Crossroads of the World

Wow. What an incredible week this has been. I wrote last time about my excitement in leading Progress through the process of re-communicating our brand values and developing our new brand identity, and the pleasure that came with getting such a positive reaction from our partner and customer community, but what happened last week is going to take some beating. I had the great privilege of joining Phil Pead and the rest of the Progress executive team as Progress Software rang the opening bell on the NASDAQ.

After arriving in New York City to the excitement of the first winter snowfall, I jumped into a bus with some of my colleagues and headed for Times Square. Well, we thought we were heading for Times Square but our driver had other ideas, and were it not for the eagle eyes of our CTO Karen Tegan Padir and a cry of “where are you taking us?!” there would have been a couple of empty spaces on the podium and some very red faces.

Crisis over, we reached Times Square and this is what we saw:



It’s fair to say it was a truly emotional moment for us all, and it was thrilling when David Wicks, VP of NASDAQ OMX introduced our CEO Phil Pead by saying “We couldn’t think of a better location, right here from the crossroads of the world, to help highlight and celebrate Progress’ new brand identity as we get set to open today’s market”. Our heritage of thirty years of innovation and our 20+ year membership of the NASDAQ was being broadcast to the world, all wrapped up in our new brand.

It was a magic moment and something that I personally will never forget. Colleagues, friends and family took great delight in sending messages of congratulations and although it’s not the kind of thing you can take your kids along to, my daughter did find a way of joining me there. When I looked in my bag to find a hairbrush, I found she had replaced “mommy’s brush” with this:



With Thanksgiving just a couple of weeks away it was a timely reminder that I have more than one great privilege in life, I had thought the day couldn’t get any better, but this was the icing on the cake. I may have been stood at ‘the crossroads’, but my heart was on the top of the world.

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