June 02, 2008
Remembering Rosie
My friend Rosie Dalziel died five years ago. Her illness was sudden. Her death was unexpected. I miss her.
Here is what I said at her funeral:
Rosie Dalziel – A Few Words
When Bob first asked me if I'd say a few words today
I was touched and honoured
It seemed the least I could do
Later my feelings changed to those of panic
How could one sum up someone like Rosie in a few words?
I had two problems
First Rosie was a very complex
and
quite private person
Even though I have known her for many years
I still found I was learning
new
and sometimes surprising things about her
right up to the end
My second problem is
that when I think of Rosie
It is often in images
Images that would take a long time to describe in words
Rosie expressed a lot in body language
The expression on her face
a gesture
often told you a lot more than the words she used
So I tried a few devices to try and capture something of what I knew and admired about Rosie
They all felt inadequate
Then I remember something Rosie used to do
when she was in hyperdrive mode
She's throw out a few words
and you were supposed
to understand what she was talking about
Even though a real explanation would have taken
several minutes
if not hours
to explain properly
Some of you may remember her doing this to you
Anyway I thought I'd do a Rosie
and throw a few words at you
But I'm going to be a little more helpful
and give you a bit of context too
My first word is Elegant
because this was my first impression of Rosie
when we met some twenty odd years ago
We were both working in a little college in the East End of London
A tech - a pre-undergraduate institution
with lots of students studying things like plumbing, bricklaying, secretarial skills, that kind of thing
It was very old fashioned, hierarchical and under financed
I can still remember Rosie
coming into the room where I was working
on tour of computer facilities
with some colleagues from her department
At that time I was based in a print room
filled with obsolete typesetting and printing technology
gathering dust
I sat next to the one piece of new technology in the room
a digital typesetter
with my bits of new technology
a computer and some other bits and pieces
that enabled you to do exciting things
like drawing circles and lines on a screen
At that point I had no idea how much Rosie knew about computers
but she listened patiently to what I had to say
as if it was all new to her
I can't remember how many conversations after that it took
but it seemed quite soon afterwards
that she invited me to her home
and we became good friends
Now as I said
in the context of the College and the East End
Rosie seemed like an elegant, glamorous, even a bit exotic, visitor from another world
And I was always rather puzzled about how she'd landed there
(She did tell me, but that's another story)
But coming back to the word elegant
As I got to know her I began to realise that it applied to much more than her appearance
Rosie had an elegant mind
She though like the physicist she was
about all sorts of things
quite unrelated to physics
She had this ability to weave complex networks
of concepts and actions
and hold them all in her head
She also had a highly developed aesthetic sense
she liked beautiful things
and she liked to help to create beautiful things
whether that was a workplace, a brochure a website, an IT system or her home
So elegant, Rosie was definitely elegant
My second word is audacious
I had to look this one up to check that I'd got it right
bold, yes
daring, yes
impudent, well if that means a bit cheeky, yes
Now I discovered this quality in Rosie
while we still both at the little college in the East End
It was at the time of the micro revolution
People from different departments of the college
were buying computers to do all sorts of different things
word processing
engineering drafting
accounting
lots of different stuff
on machines that were largely incompatible
with one another
Rosie was appalled by the chaos and waste
that this approach led to
You could say it was inelegant
She devised a scheme based on a network and a cluster of mini computers
that would mean that everyone
had access to all the computer facilities
available in the College
where ever they were
Now
I had been in the College for much longer than Rosie
and
knew most of the senior people much better
I knew that there was no money available for such a scheme
I also knew that some one as low in hierarchy as Rosie
was unlikely to getting a hearing
let alone
for the scheme to get the go ahead
I was wrong
Somehow Rosie managed to persuade
the Principal and the Governors
to back her scheme wholeheartedly
and it moved ahead
at extraordinary speed
The only flaw in the plan
was that Rosie left
to join a new hi-tech company in the New Docklands
and there was nobody else
who understood what she had designed
However this wasn't seen as a problem
because
parts of her system serviced the administrative needs
of the College
very well
And others were used by an IT course
(one of the first in the country at that level)
that she had set up almost as an aside
But the grand vision disappeared with Rosie
I sometimes used to say that what we had in the College
was a little like
a Jet Plane
that had crashed in the New Guinea jungle
and some of the natives were very excited
because they had managed to discover
how to turn the lights on and off
So we now have two words
Elegant
Audacious
Now my third word Ambitious needs a little explanation
I don't think Rosie was very interested in Fame and Fortune
Indeed I was often puzzled by what drove her
Rosie could have had a very pleasant, easy life
She had plenty of interests that could have kept her
happily engaged and entertained
But instead she seemed to find these monumental
impossibly, ambitious projects that she seemed compelled
to pursue
My sense is that what drove her
was a sense of duty
She would see something that needed doing
and that she could see a solution for
and would go ahead to do it
elegantly and audaciously
(of the course the world being a messy place it didn't always look like that from the outside, but the underlying plan was always beautifully conceived)
I discovered something of the scope of Rosie's ambition
some years after she had left the College
It began reasonably enough
We were standing by the water in London's Docklands
Rosie told me she'd got idea of how to raise some money
for another project of hers
We'd put on a conference
At that point it all seemed quite doable
so I happily agreed to help
However the notion of a money making conference
rapidly disappeared
Instead it became a mission to get European Manufacturing Industry
to understand what had to be done
to make Europe competitive in the global marketplace
Not only that instead of being a conventional conference it became a new kind of conference based on
and I quote here
"an electronic information system allowing a high degree of participation for conference delegates'
This in turn required Bob to design some special conference furniture that enabled groups of delegates to work together using the system
More than that Rosie decided that it was to be held in one of the most prestigious conference centres in London
So we had no money
No experience
No organisation in place to support the mission
And yet somehow
the teams were assembled
to make the whole thing happen
and
miraculously
'New Manufacturing Imperatives', a European Industrial Summit Conference was held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London in January 1988 and in Paris in June the following year
Some time later
a colleague of mine who had worked intensively on the project
and had a few months to recover
said to me
'Has Rosie got another project? I think I ready to jump off a precipice again"
Rosie seemed to inspire that kind of loyalty and affection
among the bright and talented who worked with her
I'm not going to say much about my next word determined
because William Clocksin
who is speaking next
will be covering much of that ground
All I will say is that at some point around the time of the first conference
Rosie had concluded that if European manufacturing was to get the technologies they needed to remain competitive
She would have to set up a group of companies
to invent, develop and deliver them
This final mission was elegant in conception
and audacious and ambitious in scope
What staggered me was the sheer determination of will
she applied to it
Under resourced
Often under supported
She worked long, long hours
and often right through the night
for years and years
to achieve it
There were a number times
when it seemed that the whole mission would collapse
but some how she'd pick it up
and it continued to move forward
I often shared her frustration
at the time it took
and the seemingly unnecessary obstacles
that were put in her way
But she kept going on determinedly
Despite having the option
just to stop
and
to go off to lead a quiet pleasant entertaining life
So these are the four words I throw out
to describe the Rosie I admired
Elegant
Audacious
Ambitious
and Determined
But there was another side to Rosie
a more private, gentle side
that I valued
The words I would use here are
Convivial
Stimulating
and Kind
Rosie was a great companion
a good friend
some one it was enjoyable to be with
I think it was those relaxed times
when we drank endless cups of coffee
and smoked too many cigarettes
and talked
and talked
and talked
about all sorts of things
I think it was those moments I valued above all
and what I am going to miss the most