I had set my alarm early to call in to an all-day IBM meeting on the East Coast (normally, I would have gone there in person, but travel money was tight).
I dialed into the conference bridge, and after giving my password, the first thing I heard was someone saying “and they’ve bombed the Pentagon, too.”
My first instinct was to go to the Top Stories page on the New York Times’ website. But it didn’t respond. I tried CNN; it didn’t respond either.
So I turned on the TV, and a minute later, walked back to the phone and told the people in the (TV-less) conference room that I’d just seen one of the towers of the World Trade Center collapse.
Somehow, we actually tried to get through the first presentation, but no one’s mind was really on the subject. And after that, the call and meeting just sort of ended; there were more important things to think about.
Today…
I’m at a three-day IBM meeting on the East Coast. In four minutes, we’ll observe a moment of silence for those who were murdered one year ago today.