The Pursuit of Happyness & Chris Gardner... what "some" of the audience didn't tell you

By the time it was time for the surprise guest speaker to come on stage and wrap up the day, I was focusing hard on testing how far down my chair I could slide without actually falling off it. All I could hear was a vague buzz buzz... buzz buzz buzz... and then suddenly "Pursuit of Happyness"! That made me sit up rather quick and promptly feather up my layers (for the naive ignorant, that's part of a haircut) because I had these 2 uplifting microseconds of feverish blissful hope that the guest speaker was Will Smith! :D It wasn't though; as Chris Gardner rightly said, Will would probably not fit the budget ; )

Jokes apart, he was brilliant. There were of course the cheesy moments when people actually applauded the worst nightmares this guy's had in his life (doh!), but to hear the story from the man himself was very deeply moving. For those who didn't know, in real life his son was actually only 14 months old when they became homeless, not 5 years old as in the movie. Also, for those who didn't know, some of the audience was not reduced to tears. They fell.

Pleasantly surprising close to the day though. IBM we're told have a history of getting some rather special people to talk at their conferences; apparently they had Neil Armstrong Himself share his experience a few years ago. Anyway, I'm buying the Pursuit of Happyness book as soon as I'm back in the UK. And Brian said he'll be watching the movie, so I'm guessing some of the audience although they'll never admit to it did get a bit touchy feely about things eh? ; )

On this note, more after the breakout sessions tomorrow.