Memoir from Lois

It is hard to write about Larry, since I am feeling guilty about not responding to my own instincts (which were that he was lonely and needed money and sympathy) and barrage of data sculpting/share point related emails from him about a month a ago that I couldn’t and didn’t try to open. At work, there were usually blockers keeping me from opening the emails, so I deleted them without trying. Many times as I have walked to work from Cathedral Hill down Laguna past Grove, I’d think of Larry in his small upper floor techno paradise apartment, wondering if he had been up all night capturing media to sculpt and share, wondering if he’d found or sought a “day job” to pay for all the equipment or if he still managed to be a tester and get free stuff from that. I guess I worried that if I rang his bell, I’d be hours late to work. And now I ask myself so what? Last week, however, I found myself drawn to the front door, to his name, still on the electronic roster. I read his name, but did not ring the bell. I felt sad. I remembered his surveillance webcam on the street – and wondered was it still set to watch?

In better times when I knew him in the Planning Department, Larry was a purveyor of joy and innovation, in what computers could do and what we could do with computers. He wanted them to be used to facilitate communication, more effective organizations and leveling of playing fields. Larry, on one level, was dismissive and angry with unions in general and Local 21 in particular. The layoff process, the holdover list and his subsequent placement at the School District and internal poisoning of the placement that took place, were difficult. The union rep felt spread too thin to help monitor placements where agencies forced to take on holdovers often mistreated them. In Larry’s case this was compounded by colleagues who felt compelled to warn the School District about Larry’s big ideas and sense of his own rather than bureaucratic priorities. However, in his heart and his real values, I think he saw technology as a great enabler of equality and empowerment, these being core values, at least for me, for the labor movement.

Strange also that last week, the prescience of the Share point approach that Larry advocated was utilized by the technos at the Department of Building Inspection to make their new Director and the “Business Process Re- Engineering” he’s launched with stakeholder groups including industry folks. He dazzled the Mayor with how this project and its process maps were on the web and shared with participants in a Google group. The Mayor even said he hoped the new Planning Director (whom he is apparently in the process of appointing) would be able to do this kind of work with the new DBI Director.

Happy but kind of bittersweet memories - include his pleasure in computer tools and his willingness to explain and install them for me, of another generation, and a low level of expertise. But later with successive upgrades, much of what he had put in at work got removed. Probably I should have tried to get more connected at home, but Bernie feared extensive overloads of information and capacity. As Amit wrote, specialized software we use in Planning such an “electronic sign in board” came from his creativity and always included a bit of sizzle and flash. It seems that his extensive extra curricular work and the deep disagreements he had with his colleagues on the best platforms etc, appeared to make it look like he didn’t fit into the organization. How sad for Planning that his genius could not be recognized. There have been times in the past when staff members, odd and brilliant, made very significant contributions to San Francisco’s future. How sad that control or perceptions of control, become more paramount than contributions and ideas and passion.


Lois Scott
August 5, 2007