On the occasion of ibm.com's 30-year reunion

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.

Somers to Bangalore

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Today's Videos While Burning Just 219 Calories in 30 Minutes

• "Chaiya Chaiya"
  
• "Zara Jhoom Jhoom"
  
• "Gandhi my father"
  

Today is my 11-year anniversary at IBM. Today, calling into the U.S. team meeting, I learn that not only is one of my colleagues celebrating 25 years at IBM, another celebrates 39 and another, 35. I don't mention my relatively small milestone.

Today is a good day. Today, I help plan a leadership development event and also meet the executive sponsor of the GLBT constituency at IBM India. He is wearing a turban and is Sikh, presumably. I meet him in the context of the earlier planning and he invites me to talk with him specifically on our respective perspectives on GLBT issues in India. That meeting should happen later this week.

Eleven years ago, I try to find GLBT colleagues and supporters in our Somers, NY site. Today, I'm doing the same in Bangalore, India. My first day, who could have guessed what the future would bring.

Wonder what it was like during their first day for my three colleagues whose tenures are 25, 39 and 35 years. Wonder how long I'll work for IBM.

Best Wishes for Welcoming New IBMers

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Later today, I will speak with up to 100 IBMers, who are volunteering to help new IBMers feel more welcome, faster at IBM India. Here's what I will say, and I'm confident that none of them will see this entry prior to the meeting:

The inviting danglers commanded my attention when they began hanging from the ceiling several days ago: My head kept bumping into them; I’m sitting, and so you might not know that I’m really tall.

By the time Sapna and I agreed that I would be able to join you today, nearly 100 new GrassRoots members had joined the community, and so you don’t need tips on community building from me. Instead, thinking back to what would have helped me when I joined IBM, I’ll ask you to consider my top five best wishes for welcoming new IBMers, and then I’ll offer tips on sustaining a community.

Before I jump into the wishes, I need to say how lovely it is to be invited to meet and encourage you in your essential and friendly mission! Thank you for your leadership in volunteering to help new IBMers feel at home and productive more quickly.

Now, I’ll contrast your marvelous mission with my experience when I joined IBM in New York City in 1996:

At our Midtown location, 590 Madison Avenue, I took the elevator to the 5th floor, where a security person photographed me...unflatteringly. And then a kind woman said, “Welcome,” and handed me a binder, and said that I would find everything I needed to know inside it.

Guess what the binder contained? An eight-minute welcome video by our CEO at the time, Lou Gerstner, and, according to the introduction of the thick content inside, 40 hours of instructions on getting my Lotus Notes ID and other basic processes…none of which I read. Instead, I relied on the kindness of my new peers, who had gone through the same thing, in many cases, just a number of months prior to me.

A decade later, while I was setting up the LEADing@IBM booth at 590 Madison’s fast_forward event, the woman who gave me my welcome-binder greeted me; she was still part of HR, though no longer had that job, and she remembered having welcomed me on my first day. I’d like to tell you that it was a warm reunion.

That would be untrue, though. I didn’t remember her at all. I was flattered and amazed that she would have remembered me and so I quickly rose to the occasion, but the reality was that she had not made a huge impression on me, as her welcoming role had been so narrowly defined – unlike IBM India’s ingenious Royal Blue Ambassador and Connections Advisor programs. She was just someone who handed me a big package full of boring reading material….The video, of course, was decent, but….

I’m telling you this story because you are poised to mean so much more to the new IBMers than that woman was able to signify for me. Remember the part of the story, where I said that the people who helped me most were my colleagues, my peers – the ones who had learned how to navigate IBM just months and even sometimes just weeks before I had. And I was also lucky to have peers who had been with IBM for many years, who helped me succeed, too.

Whatever tenure you’ve had at IBM, you’re doing a mitzvah in helping new IBMers feel part of, rather than apart from, the amazing organization that is IBM. Who knows what “doing a mitzvah” means?

[If no one:] I’ll teach you now, as I offer my top five best wishes:

My Top Five Best Wishes for Welcoming New IBMers

As GrassRoots Community members, I wish you would:

1. Help new IBMers understand the beauty in being part of a globally-integrated enterprise:
• IBM does business in 164 countries and cultures (In my culture, which is Jewish in addition to American “mitzvah” means “good deed”)
• You will work with, and lead, people from all over the world
2. Share what makes you proud to be an IBMer
3. Be an agent for helping new IBMers explain how their role aligns with the IBM global strategy; encourage discussion with their manager (IBM strategy, at internal URL)
4. Show new IBMers that IBM is the best place to be from a:
• Leadership development standpoint
(internal URL)
• Professional development perspective (internal URL)
5. Encourage new IBMers to join or start a diversity network group:
• Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) (in process; contact me directly for further information, at...)
• People with Disabilities (PwD) (internal URL)
• Women’s (internal URL)
• Guidelines for starting a diversity network group (DNG) (internal URL)

Perhaps you’ve already thought of all of these tips and so maybe I can offer another five tips on how to sustain a community. As I said upfront, I see you’re already successful at building a community.

My Top Five Tips for Sustaining a Community

1. Be needed; keep your sense of purpose and mission thriving
2. Go global; find or help launch counterparts beyond India
3. Turn it into a leadership incubator, and make new leaders
4. Sponsor summits and speaker series, whether F2F or online
5. Stay active on the Wiki (internal URL), trading best practices and having fun.