On Tuesday, August 10, 2010, Kevin went to Atlanta to do the paperwork, answer all the history questions, and perform the hand-over-heart oath-swearing necessary to become an American Citizen. Kevin still talks with that British accent of his and drinks an excessive amount of hot tea, but even so all of his American staff at QiSOFT are very proud of him.
I’ve promised to teach Kevin all the “new” words to God Save the Queen, if he needs me to. And, unlike this current generation (old person grumble) I actually know all the words to the Star Spangled Banner and will be happy to share. I find it’s always good to be current on national tunes, as you never know when someone will ask you to lead a parade and sing about it.
Being a half-breed, with an American mother and British-born father, I quite enjoy the mixed national ancestry around the QiSOFT office that lets me overhear sentences like, “Will I just go put the kettle on, then?”
(FYI: The answer is always, “Yes.”)
Kevin’s roots are anchored in British soil. Based on personal experience they always will be, but he has now given his heart to America, and America is a better country for that gift. I wasn’t even born when my Dad, Yon Swanson, became a naturalized American Citizen, but I was around when he wrote the following, which seems to fit this special occasion nicely:
LOVE
America is my wife to me
As England is my mother,
And in between the restless sea
Goes, like my heart, full constantly
To caress, in turn, the other.
I was enjoying one of my office visits with Franklin. He was telling me about his recent trip to one of the sites he deals with on line and on the phone.
“They hadn’t installed a single one of the upgrades we’ve sent them for the past several years,” he said, shaking his head in baffled wonder at that enormity. As he talked I was nodding in all the right places when suddenly the light bulb went on right over my head, blinding everyone nearby.
Good grief, I suddenly realized. Franklin is one of THEM!!!
And while I’d actually like to leave this whole topic right here, I suppose being the way you are that you’ll want some sort of explanation, so here goes:
I’ve always vaguely understood what Franklin does around this place. He’s pretty much always busy communicating (on line or on the phone) with one of our customers, so I knew he helped them with their understanding of our software.
What I hadn’t “got” till my aha moment was a huge component of his job is to help people like me come to terms with the fact their known and loved software program has been changed for the better. It gave me a brand new respect for how difficult Franklin’s job actually is, because people like me don’t ever believe that.
When people like me log onto the Internet and find a “new and improved” version of our server, for instance, we never say, “Wow! Look at this spiffy-nifty new web page. I wonder what wonderful features it offers me?”
Instead, we go mental and say very, very bad words. We get very annoyed that the icon for our mail is now on the right instead of the left side of the screen, and that the news feature has been dropped to the bottom of the page. Sometimes we even weep. “Why can’t they leave things alone,” we grumble, forgetting that if “they” actually had, we wouldn’t even have an email page to complain about.
Gather ‘round now children while I, one of your old ones, tell you of our history … “long, long ago we didn’t even have such a thing as email and our lives were dark. Without the Internet our ignorance was complete. Then, one day, the dogs stopped howling when our tribal leader, Kevin-of-the-technaspear, spoke of a wonderful far land, a place where new is better, and our mantra of great power is to be faster, smarter, better, and more accessible …”
Yes, change in technology is a good thing. And our software, with its already unimaginably slick and useful megagigabits, is constantly kept ahead of the curve to make our customers’ lives better.
Here’s the best part. Unlike my email server, when it’s time for a QiSOFT upgrade, along with the new and improved service you also get a patient, knowledgeable, soft-spoken person (Franklin being one of them) to walk you through it and help you enjoy - and benefit from - the changes.
That same day Kevin told me there’s an entire European country that consistently resists software changes, choosing to ignore every one of them and then getting an entirely new system every decade or so.
I would tell you the name of that country, but as we do quite a lot of business there, I’m going to have to let you just speculate to your heart’s content. It’s no good trying to wheedle this information out of me either. I have prudently sealed my bloglips on this topic.
I know I promised to let you in on the doings at the UK office this time, but they’ve been very busy getting ready for a couple of big trade shows, Softworld 2010, in the London area on October 19th and 20th, and another in Manchester Central called Business North West, on October 27th and 28th … and then there’s a MESA Conference in November … so they are far too busy at the moment to talk with the likes of me.
But I promise, promise, promise – fingers crossed (wink) – that I’ll tell you in much more detail what they’re doing over there in Kevin’s Old Country in the very next blog.
I may actually do that, too, but you will learn over time that I actually lie quite a lot about what I plan to talk about in the next blog. I suggest you relax and get used to it.