There are days that you just know will pass into history.  You're in them, and you just know they will be something you'll remember the rest of your days.

Today.

Tuesday, January 28, 2003.

I had the world's most brilliant idea for a presentation ending.  Unfortunately, it came to be at quarter to nine in the morning on the day I actually had to do the presentation, and as I sat there in the half-light filtering through the curtains in the room, I said out loud, "nah, scruit, I don't have time to do it.  Let's get to the gig."  Up here on the eleventeenth floor, life is a thing of fast decisions you have to stick with.

Ragan, I know you think I was just fooling with you when I said I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say in the session today.  Well, if anything, I was fooling with me.  Fooling with myself to think I knew better than I did what I'd say, what direction the show would take, what I could and could not do.  Until I hauled the laptop over to Swan 10, set up, and until I actually looked out over the audience, I really had no idea.  But I looked at them, and I knew.

I picked my music carefully... a strange mix of Arthur Godfrey, Billy Williams, the Baja Marimba Band and Bert Kaempfert.  I seg'd over to the Swan, wearing last year's Lotusphere staff shirt (mostly due to the complete lack of shirtware for the non-Lotus speakers) and got the laptop lit up.  Sure enough, though it hasn't done so in nearly a year, the Dell blue-screened for me five minutes before it actually had to start doing meaningful things, and a reboot and restart of all the queued-up software was at hand.  Thanks to the antidepressants, instead of erupting into a nasty fit, I just calmly brought the thing back online and set it up to fly again.  The last notes of "Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter" died out, and I hit the stage.

I got up there, looked out over the audience, and I just knew what to say.  The old feeling of theatre came back to me, and I just... knew.

So, we talked about this place.  This conference.  The people.  The strange stories.  The feeling of community, of care and refuge, of certainty.  None of these things should have been surprising to anyone who's read this site for a few years, but there were things I needed to say, a way I needed to say it.  Lotusphere and I have gotten older together, and I wanted to be able to convey a little of that journey, for me and for the bigger community.

So I did the sensible thing, and advised the audience that "due to the short duration of our flight this morning, we will not be serving inflight meals, however, a snack will be provided."  I then started tossing bags of Southwest Airlines dry-roasted peanuts into the audience.

What happened for the next hour is probably going to move into the realm of Lotusphere legend.  It was a remarkable hour.  I showed a little code and a lot of history.  Talked about the site and where it came from and why, and talked about a lot of the strange and amazing things that doing the site has done to transform my experience here over the years and in some ways, to transform my life.

And of all the hundreds of sessions at the ten Lotuspheres, I don't think there has ever been one that ended with a sing-a-long.  That's right... the audience itself ended the presentation, helping Vera Lynn sing "We'll Meet Again."

We'll meet again,
Don't know where, don't know when.
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
Keep smilin' through,
Just like you always do,
Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.

And won't you please say hello
To the folks that I know,
Tell them I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go
I was singing this song.

We'll meet again,
Don't know where, don't know when.
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

You don't have to take my word for it.  Order the videotape.  It's CS103, Inside Gonzo Lotusphere.

The most amazing thing was that after all the questions had been answered, everyone... stayed.  They just... sat and waited, as if nobody wanted to get up and spoil the mood, or maybe they wanted me to say something more.  There was nothing more I could say.

I packed everything up and went back to the Dolphin.  Decompression time.  I'll cover the next few hours in another post.

Yes, we'll meet again.