Lotus Rock Star :: Thanks Sami

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Today I had the pleasure of calling into a party being held in Sami Shalabi's honor. Sami is a long-time IBMer who is saying farewell to Big Blue tomorrow, moving on to an entrepreneurial venture. Having been an early early member of The Haiku Team (aka QuickPlace's code name), Sami's contributions to the product have lived on even as he moved forward within IBM.

Sami's a busy guy...and extremely modest as well. So I jumped at the opportunity to relate my "Sami story" from back in 2001/2002...(cue Wayne and Garth...doodle-a-doo, doodle-a-doo)...

In late 2001, developing with QuickPlace was still something of a novelty. Well OK, it is today too, but that's another story. It was only June 2000 when QP2 arrived and developers could really start working with it. Of course I was on the bandwagon back then, and had a few assignments. One of those was an API assignment, customizing the notification messages for an insurance company that had branding as a top concern (clue-it's still hard to do). Well there was a problem with the API, a callback mechanism was missing. I really needed that callback. So, knowing Sami and how friendly he was, I asked him for some help (a cardinal sin five years ago). He was willing to help, but had some really critical deadlines. So I waited patiently, and in fact sat down with him at Lotusphere 2002 and he explained how he could fix my problem with one line of code. Excited, I waited a couple weeks, then reminded him. And a couple more, and a couple more. Busy fella.

So on the advice of a friend, one sunny Thursday in March 2002, I had flowers delivered to Sami at work. The card: "You don't call, you don't write, but we at SNAPPS still love you Sami...".

I had a hotfix on Friday morning.

As I related this story today, the crowd at Sami's going-away party had a good laugh, but even a better one when Satwik (one of the current members of The Haiku Team) carried in another bundle of flowers from me and SNAPPS. The card had gone missing, but I explained what it had said: "To Sami, the only man I've ever sent flowers...twice. Good luck from Rob and the SNAPPS guys..."

Then somewhow the line dropped, and I didn't have time to clarify...but will do so now: I haven't sent any man flowers more than twice, and the ones I sent flowers just once? Well, they were already dead.

So thanks for your help, friendship, enthusiasm, and cheerful outlook on life, Sami. Best of luck and congratulations!

And one more thing, you know who to call if you need an "early adopter" in your next venture!