Tough Start in Vancouver

Greetings from the Austin airport.

Whoa, I had a sense of serious deja vu there for the moment.  I can’t imagine why!

Moi?  At an airport?  What up with that??

I’m off on a 12-day journey, first for some meetings in Stuttgart, Madrid, and Milan, and then from there straight back to Viva Las Vegas for this year’s IBM Pulse 2010, where I’ll be joining some of my Tivoli and greater IBM colleagues to help cover the event via this blog and the Twittersphere.

Since I’ll be out on the road, I’ll unfortunately miss out on much of the Winter Olympics coverage from beautiful Vancouver.

If you’ve never visited the area, you really should put it on your list.  It’s breathtakingly beautiful.

And in spite of yesterday’s admittedly horrific start to the games with the tragic death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, I thought the opening ceremony last night in Vancouver was stunning.

It was uniquely Canadian, celebrating that country’s great diversity and majesty, and it struck an elegant and delicate balance between being respectful of the circumstances while having the “show” go on.  The floor light show was something I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever seen before and it was magical.

IBM having once been a longtime sponsor of the Olympic games, I think I can safely speak for many of my colleagues when I extend our condolences and good wishes to the Olympics family and the country of Georgia and its brave athletes, who laid aside their grief and put their game faces on to honor the memory of Mr. Kumaritashvili.

That can’t have been easy for anyone, and I think they did it, respectfully and with appropriate acknowledgement to the tragedy.  Obviously, nobody wanted the games to start with such a sad beginning.

As I get ready to leave the U.S.A., know that I’ll very much look forward to following the action from overseas next week and I wish our own athletes the best of luck in their various competitions — especially our own “Flying Tomato,” Shawn White.

Dude, I can’t wait to see you taking some majestic air!