Song and Dance

. . .

Dear Paul, Melanie, Bridget, Rob, Ben and Sarah, Sara, Heather and Nate Pace, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt,

cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner. and Diane Cluff.

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"Fridays at 4:00 we have CoRe Exchange, a internal company presentation of something which is currently being worked on in the company. This last Friday was my first time to give the song and dance. My presentation is titled "The impending obsolescence of maps." I expect all of the CoRe presentations will eventually be posted at http://www.continuum-corp.com, maybe as .../papers. And yet, who knows what the future may hold, maybe these web pages will evaporate into the ether from whence they came.

I spent most of this week working on the related song and dance I referenced last week, i.e. the seminar `Maps, Models, Immersion, and Collaboration' (.../seminars.htm). I have sent out a lot of e-mails to folks I think would be interested in what we are doing, and I have been working on putting the material together for the seminar. Actually had one guy from Schlumberger-Geoco/Prakla call up and register for the seminar on Friday. That felt nice. Now I need to perform.

Over the years I have given a lot of different presentations. Growing up there were the presentations to cub scout den mothers, to scout masters, at church, at school, at Boy's State, for the Utah Junior Hereford Association, with The KeyNotes and later The Mydknight Hour, and having a lot of self confidence I probably did OK. However, I really learned to do a song and dance when I was on my mission. As I look at what I do each day, the activities are far more influenced by the people interaction skills learned on my mission than by anything I learned in school. Sure, I was in debate in High School, in fact Mike Gardner and I tied for first in the State Debate Competition. Sure, I had a speech class at the U from the guy who taught all of the General Authorities how to give professional type presentations. Sure, I had gone through the normal `pull an introvert out of his shell' stuff which is a basic part of growing up in an LDS dominated society. However, the ability and the self-confidence to give a presentation, even when you are not completely prepared, naturally follows from spending 10+ hours a day 6 1/2 days a week knocking on doors, giving presentations off the cuff, standing on the street next to a street sign and talking to whom ever lets you catch their eye, explaining who you and why you are in England at the fish & chips shop or the barber shop or the grocery store, etc. And the processes started in our youth, or on a mission never stop.

For instance, last Sunday evening our Home Teachers came by and gave us an wonderful song and dance about the importance of being excellent in all that we do. They also brought over a magic trick, which Matt really enjoyed. In fact, he took it to school and got in trouble for showing it to other kids during class. After our Home Teacher's left, Alan Peterson and I went out and home taught our families. My point in bringing this up is how consistantly the good things we learn carry on through all different parts of our lives. While Choir Practice in the afternoon included a song, the conductor and pianist were the only ones who danced.

Monday evening the missionaries came over for dinner. One of the Elders was not sure he liked sea food, and Andrea had made a sea food pasta salad with shrimp appetizers. His song and dance reminded me of being fed steak and kidney pie on my mission. He actually seemed to enjoy the meal, which because of my years in the meat packing plant and the number of abscessed kidneys I had cut up I didn't. Andrea and I went to the Taylor High School Junior and Senior Open House and went to all of Rob's classes to meet his teachers and see what he has to face each day. I'm impressed with the teachers and the school.

On Tuesday my friend Dennis McMullin came over to talk about his ideas on knowledge management and communities of interest. Neat stuff, and very applicable to things as varied as immersive environments and also Thoughtlets. I act as the moderator in this community of interest. The issue is the simple fact we have not created the mechanisms nor the encouragement for others to active contributors. Any suggestions about how each of you can participate more in this song and dance? Matt's trumpet practice was cancelled because his teacher kept the trumpet to fix a sticking mouthpiece. I took him to soccer practice. On the way home we stopped and invited three of the inactive Priests to the planning meeting on Wednesday evening.

Wednesday I met with our investor, Mr. Finstad for a while in the morning and we had lunch together over at his hotel. In the afternoon Peter Duncan coordinated a practice session for a presentation to Mobil planned for Thursday morning. We struggled putting the song and dance together. In the evening the Venturing Crew had a planning session. The plans are posted at http://www.walden3d.com/nvc/calendar.html. I had picked up candy, and started the session of with a practice run of the presentation I was scheduled to give CoRe Exchange on Friday. The movie files are neat, and the four boys in attendance were impressed. Needless to say, the 10 boys not in attendance didn't get much out of it.

The Mobil song and dance Thursday morning was bad. We definitely ran into some major limitations of the MuSE navigation approach in doing the work for Lloyd, Mobil's representative. Lloyd Weathers started at Mobil in the same group of 18 that I did. He is about the last of us to still be employed there. He is a very good technologist, and he was nice in his comments about how we stumbled. The day seemed to drag on, and I was glad to head for the house. I took Matt to soccer practice and got a whole bunch of mosquito bites through my sockings. Oh well!

Friday was very busy. I went in early after dropping Rachel off at 6:00 and printed off some stuff. I had a breakfast with Chuck Edwards at JoJo's from 7:30-9:00. The developer's meeting was from 9-10:00. There were numerous e-mails to respond to, and I was still sending out invitations to the seminar planned for October 19th. I left the office for lunch with Ed Rogers at 11:30 in the Houston Club downtown. Since he had missed the breakfast with David Kessler he was very apologietic. As I was about to say goodbye my cell phone rang, in the basement of The Bank of the America's Building, and it was Michelle telling me there was a guy waiting to see me at the office. I had not written down the appointment, and as I went through my apology song and dance, Ed smiled. When I hung up, he simply said, `Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't write an appointment down on my calendar.' The words ringing through my mind were `judge not that you be not judged.' He waited for me, and I got back to the office about 1:30. We talked until about 3:00, then I got ready for my presentation, and answered some e-mail. I went down to CoRe exchange right at 4:00. The room was pretty full, and so few folks noticed I brought my guitar with me.

After the preliminary stuff, I got up with my guitar, got the Center Manager, Mike Yates, to turn on a video of `Riverdance' so it was playing replicated on each of the 3 12 foot by 10 foot screens in back of me. I started off saying since I was asked to give a song and dance this week it seems appropriate to start it off with a song and dance. The song I sang was the one I wrote at the 1998 SEG Convention (../9838.html). The timing between the video and my singing was perfect, and just when I got to the words:

`Perceive flying through the data Integrating, various kinds'

Michael Flatley came on stage with a loose white shirt and his arms out stretched like he was flying. Everyone in the audience was laughing and enjoying the show. Andrea came down to watch me give the presentation, and she had no idea I was going to do the song and dance. The flaw in the plan was that the movies in the PowerPoint presentation did not copy over to the system downstairs and everyone had to wait for 5 minutes while I went upstairs got my computer and got it hooked up to the center screen in order to give the presentation. Oh well! I think everyone had fun. In the evening Matt stayed at Patrick's again. Andrea and I went to the Kevin Costner movie `For the love of the game.' Her Dad was a real baseball fan and had written a couple of books about little league baseball. With as little interest as I have in sports, I was suprised to be the one who seemed to enjoy the movie the most. Rachel and two of her friends had gone to a different movie, and we took them over to one of the friends houses to spend the night afterwards.

Yesterday Andrea got up early and went to The Galleria to participate in a `5K walk for cancer' in rememberance of one of her best friends. While she was gone I had phone conversations with Mr. Finstad, and then with Steve Joseph and Roger Anderson. I picked up Matt and Rachel about 9:30 and also wrote a song for Matt. The words and guitar chords are:

` C G 1. Soccerball flying F C Down the sideline C G The half back tieing F C Just in time D G 2. Vollyball lobbed A D Across the net D G The scoring point robbed A D A spike like a jet C G 3. Football bruises F C A sign of manhood C G Pride oozes F C Like muscles could A C D A C. Sir Matthew Charles reigns today A C D A A young man with a lot to say A C D A Learning more every day A C D A 2x last Of life's choices and what they pay :| 4. The king of Star Craft A computer game Going places I can't even name 5. Living in Lego Land Across his floor Practicing for the band Behind a closed door 6. Confused and angry Seeking words to sing The song of the free I love this young king'

Conference was at 11:00, and Andrea left early to get Matt to the soccer field for photos and then for his game. I got to the field just before the game started. Maybe the soccer game is the dance to go with Matt's song. I helped him mow the front lawn, got cleaned up, had a meeting with Mr. Finstad, and got back to the house in time to pick Matt up for the General Conference Priesthood Broadcast.

After Priesthood meeting we picked up Rob and his friend David Hergenrotter (who used to live two houses north of us) and we all went to `Chuck E. Cheese' for pizza. As we got there some of the staff joined with some animatronic characters too for a Happy Birthday song and dance. It was similar to DisneyLand and the Country Bears.

Then today we went to the 11:00 and the 3:00 sessions of General Conference to listen to the brethern and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I sure do enjoy the words of the prophet, the apostles, and the other General Authorities. I wish I knew how to package this message so everyone would listen to and daily apply the song and dance of eternal life."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

. . .

Copyright © 1999 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.