Congratulations on your tremendously successful career at IBM! It has been extremely rewarding working for you these past years. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to work on your team and for the many growth experiences I have had during this time. It has truly been the best job in my IBM career. There's so much to say but I'll just mention on a personal note a few of the reasons why your leadership has made a difference in IBM and why I personally value all that I’ve learned from you.

I remember your first email to me flaming the IBM Lotus Notes mail template and inviting me to read your "Get Connected" white paper. You had a vision and were passionate about how Internet technology would change the world and IBM. From then on I witnessed your relentlessness in moving IBM forward to modern day technology and stamping out dinosaur thinking in IBM. You walked the talk and drove change from the top down as well as bottoms up by building grass roots momentum. You broke down the barriers of bureaucracy and led the charge to start simple, go fast. You created a talented innovative team who thrive on "rules for radicals". I'll never forget the many terrific Pennwood planning sessions brainstorming new ideas. And, we had a lot of fun along the way!

You are always on the bleeding edge of technology - for better or worse! Countless red box/blue screens of death, dialer not working, apps not working, etc. Fortunately you could rely on the expertise from your talented team: "Reboot", "Reinstall", "Rebuild your machine". I lost count of how many Thinkpads you went through over the years and how many times your machine died right before you had to give a presentation. Miraculously, you always pulled off a last minute hardware scramble without a hitch. Adding memory to your Thinkpad minutes before stepping onto the podium at Internet World tops the list.

And of course there's your website. Other than our chairman, you are the only IBM executive to have his own website, not to mention the ibm.com/patrick redirect. That rules! There was never a dull moment as your Saturday morning hobby evolved from a single html page with 75 links in Webexplorer, to multiple Notes databases on Linux, to Dreamweaver with blogging. I'll never forget all the fun with site outages, broken links and Notes questions. And the tally is still growing as to who has worked on your website!

I am grateful to know you and to have worked with you all these years. I wish you continued success and lots of happiness in the years to come!