Short stories are usually better than long stories but this past week contained so much to share that it can not be told in one short story. The highlight was when five-hundred of us entered the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel in a rare way — the buildings had been closed to the public and were empty — and then even more rare was having dinner in the Braccio Nuovo Gallery of the Vatican Museum. The Business Leadership Forum was led by Sam Palmissano, chairman of IBM and it focused on "Innovation That Matters".
Just about every company these days talks about innovation but IBM is actually walking the talk — and innovating in innovative ways and on a global basis. CEO’s at the forum from around the world talked about how their companies were breaking new ground and setting new records by innovating with IBM. During coffee and lunch breaks at the rapid-fire day-and-a-half forum there were demonstrations of technology that can make the world a better place by using RFID (radio frequency identification tags) to track the movement of cargo containers and hospital patients. With incredible humility, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux talked about the past and future of open source software development. The week even allowed a few geocaching trips on arrival day. The link below provides an index to the stories about what I learned this week.