Catching up with Carole

For a while, I have had a low-level “I”ve gotta do this someday”. I have wanted to get to Washington DC to see the famous Cherry Blossom s in spring. And, here I am! I have been incredibly focused on a big project for work, which took me to DC Saturday. And when I arrived, looking down at the landscape as we were landing, it looked like scores of trees were dead – all white looking, interleaved with green ones. In a few seconds I realized they were trees in bloom. And as the taxi got me closer to the heart of DC, I could see all kinds of trees in bloom and I realized that one of my ‘I’ve gotta dos’ was happening. How very cool!!

The big project for work is 2 massive, very important to the company, back to back trade shows: FOSE in DC this week, and RSA in SF next week. Somehow, I don’t really recall exactly how, I became logistics manager and entire team to pull these off. I have been to trade shows, and early in my career I was part of the set up & tear down team – thank goodness I was paying attention. Since then, I graduated to companies and teams where I “had people” to do this. Now, at this fast-moving start up, I have become “people”. I had been in the vicinity of one major trade show disaster – back to back shows where we shipped the booth “direct to show’ from the first to the second – and it never arrived. To avoid that, I decided that we were going to rent a second both and have graphics panels printed for both. We’d ship our own booth property to the first show, in DC, and use the rental the second week in SF.

I had been in CA early March, working on these shows and other projects. Returned to Rochester on March 8th. Was planning to stay in Roch until March 29th, fly from there to DC for the first show. But no, that was not to be – there were just too many things to be coordinated, nudged, prompted, pushed along that needed me to physically be in CA. So I returned to CA on March 15th. Because I was back there, ProExhibits, the exhibit company that was reprinting our booth graphics, set up a preview of the booth for me at their Sunnyvale location, scheduled to be on Monday the 17th at 2 p.m. Funny story about that …

Monday morning the 17th I show up to work and 3 people descended on me within 30 minutes – “Sheryl from ProExhibits called. There’s an emergency.” Oh boy. I got a hold of her and she told me they had a flood over the weekend – a water main broke and everything was under 2 feet of water. She’d let me know what was going to happen when they figured it out. The thoughts that raced across my front brain were – my first big project for IronKey, we need to ship the booth tomorrow to get the cheaper shipping rates, now they have to redo the booth somewhere, I don’t know what’s going to happen or how this will get fixed and … oh well. It will be fine. I could see myself making that decision. It will be fine. Most people at work did not even know what had happened. I slipped right into calm and decided I didn’t need drama around this. I credit all the self-awareness work I’ve been doing with my newfound grace under pressure.

The week wore on. I talked with Sheryl almost every day. They were going to reprint the panels at another location, make sure delivery happened on time.On Monday the 24th, I went to visit her at their Sunnyvale location – by this time there were at least 5 portable trailers in the parking lot, and 2 big trucks with huge hoses, one in each side of the building. The portables were their temporary offices, the trucks were dehumidifying the building. There was a special trailer in the very back, freeze drying their documents. Sheryl showed me pictures of the facility – and I really hadn’t pictured the devastation.

When I hear ‘flood’, I think ‘river rising’ – my parents both grew up on Wheeling Island, in the middle of the Ohio river – and it flooded every spring. (They moved away – and they lived on a hill, and all their kids live out of flood zones!) What happened at ProExhbits was that an 18” water main broke – and it was like a rocket launching inside the building. Ripped apart the ceiling in the 2-storey show room. Filled the premises a couple feet deep. Destroyed all their deskside computers, which of course were sitting on the floor. Sheryl said when she got to work that Monday, her files were floating out the door.

And through it all, she and Tina, my customer service rep, have been calm, polite and getting things done. IronKey’s booth shipped out on Thursday March 27th, arrived in DC on the 28th, and I arrived on the 29th and got the booth set up. (I did encounter a couple damp patches - which made me laugh, thinking of all this, and picturing Piglet floating out of his home as the rain rain rain came down down down, in rushing, rising rivulets.) I can HIGHLY recommend ProExhibits to any and all for their trade show exhibit needs. The people there are phenomenal.

I have become quite the road warrior. I took the redeye home to Roch on Tuesday the 25th, worked some on the 26th. Took a 6 a.m. flight to DC on Saturday – just yesterday – got to the hotel, dropped off my stuff and hit the convention hall to set up the booth. It went pretty fast. I now have a Blackberry – to which I’m already addicted – and a Bluetooth earpiece. I’m going to be travelling a lot, and loving it. I get to work with an amazing team; these people are smart, dedicated, moving fast and astoundingly kind and respectful of each other. I get to visit Silicon Valley often. And I get to live in my little houseeen and visit with Dad, and hang out with the rest of my family. Best of all possible worlds, right now.

Today, it’s a rather cold overcast day in DC. I intend to get out to the cherry trees tomorrow, it’s supposed to be warmer then, and the show starts on Tuesday. (I left myself plenty of time to scramble in case something wasn’t right with the booth, what we shipped, etc. Always good practice, and I’m so happy that I am not scrambling.). Sis-in-law Amy recommends the grove by the Washington Monument. So today I will write this, do some work, get the extra stuff to the convention center (we had some things shipped directly to my hotel.) And I get to ride the Metro! My hotel is 3 stops from the convention center, I took the Metro there yesterday. I realized that’s the first time I’ve ridden a great public transit system since I moved away from Munich. And it fueled my intent to find a place to make my permanent home base – one with good public transit, much better weather than Rochester, and a diverse population. Barcelona might be close, although it’s very hot in the summer. Hmmm, maybe I need two places – or three.