Follow your bliss – honoring Luke’s memory
As many of you probably already know, next Tuesday October 25th is the 1-year anniversary of the plane crash that killed our friend and former President, Luke Bucklin and his sons. I’ve been thinking for quite a while about how we could best recognize the anniversary at The Nerdery. Many of you have offered a bunch of great ideas, like having a moment of silence, making it a company holiday, or holding some type of memorial event. On a personal level, I want to extend my gratitude to all of you that are thinking about our friend, and offering suggestions on how to honor his memory. He was a lucky guy to have so many people who cared about him. Although I think that all of those ideas are touching and completely appropriate – my difficulty in figuring out what to do stems from the fact that I don’t think that Luke would want us to remember him in such a somber way, nor do I think he’d want some type of grand gesture or memorial happening in his honor each year. Those that knew him probably know that wasn’t really his style.
If there’s one part of Luke’s legacy that you should know about, it’s that he cared about people and their happiness much more than anyone else I know. A famous quote of his (which I’m sure he’d be the first to admit he stole from someone else), was “follow your bliss.” He believed that people needed to chase the things that made them happy in life. Our company’s vision – to be the best place on earth for nerds to work – was the vehicle he used to make that a reality for many of us. The more that I reflect on the things that he did and the decisions he made, the more I realize how important that was to him.
Instead of doing something grand to memorialize the day, I’d like to do something a little bit more low-key, un-produced, un-organized, and focused on the part of The Nerdery that really mattered to Luke – you guys and your being part of the team – Co-Presidents if you will. What I would like to do on Tuesday is ask that you take the opportunity to spend a little bit more time than normal to hang out and get to know each other a little better. The company is going to bring in lunch around 12:00 and set it up in the Nerditorium (in the kitchen area for you Chicago folks I guess). Please come in and spend at least part of your lunch with us. There won’t be a program. Nobody’s going to talk. Instead, please take the time to talk to someone you’ve not talked to before, get the name of someone you’ve only seen in the hall, or maybe just understand “bliss” for someone that you already know really well. If you do any or all of those things, you’ll be honoring Luke’s memory in a way that, I assure you, he would appreciate.
Another thing that we’re finally ready to announce is something that many of you have been asking about for a long time. We’ve created a repository of all of Luke’s famous 2AM emails in the Mainframe. If you didn’t have a chance to meet Luke or haven’t heard – he had a strange habit of waiting until the middle of the night to finally find the inspiration to send out an all-staff email. Interestingly, I think that his cloudy thinking from lack of sleep actually make the message clearer for all of us, and helped him hone in on the important parts of what we do. His humor and ability to inspire people to achieve in these messages is a big part of our history, and definitely worth reading when you have some time.
