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« Thoughts on Thought Leadership | Main | Millennial Comm-marketers Blaze the Digital Way... » Everything's Dead But The Future -- Fitting Epitaph for John BeardsleyPosted by Matt Kucharski on September 6, 2010 at September 6, 2010 5:42 PMI've been dreading this post all weekend. My mentor, inspiration and friend John Beardsley, Padilla Speer Beardsley's former CEO, died Thursday evening after complications from heart surgery. He was 73, and he wasn't ready to go. Too many truths left to discover, too many ideas left to share. It was an honor to be one he shared them with, and like the others, I'm a better professional and person for it. With a voice as suited for Shakespeare theater as for the boardroom, Beardsley would shout "Everything's Dead But The Future!" And he believed it. There was nobody from his generation more in tune with the next big thing. He was evangelizing the potential of the Internet when it was still ARPAnet. He declared the beginning of the mobile computing revolution the day he came home with one of the first (and only) Apple Newtons. He used to have a book in his office on the social behavior of ants -- and I'll be damned if he didn't use it to talk about social networks. His idols were people who were the vanguard of discovery and philosophy. Lewis and Clark. Albert Einstein. Max Planck, Thucydides, Lazersfeld (look the last three up -- he made me do it, so you should have to as well). One of John's enduring passions was a quest to demonstrate the value -- the necessity -- of communications in influencing behavior. He was doing it right up to the end -- studying social network theory and hoping to find a formula to increase the probability and predictability of human beings in socially networked environments. He was onto something, and he never got a chance to finish it. That sucks -- not just for him, but for all of us. This is starting to get a little self-indulgent, and that's not something John tolerated, so I think it best to leave you with one of his favorite poems. He chose it for one of our holiday broadsides, he shared it with staff when he retired, and it seems fitting to share it with you. After Working
After many strange thoughts,
Thoughts of distant harbors, and new life, Outside it covers the trees like pure sound,
The sound of tower bells, or of water moving under the ice, We know the road, as the moonlight
Lifts everything, so in a night like this - Robert Bly
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsThank you, Matt. I can only imagine how difficult this was to write (especially knowing that one grammatical error would have brought John back to chastise you in person). Bravo on a memorial well-done that would have made John proud. He was a an exceptional man who lived an exceptional life and touched his family, friends, community and world in an exceptional way. I am better for having known him. Posted by: Roger Friedensen at September 8, 2010 11:18 AM Post a comment |
