December 23-27, 1979: Christmas in North Carolina
	December 10-14, 1979: A Trip to Las Vegas
	Return to Index for 1979

On Friday evening, I took a short flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Chris Gane was calling a meeting of all the IST Consultants, and he wanted me to attend, assuming that I would be joining that group of consultants.

After my class was over on Friday, I drove directly to McCarran International Airport, turned in my rental car, and hopped on a shuttle flight over to Los Angeles- less than an hour in the air.

At LAX, I just took a cab to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel where IST had already made a reservation for me. I might have rented a car to perhaps visit some more Baskin-Robbins stores in LA, but I was pretty sure that the weekend would be full enough with our meetings. Anyway, I had a flight back to Chicago early on Sunday afternoon, so there wouldn't have been a whole lot of time anyway.

Los Angeles is a lot like Chicago or New York as far as the cost of things goes; the taxi ride to the hotel wasn't cheap by any means, but I can only assume that trying to park a car at a premier hotel like the Beverly Wilshire wouldn't have been cheap either. So I was happy not to futz with a car at all. I should have taken a picture of the hotel when I arrived, but it was dark anyway, so below is a current view courtesy of Google Maps Street View:

Before I talk about the meeting itself, I'd like to say a bit about the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The Beverly Wilshire is a historic luxury hotel. Located at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, it was completed in 1928. It has been used as a shooting location for many films and television series, and guests have included US Presidents and all manner of other celebrities. I had a look at the bill for my own room; I have never stayed in a room costing as much ($345)- even in New York City. (NOTE: I got curious at what rooms at the hotel cost in 2019, when some of this narrative is being written. Rooms begin at $825 per night, while suites start at $1,500 per night.)

In the aerial view at right, you are actually looking at the back of the hotel, but you can see Wilshire Boulevard running in front of the hotel and Rodeo Drive beginning right across the street and angling to the northwest.

The hotel was constructed by real estate developer Walter G. McCarty on the site of the former Beverly Hills Speedway. It was completed in 1928 (when the city had fewer than 18,000 residents), and was then known as the "Beverly Wilshire Apartment Hotel". The E-shaped structure is built of a Tuscan stone and Carrara marble in the Italian Renaissance architecture style.

Renamed the Beverly Wilshire Hotel by new owners, it was renovated with a ballroom in the 1940s to accommodate the popular big bands of the day. An Olympic-sized swimming pool was built and championship tennis courts were added, with tennis champion Pancho Gonzalez as tennis director.

The hotel changed hands in 1958 and again in 1961, and a new tower wing was added in 1971, doubling the size of the hotel. Since 1971 it has been essentially unchanged. (I can say from my 2019 vantage point that the hotel changed hands five times since my stay, at one point becoming part of the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts group. It is currently owned by a private equity firm, but still retains the Four Seasons name.)

The hotel featured prominently in quite a few movies through the 1970s, but its starring role would not come until 1990 and the film Pretty Woman starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. That classic movie showed the hotel off to good advantage (although most of the interior shots were filmed at the defunct Ambassador Hotel nearby). I'd go get a clip from the movie to put here, but I think that if you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to have a look at the entire film.

I checked in and got settled, and found a message from Greg waiting for me that everyone was going to have a late supper, so I changed and went down to the lobby. Chris Gane and many of the other instructors were there, and Chris took all of us to a very nice dinner right in the hotel restaurant. I got a chance to meet just about everyone on staff.

After dinner, Greg and I walked out onto Wilshire Boulevard to see what the area was like, and then returned to his room so he could find out how my first few classes had gone. Chris had already said something at dinner about how he had already gotten reports that his newest instructor was doing very well, so Greg already knew that that part of my transition was going well. But he wanted to know whether I'd made a final decision yet about what I was going to do.

I told him about my conversations with Tony and John Cullinane at the User Week, and that the plan was that by the first of the year I would tell John whether I would be leaving or not. Greg understands me quite well, and he knows that when I get comfortable with something I am reluctant to change it- whether it's where a piece of furniture sits in my apartment or what job I have. Greg is pretty opposite me in that respect; he embraces change, welcomes it, and indeed goes after it periodically.

We had a good conversation; of course, Greg's input was that he was extremely happy with the work he was doing, the freedom he had to do or not do a particular class, and especially the fee he was earning (which, he said, was about to be increased for everyone across the board). We returned to the hotel, and the next morning met in the lobby for some breakfast. That's when I took the picture at left of the announcement board in the lobby.

After breakfast, we all went to one of the hotel's meeting rooms for our gathering. One of the nice things about the IST people was that, even though I was just trying the job on for size, everyone treated me as if I were a full-fledged instructor. I guess that's because many of the IST instructors do not do the classes full-time; they have their own consulting firms or they work for other firms also. So it's nothing unique to have an instructor who just does a few classes a month.

In our morning meeting, Chris reviewed the company's status, and said that the number of classes being scheduled could keep everyone as busy as they wanted to be, and that he was continuing to look for more consultants to handle the load. He also talked about the new systems development methodology that he, Greg, Trish, and other consultants were working on. It would be called STRADIS (STRuctured Analysis and Design of Information Systems) and would be a whole new education and consulting opportunity for us. The methodology was new to me, but I was able to participate in discussions about it, further reinforcing my feeling that even though I'd done only a small amount of systems development work, I could make a success of doing classes for IST.

At right is a picture I took at lunch, and I very much wish it had turned out better (or that I'd been using print film instead of slides). At the left, we have Mona Piontkowski, who was the main secretary in the New York office, and then moving around the table are Greg, Don Higgins, the primary instructor for Europe, two consultants whose names I have forgotten, and Chris Gane (with his pipe). Turning around to face me is another prospective consultant, Rick Stilwell, who lives in Dallas.

After lunch, we had more meetings in the afternoon, and even got together out by the pool. We did another dinner together, and Chris brought the official session to a close. He would be taking a flight very early in the morning back to New York, but encouraged the rest of us to get to know each other as much as possible before our individual flights home. Late that evening, Greg took me with him out to West Hollywood to one the bars he knew well. I knew that Greg was gay; he'd told me all about himself when I went out to stay with him in California when we were working on EEO_REPORTER for Cullinane. Being in gay bars didn't make me uncomfortable at all, and I enjoyed talking with Greg's friends. I also, I have to say, enjoy the occasional times when someone approaches me for a conversation, although I'm not inclined to do much more than that.

I cam away from Los Angeles almost resolved to leave Cullinane and go with IST. The only problem was the people. Not at IST, but at Cullinane. I was so familiar with them all, and they seemed so much like family, that I told John it was very difficult to make a decision to leave- no matter what the benefits I might hope to get. The end result was that for about a month I postponed the decision. At first, I said the end of the year. Then, when Cullinane had two classes that were best suited for me, I agreed to extend to January 15th, holding IST in the wings meanwhile. It was Tony who finally made me realize that I wasn't helping the situation any through postponement, and so I finally made a decision to leave on the 21st of January, 1980, after trips for Cullinane to New Jersey and back to Florida.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	December 23-27, 1979: Christmas in North Carolina
	December 10-14, 1979: A Trip to Las Vegas
	Return to Index for 1979