Carol Moore, ibm.com VP, launched my IBM career in 1996, securing my interview with ibm.com/software’s director. A couple months in, Carol asked, "How's the job going?"
"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing."
Carol said something like, "Sarah, don't you know? You're supposed to make it up yourself. That's how it works."
IBM hired me as a Web Zealot in what was then the Internet Division of IBM -- a Web Zealot because as a Jew, I refused the original title, "Web Evangelist."
My plan a few weeks ago, in 2024 -- four years after being laid off and bridging to retirement from a mostly wonderful run at IBM -- was to cruise to Greece, Turkey, and then fly and catch a ride with ibm.com Webmaster Ed Costello to the Poconos, for the ibm.com 30th anniversary reunion. "Man plans and God laughs." -- Yiddish proverb
The moment I boarded the ship, I felt sick enough to visit the ship's doctor, who after negatively testing for Covid, reasoned that the white junk he saw on my tonsils might mean strep. One and a half rounds of antibiotics later, it hadn't abated and the doctor concluded: tonsilitis. There went my plan to reunite with sweet friends from IBM’s best old days.
You can see Rhodes’ dry mote. You can see Akrotiri’s ancient Minoan village ruins. You can see Kuşadası, Turkey's modern, solid marble version of the High Line, but even on the Way Back Machine, you can't see the home page of ibm.com/globalnetwork, my first web project from even before joining IBM, when I was with a joint venture at the time of IBM and Sears.
The art of ibm.com from 1994-2001, my era, resembled a play in a Greek (or any) theater more than a film, which you could watch whenever you liked. A play was relatively evanescent.
ibm.com's early incarnations were no less art for being ephemeral, like the live performances enjoyed by Greece’s throngs. Tourists don't continue marching in exhausted lines to see what we built. And yet...
Herculean/Constantinian/Ottoman power struggles and dramas happened. Fortunately, I didn't lose my job when I agreed with a director of another organization who wanted to poach part of the Software web team I managed to his area. My manager showed up very late to the meeting on the proposed re-org.
Before he arrived, I had felt pressured into stating my position. I agreed with the director, it made sense for the people to move to his team. I earned my only-ever lowest rating: PBC 3. My tardy manager left not long afterward to make a third, dramatic career change. He had been a monk prior to joining a company that IBM bought. I understood why he was no longer a monk.
That was the tragic part of my ibm.com career. Almost every other bit of that era was a pleasure...
...especially meeting with Ed Costello to show him my plan for the home page of ibm.com/globalnetwork. This meeting took place years before Project Bullseye, which was IBM's move to transform ibm.com's layers' look and feel to appear like they came from a single brand -- like whitewashed and brilliant Santorini. When Ed and I met, "The New York Times" hadn't yet reviewed ibm.com and found the user experience fractured. Lou Gerstner, IBM's CEO then, hadn't yet ordered cohesion within 90 days.
Reflecting on my earnest enthusiasm in my meeting with Ed, I remember how excited I felt at six and seven, participating in my public library's summer reading club. Every book I read and summarized for the Children's librarian, Mrs. Keating, earned me a children's palm-sized, construction-paper owl on the public bulletin board. My favorite part: delivering the oral book reports, where Mrs. Keating listened to me tell her about each plot. It felt sacred.
The day I visited Ed and told him my vision felt the same way. He might not even remember the meeting, but I showed up with primitive hand drawings and explained each element to him. And like Mrs. Keating, he seemed to listen with loving attention.
Right now, I wish I were riding to the Poconos in Ed's SUV with Ed, our
colleague Klaus Rusch, and Ed & Lisa's two canine family members. I'm sad
not to be on that ride, but feel grateful for the one I took with Carol, Ed,
and the whole ibm.com gang practically 30 years ago. And grateful to Carol, Adam Chng, and Ed for setting up the reunion, and for enabling an online version.
Heraclitus wrote, "You cannot step in the same river twice," and I'm glad all of us are still here to step in the river 30 years later.
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