Category: Personal

IBM Connect in San Francisco – A comeback

During the next few days IBM Connect 2017 will take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. While the subject of many sessions, solutions, products and most of the speakers are familiar or known for many years, the venue and location is brand new.

So, for the first time it’s not sunny Florida end of January it is (actually rainy) San Francisco and the community is gathering around the Moscone Center and will try to make San Francisco their home for a week.

I am looking forward to many great sessions and I am very interested in hearing how IBM will want to integrate new AI capatabilities aka Watson into their products and solutions. I want to learn more about the roadmap and the next releases of the software our customers built their collaboration solutions on.

For me it will be a totally special comeback to the city we “almost” wanted call our home for the rest of our lives. Instead, we decided to go back to Switzerland and start with our project and Belsoft as a company for IT services. A decision we never regretted, but still San Francisco will always be a city I called close to home and because of this IBM Connect in San Francisco is a very special one for me.

So, I’m back home and looking forward to seeing my 2nd family that is spread all over the world and meets once a year.

That was not my best vacation – and why

When I took this photo out of my window earlier this year, I was unaware that it would be our last winter up there.

For those of you who know me (even from afar), you are aware that I stay up in the Swiss mountains as often as I can. I even had a short part of the SparkIdeas Nerdgirls Session at ConnectED this year, regarding our mountain life and why that house is my favorite spot for working efficiently. We were renting half of a very old house on a long-term lease, never intending to move out. It was the home where our three kids literally grew up and learned a lot not only how to ski. During autumn and winter, we spent almost all of our family time in this home.

Because of bad luck, lies, unkept promises and an ordinance that we (as non-farmers) could not buy the house, we are essentially being evicted. The entire situation affects my family emotionally much more than I could imagine.

When we were told to vacate the premises without prior notice and with the expectation that we would be gone in a few weeks, we contacted our attorney. There was the option to fight and stay up in the house two more years, but as we would have to share one roof with the new owners, we decided to try and find another solution for our family within the immediate vicinity.

With the support of many close friends we made over the last 15 years in our mountain community, we finally found a solution. We moved out of our beloved mountain house during this summer vacation and moved into another house that is even older (it’s from the 11th century), even though it will be on a much lower altitude (“only” 1’2oo m), the slopes are farther away and more difficult to reach. To us, it is not a mountain house feeling for sure, but we all need to just try to let go and make a new start.

So, all combined my summer vacation was terrible. But I am sure that in a year, I will be able to look back without being angry. So, stay tuned for a new view and new pictures out of our new house and I hope that I will soon find the right spot in that house to work and that it will also feel like home again soon.