Phillies Win World Series!

'nuf said.

My Friend Jon: The Flip-Flopper

My buddy Jon Maron posted his first article on his new blog. He's declared to the world that he's a flip-flopper and proud of it!

I encourage you to read Jon's "I am a flip-flopper". It's timely (due to the current presidential race) and timeless (people change their minds every day).

Above image licensed under the free Creative Commons Attribution License.

OFF TOPIC: Taking the Wayback Machine to 1978

Well, the day finally arrived for the reunion I mentioned in my "30 Years Later" blog posting in February. While I've not attended my high school or college reunions, this reunion was cool since I've actually managed to stay in touch with a good many of my grade school friends.

I kicked off reunion day with a round of afternoon golf at Rancocas Golf Club with my long-time good buddy Jim McKee (3rd row, 4th from left in photo below). It was a sunny day, 70 degrees....we both hit some good shots...and the bad shots...well...who really cares when it's 70 degrees and sunny?!!

After a quick cleanup, Jim and I hopped into our wayback machine, set the dial for 1978, and prepared ourselves to mingle with the 8th-grade graduating class of St. Peter Celestine School:

Here's my attempt to name all of the people in the above picture:

Top Row: Pete Oswald, Bill Nicoletti, Neil Webber, Greg Saldutti, Bart Heenan, Eric Basting, Tony Maladra
2nd Row from Top: Pappy Strasser, Sandra Davi, Joan Walsh, Teresa Patterson, Peggy Wysocki, Melissa Shannon, Faith Long, Sandy Rodio, Brian Ehrman
Middle Row: Billy Cark, Srikanth Rajan, Bruce Wnek, Jim McKee, Shaun Connolly, Mike Camardo, Mark Marrazzo, Joe Messina, Jeff Wahl, Steve DeLuca, Charlie Spencer, Anthony Spica
2nd Row from Bottom: Lisa Staas, Patty McGrogan, Mary Beth Cunney, Maureen Haney, Amanda Gamel, Carol Durso, Karen Graham, Teresa Driscoll, Irene McClure, Teresa Ianuzzi
Bottom Row: Amy O'Brien, Jackie Verme, Mary Micale, Sister Nancy (Principal), Monseigneur Sharkey, Sister Wanda (Teacher), Ms. Flynn (Teacher), Nora Burdenski, Eileen Moriarty, Mary Jean Bellino

About 25 of the 40 or so kids in the picture attended the reunion along with a handful of others who attended but moved on prior to our graduating year. I was able to recognize almost all of my ex-classmates. Apologies go to Tim, Melissa, and Maureen for my awkward struggle to remember your names. What can I say? I'm sure this won't be the last of such senior moments for me. :-)

It was great catching up on what everyone has been up to over the past few....decades. Ouch, that hurts.

Among the attendees, we had nurses, engineers, teachers, one retired teacher launching her own boutique store in Princeton, IT consultants, a handful of small business owners, homemakers, a CIO, a forensic accountant, an anesthesiologist, etc., etc.

Many had children under the age of 10. My 8th grade best buddy Bill Nicoletti (top row, 2nd from left) has 3 kids (a 3 year old and 1 year old twins) with a 4th child on the way. Yikers! I felt like the old guy in the crowd with my 16 year old daughter and 13 year old son.

Even our physical education teacher, Mrs. Andress, showed up...which was really cool. We reminisced with her about how she used to march us through our warmups, rotating our heads to her commands of "left, center, right, center, left, center...". Many of us also fondly remembered our winter weekend retreat to Andress Farm out near Hazleton, PA. It was wickedly cold with a fresh foot of snow. The giant hill across the street from the farmhouse kept us busy sledding all day long!

Lots of classic photos were shared. We had some fashion plates in our class back then...as well as folks like me who were ideal candidates for the TLC show What Not To Wear. Gotta burn those old photos before they fall into the wrong hands! ;-)

The time flew by and a great time was had by all!

UPDATE ON MAY 13:
Click here to view the online photo gallery of the St. Peter Celestine 1978 Class Reunion.

A WORD OF THANKS
While I am sure many folks had a hand in making this reunion happen, I'd like to personally thank Patty McGrogan-Fost, Kevin Brake, and Irene McClure for taking the lead on hunting everyone down, arranging the venue, sending out all of the invites, etc.

Well done and thank you!

OFF TOPIC: 30 Years Later

I received an invitation to attend a 30-year reunion of my St. Peter Celestine 8th grade graduating class. Wow! I did the math and yep...it's been 30 years.

Of course I had to rummage through the old pictures and stuff to see what remembrances I could dig up from this byegone era. I kinda felt like Indiana Jones in search of ancient treasure. After a little digging, I found the picture below of me and three of my 8th grade amigos:


My friends are from left to right:

• Bart Heenan: currently lives in Virginia Beach and is CEO of Morphix Technologies. 20 years ago, Bart and his wife Karen set me up on a successful blind date with my [future] wife; and we have been happily married for 18 years.


• Steve DeLuca: currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area and is a Portfolio Manager at Spinner Asset Management. I ran into Steve a couple of years ago at an Investors conference in San Francisco.
  
• Bill Nicoletti: currently lives in Wilmington Delaware and is President of Visual Innovations. About 10 years ago, Bill and I played on an "over 30" baseball team together.

Yep...that's me on the right...pretty scary!

Lest I wallow in remembrances too long, I've come to the sobering realization that I was actually younger than my high school Junior daughter and I was one year older than my 7th grade son.

30 years goes by so quickly!

When Was Your Last Giant Leap?

A few years ago, I participated in a two day session with Bill Treasurer of Giant Leap Consulting. Bill's focus is on helping people and organizations be more courageous.

Founders of open source projects and companies exemplify what Bill would call "purposeful risk-taking". It takes courage to put your passion and work out there for all to see.

Two recent events reminded me of taking Giant Leaps:

1. My friend and prior coworker Ibrahim Abdelshafi is headed back to Egypt to be the CIO of one of their top financial services companies. Ibrahim has been at Primavera Systems for the past 15 years and has done a great job leading the development team there. He periodically considered a move back to Egypt to be closer to his family, but figured he'd seriously think of it in 3 or 5 years since he was really enjoying himself at Primavera. A conversation with an old friend from Egypt led him to more conversations....and bada bing....Ibrahim was faced with a Giant Leap decision. He leaves for Egypt on Tuesday.
2. My daughter Liza will turn 16 this July but will not be home for her sweet 16th birthday. She is currently participating in the Experiment in International Living and is in Europe for the entire month of July. I have tried to raise my kids to be open to life's opportunities, and I feel the EIL program will open her eyes to the much bigger world out there. This is definitely a Giant Leap for Liza who has never been away from home for an extended period of time...and frankly...a Giant Leap for me as her parent who still can't believe it's been 16 years since she was born.

As they say, the only constant in life is change. Many of us are spectators for these waves of change. In my opinion, the best changes, the sweetest changes, the most impactful changes are those where you make a conscious and informed decision to "go for it".

So, when was your last giant leap?

Whether it's in open source, business, or life, I'd love to hear your giant leap story.