Retirement

Yesterday, it was my pleasure to be the speaker at Peter Tanner's Retirement party here at the IBM Lab in Ottawa. Peter is retiring after 13 years at OTI/IBM. Peter's role was in business development, most recently around our J9 runtime technology which can be found in IBM product such as WEME/WECE as well as the IBM J2SE SDK. In that role, Peter was able to leverage his technical knowledge, and his business skills and contributed much to the success of J9. For that I personally thank you Peter.

During the party, Peter's daughter Laura showed a humorous PowerPoint presentation of pictures of Peter, from baby, to long hair hippy, and finally as a suit and tie clad business person. It was during this presentation that I realized how lucky us old guys have it. We have spent most of our lives in the absence of digital photography, so much of the evidence of our youthful hairstyles and partying antics are difficult to find. For you younger career people starting out today, be forewarned, your whole lives will available in easy to blackmail distribute form, and in 30 years, at your retirement party, there will be so many more embarrassing pics to choose from. We may have had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow, at -30C and uphill both ways, but I know, my youthful antics are buried. You youngsters on the other hand will have to explain your university party days to your kids.

The picture above is me (left) presenting Peter with some last minute IBM paperwork before his departure. (Cliche moment, he selected the retirement watch). Given the picture could be interpreted differently, it's not surprising that someone asked me if it was me retiring, (oh how I wish) but sadly no, I'm still here. (Photo credit Jim des Rivieres).

Congratulations and enjoy your retirement Peter, I am so jealous.