On the IBM Corporate Award - recognition event

Yesterday, there was a "recognition event" to recognize those in Israel who received the IBM Corporate Award, and some other awards this year. This award is the highest award that IBM grants to its employees, this year there have been 20 such awards worldwide (IBM employees from Israel have participated in 3 out of these 20 awards - quite an achievement relative to Israel size inside IBM), where each award can be shared among several people.    In the picture above you can see me in the middle between Meir Nissensohn, the General Manager of IBM Israel on my right hand side, and Oded Cohn, the Director of the Haifa Research Lab, on my left hand side.   Actually I got this plaque more than 2 months ago, and handed it over so I can get it back on the stage.  The award was given for "deep insights and groundbreaking research in Event Processing",  and contribution to the event processing industry development in general to be an emerging market, and getting IBM as a leader in this area in particular.


Then they asked me to provide some impressions 

We were briefed beforehand and were told that we'll not be able to use slides, just use voice, so I have given some insights and impressions in a way that was described later by people as a "stand-up performance" (well, I was sitting down), this is consistent with one of my old habits - Ridendo Dicere Verum,  when we started working on event processing in 1998, we did not know that we are doing event processing, we did not actually used that name, we also did not realize that 10-12 years later it will be an established and well-recognized area.   Getting new ideas in a big corporate are never easy, and I have written before about some best practices to navigate.    


Getting a recognition is always fun - but as my motto in life is based on the poem "IF" by Kipling, I'll end with one citation from this immortal poem:


If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;


This award has reflected past work, but the challenge for the present is to work on the future of this area, my recent talk in the OMG conference reflects some of the work towards the future.