Thoughts about Paris ----- March 10

Thoughts about Paris

The city of light never disappoints.  What I like the best is dressing up on a cold day and walking through the her streets.  I spent hours walking through the artist community called the Latin quarter and the left bank where her winding narrow friendly streets with cafés and restaurants fill the senses and spirit.  And then her romantic meandering streets open up to spectualar magnificent views of Notre Dame and the Louve.

It felt wonderful to take a trip to Paris just to sample and connect to the place most called home for artists. And I thought often about our group and how each of us would be so at home here and excited to share the experience.  

Although alone I walked with many companions.  You guys, our newly formed homegrown artist community sharing our excitement and trials pursuing our dreams.  I also felt the ghosts of Hemingway and Sartre.  And a camaraderie that I visit their venerable place of culture to deliver a lecture of my own creation -- -- mathematics not literature, however my own creation nonetheless.  I felt a companionship of  shared kinship -- -- business associates are colleagues, but fellow artist are more like blood brothers.  When I read of their struggles, sacrifice, obsession, rejection .... I feel connected to their spirit -- -- this characterizes my life and career even though it resulted in a business.  It was much more the new mathematical creation than the business enterprise.

I write this to both reflect on Paris but also to share with you.  There is something really special about our new group and I feel a strong bond and connection to it.

Tom

Presentation in Paris ----- March 9, 2010

This was the announcement of a talk I gave to the 'Club Qualimetrie' in Paris on March 9 2010. One of the topics was a new way to isolate a computer software threat with some new techniques I recently developed and in the process of publishing. The approach uses both graph theory and set theory to subset the exact fault edges along a entire end to end fault path. I am hoping and anticipate this will have a timely and significant impact on the current software security crisis.

This was the first time presenting this and it always amazes me how much I learn presenting new ideas --- all the reseach in the world seems incomplete until presenting it to practioners involved in everyday software nuts and bolts. Everone was excited and thought it a 'killer' app.

It was equally exciting to be with my gracious French associates who I now call friends. There were fascinating discussions with fellow French computer scientists of a different nationality --- so much alike yet so different. On these trips it's always me that learns the most ---- me the teacher! 

This trip and lecture I considered more of an artistic expression than a business trip --- unlike the many lectures I have given previously in Paris while I was a CEO making things happen. The fact is that my technology, company, and work has always been more about something I created, my art form;  my presentations are more about self-expression than tpical business issues. It was always that way and in fact that's what gave me the energy and drive to succeed. Instead of talking about the business bottom line I had a passionate enthusiasm for my mathematical breakthrough and how that could solve many of the problems. A business man talking of the bottom line is scant competition for an artist creating a top line ....  On this trip it felt energizing and liberating to fully embrace that spirit.


Irony would have it that my hotel and the presentation were in the Paris District of Montparnasse, south of the Latin quarter.  When Paris was the artistic center of the universe in the 1920s Montparnasse was the home of the 'lost generation', world renoun artist and philopsphrs ----John Paul Sartre, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, James Joye -- -- a nurturing enclave of creative self-expression. I stayed several extra days and visited their haunts --- Luxenberg Gardens, cafes of Clôserie des Lilas, Le Dôme, La Rontonde.  The environment and culture was much more suited for artists than businessmen.

Paris has always had a unique charm and this trip was no exception.