by Tom Rieke

Q's second 25th-anniversary celebration, July 30 in Boston, attracted Q friends from around the world to the Barking Crab, a seafood joint with a dramatic view of downtown. The weather was perfect.  So was the timing;  the first day of SIGGRAPH 2006.  And one group of guests pulled off an astounding surprise.

The official Q delegation included operatives from San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, and Ann Arbor.  So before the party officially opened, we had a mini-reunion of the American Q family and wondered if anybody would show up to help us celebrate. 

Early arrivals included special guests John Bidwell and Kris Holloway.  When they lived in Ann Arbor in the 90s, Kris was studying at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and John was a very talented designer at Q New World.  Now they live in western Massachusetts, where John manages a branding and identity firm (Bidwell Design) and Kris recently finished a book (Monique and the Mango Rains) about an extraordinary midwife she met in Mali when she and John were Peace Corps workers there.  They joined the reunion.

A few minutes later, I realized that we could stop worrying about attendance.  The party was packed, and we were greeting guests from Palo Alto, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Iowa City, Tucson, Columbus, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, Zürich, Montréal, Calgary, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, and Mexico City. 

It was a festive crowd.  But I had a few moments of regret, because our friends from Q Old Europe weren't there.  A few weeks before the Boston party, I was in Wiesbaden to attend the concert they sponsored in this year's Rheingau Musik Festival, one of their major clients, and eine Partei für Freunde und Klienten.  Then I flew to Boston, and Thilo von Debschitz, one of the two principals at Q Old Europe, went to Mallorca for a family vacation.  We agreed that we would try to meet again next year, somewhere. 

So I was suddenly speechless in Boston when I looked up from a conversation about my visit to Weisbaden and saw Thilo and his wife, Ute, and children, Clara and Flora, walk into the Barking Crab.  They carried out a flawless covert mission.  Mallorca was the cover story. Instead, they went to New York for a few days and then to Boston for the Q party. 

I am now planning a similar (but, of course, surprisingly different) mission for Q Old World's 25th anniversary.