had opportunities to review a few of the many accomplishments of the IBMers of this century, see for instance the 100 icons of progress.

This simple celebration was to remind us that this is just a milestone, IBM is in high technology for the long... run.

Speaking of running (to remain in the blog theme...), I went to the track last Tuesday and ran 3 repeat miles in 5:46, 5:42 and... 5:20! I'm glad to have gotten some speed back although I wish I could train more consistently before the World Championships. But I'm happy to take the running miles I can squeeze in my schedule right now, especially before a 2-week family vacation in the Balkans. Talk to you from there, connectivity permitting...