cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"Monday and Tuesday were the culmination of several weeks worth of work. Continuum hosted the first North American RC-SIG (Reality Centre - Special Interest Group). I talked about the GSH Board authorizing the new RC-SIG (../9946.html), about our preliminary meeting (../9950), and about getting ready for it (0002.html, 0003.html, and 0004.html). I'm not sure why, yet it always seems to amaze me when one of these things which have never happened before actually occurs, and especially when it is a big success.
Friday we had a rash of registrations for RC-SIG, and we put up a note on the web site saying registration was limited to the 83 who had already signed up. I was hoping about 50 folks would attend. I dropped Rachel off at Seminary and was in the office about 6:40 AM. I put together a sheet to keep track of attendance. By the time I was downstairs it was about 7:15 AM and there were already several people there. It was rush, rush, rush all day. I am going to include the agenda for the two days because I expect each of you will end up conducting some similar kind of a meeting at some point in your life, and this can be an example for you:
The RC-SIG presentations went very well. Everyone in attendance was suitably impressed with Continuum's facilities. At the end of each day, I was worn out. I had a talk on the second day, and the only session I formally conducted the research session on Monday morning. Yet it seemed like I was in the middle of everything. One of the big issues we faced was whether to rename RC-SIG as something else. The concern is that Reality Centre is an SGI TradeMark. We ended up leaving it RC-SIG, and not worrying about what the RC stands for.
My responsibility as special editor for the May 2000 issue of The Leading Edge for the SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists) was all coming together last week also, and so I was checking and responding to e-mails. I felt very stretched during and following the RC-SIG meeting. One of the reasons I wasn't feeling good was I had been up much of Sunday night with diarrhea. Andrea actually got up and slept on the couch I was in and out of bed so many times. I still ate the Mexican dinner Monday night. As soon as I got back to the house at about 10:00 PM my bowels started to run again. Despite this most personal of issues, the RC-SIG, the dinner meeting, and the interaction were all first class, and well worth the effort. Tuesday was even better than Monday. There absolutely has to be a good business tied to the stuff we are doing. The people in attendance were all smart, articulate, have been with their companies or profession for a long time, and they absolutely believe in immersive visualization technologies.
I took Rachel to seminary, and went into work early every morning all week. I remember one morning I was still feeling a little sick at the stomach, and I told her about a time on my mission when I had got quite sick. We lived on Exhibition Road, at Earls Court Road, which was two tube stops from the Hyde Park Chapel. I had been throwing up and had diarrhea, and it was a Monday P-day (Preparation Day). I don't remember who my companion was, and I remember he wanted to go play basketball, and not be stuck in the apartment with the smells and sounds of a sick companion. So I said fine. However, since I was the District Leader, I decided I should be with the other guys, and so I made my way to the tube station to go to where the other guys were. On the way I got sick again, sat down and threw up in the gutter. I remember looking up and seeing an American tourist couple looking at me in my P-Day levi's and T-shirt, and I could almost read their mind as they figured I had been out drinking or worse the night before. Oh well! And here it is 29+ years later, and I still get ill. Even when I am organizing something like the RC-SIG.
Because I was still feeling puny, I didn't go to the UH Milton Dobrin Tuesday evening. I just came home and worked on catching up on stuff. Most of the rest of the week was spent working on the Special Issue for The Leading Edge. Wednesday evening my Venturing Scouts were responsible for the combined activity. We had a night called `Mormon Gladiators', where everyone was divided into one of six groups, and two groups would compete against each other at various events. There was two 50 piece puzzels they had to put together the fastest, when everyone's hands were tied together to test cooperation. There was church questions to test spirituality. There was Nintendo to test agility. Then the winning teams competed to move a small ball the width of the gym with only their heads to test coordination. The final test was a tug-a-war against the Priests, to test physical prowess. (The Venturing Crew lost.) It was a lot of fun, and by then I had pretty much forgot about the RC-SIG. Thursday evening I worked with one of The Leading Edge Editorial Board until 7:00 on the special issue, and then didn't home until 8:30 PM. There was just time to help Matt pack for the Camporee before he went to sleep.
Friday there were a few follow-up e-mails about RC-SIG, and a lot of
reading and writing relative to The Leading Edge. I also finished
a mini-study I had started Thursday at lunch using the spread-sheet to
image program Roice built. I had gone out looking for some public
domain data to put into a spread-sheet and then visualize. I went
to the U.S. Geological Survey site, and noticed they had data about
the amount of water discharging in the various rivers across the
country. So I went to Utah, and sure enough, there was station
#10242000, at Coal Creek near Cedar City, Utah. So I downloaded the
data, and reorganized it in a spread-sheet with years across the top
and days of the year down the side. I have attached the resulting
spread-sheet map (CoalCreek.jpeg), because I find it so fascinating.
My Mom will get a kick out of this, because Dad always said `This is
the dryest year we have ever had!' Well the resulting time map shows
when it was dry and when it was wet. There are major floods down
Coal Creek, which if my memory serves me right, correlate to:
(a) the blizzard of October 1949, just before I was born;
(b) the first Nelson basement flood of 1967;
(c) the second Nelson basement flood of 1968; and
(d) the storm the day Nelson Packing Plant was shut down by Federal Meat Inspectors.
Nate, Ben, Melanie, Sara, or one of the rest of you budding entrepreneurs,
if you are looking for a business waiting to take off, it is sitting there
in public domain data, and Roice has built the first of what can be several
software tools to unravel this kind of data.
There were important demonstrations in the theater to Exxon-Mobil and Santa Fe/Snyder. In both cases the data was their own, and in both cases it looks like the first project is going to lead to several more projects. Friday afternoon I spent a couple of hours with Andrea at an Internet marketing seminar. Learned several very interesting things. For instance, there was a 13 year old boy who signed up with Apple Computers to be an on-line distributor, and he made $1.3 million in sales in his first year. His Mom and his Dad now work for him. There are now 180-190 people on-line (and to think I got John Amason to put the first commercial line in Houston into Landmark Graphics from Rice University when we were on Cypress Run). Traffic doubles every 100 days, and 75% of the users have credit cards. Electronic commerce is worldwide, open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and with automated sales you can be guaranteed a good business. Today 1 in 10 companies have a commerce enabled web site. By 2002, 9 in 10 companies will have a commerce enabled web site. The seminar closing words were `get linked or get lost.' Once again I find myself to have been too far out front in what I have been doing. Maybe we can turn walden3d.com into a viable port that trades some of the material we have put together over the last couple of decades for cash to help make ends meet. Then again, maybe not.
I love the outdoors. Friday evening Matt and I went to Camp Brosig for a Camporee. It has been several years since I was last at a Camporee at Camp Brosig. It was a wonderful Friday evening and Saturday. I did get cold on Friday night, and might have caught a cold. Matt absolutely did wonderful. There were skill sections on first aid, lashing and knots, fire building, orienteering, putting up a tent blind folded, a scavanger hunt through the scout handbook, and more first aid. There were meals to cook, and judges to satisfy. I carved a sword for Matt out of a tree branch. And although I started a song, there hasn't been time to finish it yet. The chorus summarizes the theme, and it goes:
We were definitly tired when we got back. I was excited to learn Melanie has found her wedding dress (even though I learned we have paid for it). Sunday I got to talk briefly to Rob and Sara. Sunday evening my 2nd cousin Keith Nelson's daughter Sherrie came over for dinner with her two daughters (ages 2 and 5) and Brother Burnham and I had the honor to give her a blessing. All in all it has been a very good week. It seemed to just keep going and building after starting off with a bang at the RC-SIG. I hope and pray the week for each of you has been full, exciting, and that it helps you want to get after next week and to do even better than you did this week."