It was an exciting week with every minute occupied with conversations with employees and ex-employees. In total we had eight signings, sold over 600 books, and met with over 500 people. (We also sold over 800 books via the virtual book stores at www.fed.org.) I talked at most of these gatherings about the book and how it was organized.

The book is organized into 14 chapters. There is a foreword written by Bill Taylor, co-author of Mavericks at Work. Twelve of the chapters are devoted to topics discussed in the pamphlet, SAIC’s principles and practices. The 13th chapter discusses governance of an employee owned company. The 14th chapter presents my view on both the future of employee ownership and my opinion on new technologies that are going to be important. In the appendix, there is a timeline showing when major events occurred at SAIC and a section on my life before SAIC.

During the tour, I asked people to let us know if they discover mistakes in the book as they are reading it. Let us know via this blog. Also if there are omissions regarding major events, facts, or details, that you feel should be included in the book, let us know. There will be a second edition of the book after the first print run (around 15,000). We’ll try to get changes in the next edition.

It was a pleasant experience seeing people that I hadn’t seen in a long time and meeting some of the superstars still employed at SAIC. A number of good friends held private sessions for Betty and me. The largest and longest event (over 320 people; over 4 1/2 hours) was at SAIC in the Towers. Even members of the board attended. David Tillson and Carla Post did a great job organizing the event at Tysons Corner. A number of employees volunteered and did an outstanding job in assisting in the selling of books. They included Sherry Frye, Janice Hughes, Sally Robb, Betty Carper, Cathy Talbert, Paula Ringer, and Julia Perkins. At other events, Sallie Dill and Mary Ann Brown helped. In San Diego, the support crew includes Diane Fries, Barb Schmidt, Wai-Lean Ross, and Nancy Burriss. And a special thanks to Carol Rathburn, who was the last person to receive an autographed book at the SAIC event.

We spent two days in Norfolk in Virginia attending signing events. Carl Albero was our host and held an AMSEC signing on Monday. Admiral (retired) Harry Train joined us at most of the events and also made a special effort to make our visit enjoyable. I met over 100 people in the two days and visited a nice independent book store, Prince Books. I also met with Jon Glass, a reporter from the Virginian-Pilot. The interview occurred at the Marriot Hotel in Norfolk. His newspaper is widely read in the Tidewater area. With SAIC having around 3000 employees in the area, it served as a vehicle to inform them of the book and my thoughts. Article can be found on the book review section of this blog.

We took over 300 pictures at the event, not including photos taken by others. Some of these will be shown on this blog starting later this week.

As you may know, I have been away from home for about 10 days, and my schedule was so busy that I did not have time to contribute to the blog. I will resume answering questions and contributing material next week. This week I am recovering.

The next public event is Warwick’s in La Jolla on April 19.

Bob