Undo by Joe Hutsko (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

“Matthew, this is everything.” Eileen said, placing a manila folder before him on his desk. “You’ve got about ten minutes before the meeting begins,” she said, then closed his office door. He opened the folder. Before him was an assortment of transparencies, his presentation to the board of directors and executive staff.

Yesterday’s introduction of the new Joey Plus, which was warmly received by the press and the user community, would certainly work in his favor this morning when he detailed his plan for ICP connectivity.

He flipped through the films. They were perfect. He felt armed and ready to face for the first time all of Wallaby’s power players in the very room from which three months earlier he had ejected Peter Jones.

His intercom beeped softly, and he looked out of his glass office at Eileen. She tapped her wristwatch. It was time to start the meeting.

He nodded and shuffled the films and his notes together into the folder and headed for the meeting. Just as he reached for the boardroom door, it opened. Hank Towers appeared carrying a small plate.

“Good morning, Matthew,” Hank said brightly. “Give me just a second for seconds,” he said, gesturing at the remaining treats arranged on the long table outside the conference room.

Matthew laughed good-naturedly and went inside. “Good morning,” he said, addressing everyone seated around the table. He set down his materials beside the overhead projector. Finishing sentences or the last bite of a muffin or looking up from their agendas, the board members and executive staff voiced their good mornings.

“We’re just waiting for Hank,” Matthew said. Just then Hank entered the room smiling sheepishly over a plate of fresh fruit salad.

“Matthew, congratulations on the Joey Plus,” Hank said. The others followed with congratulations, and someone clapped. Another pair of hands joined in, and then another, until the entire room was applauding his success.

“Thank you,” Matthew said. “But the congratulations should go to all of your people who made the development of the Joey Plus successful.” His smile swept each face at the table.

Martin Cohn stood and announced the agenda, a copy of which rested before each person. Four items down the list was “The Whole World In Your Hand: Wallaby’s Future - Matthew.”

After ninety minutes of standard status reports, discussion, and voting, it was time for Matthew’s presentation, and he stood. “Should we break for a few minutes before I begin?”

He knew his agenda title had them all intrigued - this would be the first time anyone but Peter had revealed a major future strategy for Wallaby. No one stood or motioned departure.

He dimmed the room lights, then switched on the overhead projector and advanced to the first slide, a modified Wallaby logo. Normally the logo depicted the baby kangaroo poking its head out of a pocket, but Matthew’s slide showed only the joey and no pocket.

“At Wallaby,” he began, “we’ve always been intensely focused on the idea of people using a portable computer for their personal tasks and needs. This had been a successful strategy, inherent in our culture because we got our start by giving people the power to use our portable personal computers for exactly that: very personal computing.

“But to some degree, we’ve been in the dark. In the early days we succeeded because we were the only players. But we lost our number-one status to our largest competitor, ICP.”

He changed to the next slide and paused for a moment, allowing the visual analogy depicted to sink in. The slide showed the same lone joey, offset to the bottom left corner of the frame, and a sketch of the earth with the initials ICP stretching around it.

“International Computer Products is everywhere. They own the world of mainstream computing. There’s hardly any big business, organization, or function in the world that doesn’t in some way use ICP’s products for its information processing.”

The next slide showed the Joey Plus screen with little filing cabinets and documents positioned here and there. “By design, Wallaby’s Joey Plus is the choice method of computing. The user community has stated that, and we all know that.

“But competition from ICP with its BP system, regardless of its inferior technology, continues to grow at a steady rate. The ICP logo on the front of its desktop and portable computers makes them mentally compatible with its mainframe computers. And for the past decade at Wallaby, we’ve all held a resentful attitude toward ICP. This is due, in part, to the premise upon which the company was founded. We’re a small, free-spirited company, providing people with personal mobile computing tools contrary to what ICP has represented throughout its history - people acting as slaves to headquarters and mainframes.”

He then showed a slide bearing an ICP BP computer graphic with a circle around it and a slash through it, like the “No Smoking” signs found in public areas. A few chuckles emerged from the darkness.

“Consequently - by design, if you will - few of us at Wallaby are apt to perceive an opportunity that could take advantage of ICP’s Goliath size. Locked into our rivalry with ICP, we’re too busy reacting, competing with our portable computer technology as if we had a chance to displace its impersonal, worldwide installed-base of systems.”

He let them absorb this truth for a few moments, then removed the slide, allowing a pause before asking his next question.

“But what if the Joey Plus were equipped to make a huge leap into the big game?”

Chairs creaked, and elbows settled on the table as those seated around the table moved forward to more attentive positions. The next slide showed the Wallaby Joey Plus computer screen again. But in this one, the ICP globe logo was orbiting within it, with the baby kangaroo hopping from the U.S., across the Atlantic, to Europe.

Matthew heard whispers and low voices. In an instant he understood his position with profound clarity. Here he stood, in the place that for the last decade had been occupied by Peter Jones, with his hand on the lever that, once thrown, would forever alter the focus of Wallaby. He threw it.

“I believe that Wallaby has the potential to penetrate the worldwide installed-base of ICP computer users by becoming more compatible with ICP systems.”

Not surprisingly, Hank was the first to protest. Incredulous, he rose from his seat. “Matthew, are you proposing we build an ICP clone computer?” His alarm was amplified by the others, and the room suddenly erupted into a rumble of questioning voices.

“Wait. Listen,” Matthew pleaded. “Please.”

Hank dropped back in his chair, turning his attention to Matthew. The others followed his lead and quieted.

“No. Hank. We would not, not ever, develop systems that operated ICP’s system software. First of all, we would continue with our design to evolve the Joey hardware, adding a simple, inexpensive port that would provide an easy connection to ICP mainframes and workgroup networks. Second, we would implement system software communication hooks in our operating system, which would read and understand file formats and information from ICP systems. These hooks are what would enable the user to easily manage the massive ICP mainframe databases from within Joey software applications, as well as share data between personal programs like word processing documents, spreadsheets, and