The event held in New York City on March 16 was successful by all accounts.  First let me take you through some of the details, facts and figures.  Over 75 people were at the event, which more then filled out the room we had reserved for the event.  Rob Thomas (VP of Business Development) kicked off the event with an overview of our new strategy and positioning.  He started off with an unusual story about Edwin Booth saving Todd Lincolns life, see the link below.  One point out of this story is that you can not always predict the future by judging from past events.  

http://www.historynet.com/edwin-booth-saved-robert-todd-lincolns-life.htm 

Rob made the point that we are here to change the Informix business, but yes like most things in life this is done one step at a time vs. just flipping a switch.  I do occasionally still look for a big switch on the wall that says, flip this and your business is transformed over night.  No luck so far, maybe it could be an episode on Monster Quest, since it is as elusive as Big Foot.  

Jerry Keesee presented next.  He talked about the Informix Roadmap, some key product features, customer successes and the fact that Informix is #1 in customer sat.  Jerry added his usual dry sense of humor.  

We were very fortune to have Arvind Krishna (GM of Information Management) be at the event and led the Q&A session at the end.  We also had Inhi Cho (VP of IM Marketing) at the event as well.  We had leaders from Sales and Support at the event to answer questions BPs and customers may have had in those disciplines.  

We then broke for some refreshments and food in the area outside the room. We had a lot of good discussions about our favorite topic, yes you guess it Informix.  Most of us then went to dinner afterwards. One customer mentioned he was very happy that IBM reached out to him in this way around Informix, I could not agree more.  At the end of the day communications, trust and direct interaction is the life blood of business.  

As I mentioned in the beginning I felt the event was very successful, but for me the reason was because it was the first step in working with each one of you (our clients and BPs) on the new future of Informix.  I would like to thank two people in particular for all of their hard work in making this a great event, they are: 

Lauren Borman and Brenda Brown  

And yes, now I leave you with another quote: 

“The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”  -  Oliver Wendell Holmes