In the midst of covid-19, we can’t quite get together in-person to toast Steven on his retirement. We’ve collected some of our thoughts here, only as a temporary placeholder until we can have a proper send-off.

I don’t know that there’s ever a good time to retire from one’s dream job, and even if there is, it’s probably not in the middle of a global pandemic that upends your company’s business model almost more than any other—even space flight can resume easier than our in-person meetings, so don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t as hard as rocket science.

But, to quote one of my favorite proverbs of unknown origin, “tide nor time tarrieth no man” and to quote a favorite song of known origin—my mother’s favorite songwriter, in fact—“To everything, there is a season.” And the season for me to step down from my role as director is the summer of 2020.

The first TTI/Vanguard meeting I attended was in the summer of 2013, in Vienna, Austria. Robin, with her usual thoroughness and probably in hopes of making a good impression on the new guy, sent an airport limo for me. My first official function was an advisory board meeting. (For many of the board, this was the conference highlight, not surprising, if you can imagine the dynamic between Len, Eric, John Perry, Gordon, Maria, Doug, Nicholas, and all the rest.) Even as the discussion progressed, I got into a heated backchannel email exchange with Alan Kay over the relative merits of Aristotle versus Isaac Newton. (I don’t mean to brag, but you want to be holding the Aristotle ticket on that ride.)

We are in the middle of our Ubiquitous AI conference—five consecutive Tuesdays, three down (including our May 26 field trip) and two sessions to go. The archive has videos, highlights, presentations and everything else you need—Claudia Miklas is ready to help you access.

Our September conference Game Changers, originally scheduled to be held in Washington, DC will be a virtual-only meeting. We are just a few months into our temporary pandemic-pivot from in-person to digital meetings. Thanks to our community’s endless support and curiosity, much of the TTIV experience has transcended physical space. We’ve already had one only-at-TTIV moment: our virtual visit to The Long Now, which no less of an observer than Gordon Bell said was as good as any field trip he can recall. But another holy grail of TTIV—the spontaneous, magical conversations and connections at a coffee break, dinner, or even on a bus—remains elusive. We’ll continue to experiment until we find a way to virtually bring those additional only-at-TTIV moments to our beloved community of “extroverted introverts".

Congrats to member organization JPL for finding an exoplanet using a tiny satellite—a CubeSat (Jordi Puig-Suari, Boston, Apr 2017), of course.
www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7670

And congrats to TidalScale (Ike Nassi, Washington, D.C., Sep 2014) for its inclusion in CRN’s list of The 50 Hottest Software-Defined Data Center Vendors Of 2020.
www.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/the-50-hottest-software-defined-data-center-vendors-of-2020

The EU’s new €750 billion recovery plan has more than recovery in mind. Its goal is to achieve “technology sovereignty” in such areas as 5G/6G, AI, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure. (Hermann Hauser, George Metakides, Berlin, Jul 2004; Reineke Reitsma, Amsterdam, Jul 2000)
www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-budget-recovery-tech/tech-reboot-in-store-for-eu-as-plans-recovery-from-crisis-idUSKBN23324B

As many parts of the U.S. relax their various shutdowns and the remainder gets ready to, the most pressing question is, how likely are you to get infected in a restaurant, store, church, or other enclosed space? As it happens, our good friend-of-TTI/V William Haseltine (San Diego, Feb 2015; San Jose, Feb 2012; Phoenix, Dec 2008) has an equation, cited in a Psychology Today blog post by his sister-in-law and past speaker, physician Chris Gilbert (San Francisco, Feb 2017):