Departure Photos

While the company moving from 102nd Street to the Clocktower isn't ICOM, it does involve a lot of former ICOM employees moving out of the last building that ICOM called home. Photos and video of our final toast to the old place are now available right here.

Enjoy!

 

Happily Ever After

In an email message to the company dated October 21, 1994, Steve Burt officially announced that ICOM would be merging with Allen-Bradley to form a new automation software company with a new name. "Merge" was the actual verb used, though in many of our minds this conjured the image of a bug merging with the windshield of a speeding Peterbilt.

Rumors of the merger had floated around for weeks, gradually solidifying as more details leaked out. By the time Steve's copy of the press release hit our inboxes, there was little surprise, but plenty of uncertainty. In the meeting late that day, Scott Zifferer and Rich Ryan did their best to reassure us that this wasn't the end.

Sure enough, the world kept spinning and the sun came up Saturday morning. Come Monday, we all showed up for work. We didn't yet know the name of the company we were working for, but we still had projects to complete, and the faces in the hallways were the same faces we saw the week before.

There we were, living proof of the afterlife. Not really dead, just... passed on.

That's the way it is with endings. The classic fairy tale winds up with a quip about everyone living happily ever after, though by the time we're adults we know that, in reality, a lot of what comes later isn't all so flowery. Cinderella might get drunk at the next ball, or Prince Charming might come home smelling like Snow White, and even if they make it through that, well, sooner or later one of them is going to be burying the other. But "happily ever after" lets us close the book while we still feel good about it.

October 21, 1994 is, for the purposes of ICOM and this website, where we place our "happily ever after" marker.

Nearly a decade after that marker however, another chapter in the larger story is closing, and it's difficult not to feel a little sentimental about it. Later today, Thursday, June 17, 2004, Rockwell Software employees will leave the building at 2424 South 102nd Street in West Allis for the last time. Everything will have been packed by tonight, in readiness for the movers on Friday morning. Come Monday, Rockwell Software's home will be in one of Allen-Bradley's buildings in downtown Milwaukee.

ICOM first moved into the 102nd Street building in June of 1990, and it seemed vast; how could we ever grow to fill it? The move into that building was a happy one; we were thriving, and growing, and proud that we'd managed to come so far from that first shabby apartment we used for office space. That building holds a lot of good memories, and a few bad ones as well. In leaving it, we also leave behind a piece of our shared past, that of ICOM at its pinnacle.

Most painfully, it is also time to bid farewell to the Garcia family, friends who have been cooking our meals for most of our time in the 102nd Street building, and cleaning for us since before we moved in. Carlos, Delia, Sylvia, Belinda, Julian, and the rest: we love you all. Keep in touch, and be well.

Live happily ever after.

Hello.com

I posted the two previous photos using a free program called Hello at http://www.hello.com.

It's pretty easy to use, and it communicates with Blogger directly, with settings for thumbnail size and a couple of other things.

What we really need are some old photos, like on moving day...

- Duane

Tim, Janice, Craig, Duane, and Dave in May of 2004

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