Author: way0utwest

Each year I attend an annual Christmas party that’s essentially a JD Edwards Operations department party. JD Edwards hasn’t existed for 8 years. Almost everyone has left the company, or what it has become, which is Oracle. Yet we still hold a Christmas party every December that brings together 20-30 families.

I’ve never seen a bond like that from a job. And it’s still there.

We used to have monthly teambuilding in our group, and occasionally bringing long a few people from related departments (engineering, help desk, etc.). We would have almost weekly lunches among the team, and even when Peoplesoft purchased the company and people started to leave, we still had monthly lunches. We still played fantasy football each year, and kept in touch. We also had a yearly Christmas party that included our former director.

It’s an amazing bond, and it shows that the power of a strong corporate culture continues even as the company is gone. The 30 of us communicate, recommend jobs to each other, or have even helped each other find employees we trust. There are small clumps of us, 3-4, that work together in other companies, even having moved companies together, and it’s become a trusted and valued network unlike any I’ve ever had.

I’ve kept in touch with people from other jobs, running into them or having lunch at times, but I’ve never seen 20-30 people leave a company, and still remain strongly bonded together.

The culture at JD Edwards, a 5,000 person company was amazing. It was like a big family and people really built strong relationships there. I was honored to have worked there, and it’s the kind of company that I wish was the rule rather than the exception.

It’s done, though I’m nervous about my laptop repair. The last entry on the machine prior to shipping is “repl hdd""

It’s not the end of the world, but I had already replaced the HDD with a larger one, I could read the one in there and backed up most everything I could think of. Still, my concern is not that I’ve lost data, but that I’ve lost space.

I was going to rebuild to Win 7, so this is a good time to make it happen.

The Denver Tech Trifecta is set for February 27, 2010 at Metro State College in downtown Denver. If you are going to be in the area, make plans to attend. You can register here.

This event was put on last year through a combination of the Windows, SQL Server, and developer groups in the Denver area. It features a number of tracks on different technologies and drew about 500 people last year. The organizers were looking to do another event this year, and while I offered SQL Saturday, they decided with the multi-technology nature of the event they wanted to stick with the Tech Trifecta.

It’s about the community and helping people, not pushing a brand I’m associated with, so I’ll be speaking and attending the event.

We’d love to get some speakers, especially some of you very well known people, to come to town and attend the event. I’ll even offer to take a few people skiing on Friday if you’re up for it. I don’t have a speaker sign-up page

If you want to speak, let us know.

The CIO’s Voice, a blog written by Arun Manansingh, has been mentioned in a number of articles I’ve seen as a good blog to read. I had glanced at it a few times, but wasn’t until recently that I subscribed and added it to my reader. I found a number of articles in there interesting and I’ve been checking them out on a regular basis.

So I was surprised to see Pearl Knowledge Solutions listed in an entry. I’ve known Robert Pearl for years through SQLServerCentral, but not had the pleasure of meeting him in person. However it was nice that his company, which I’ve heard about but never worked with, was mentioned with a bit of a reference in the entry. Since I’ve seen this blog listed elsewhere, it was a little impressive.

If you’re looking for database help, you might check out the recommendation, and then Robert’s company.