Family Life

We had our annual Gloria Music board meeting today. Imagine a long oak table, in a room paneled with dark wood. High-backed leather executive chairs surround the table, and there’s a leather blotter at each place. Notepad and pen lie on each blotter, with a glass in the corner. There are a couple of mints beside each glass. Two steel water pitchers sit on the table, glistening with condensation. You know they’re cold. Thirteen people sit at the table, and for five and a half hours we look at last year’s performance and plot the coming year’s course. It looked like a real board meeting. It felt like a real board meeting. Appearances matter.

The photo here is of our annual meeting in 2003. We met at a cottage, sitting on beds and couches and rockers. Very informal, a totally different flavour from today’s event. Ernie (front, centre) has since died. Rolf and Phyllis (second from the left, back & front rows) resigned from the board today. Our new chairman, Ken, wasn’t there.

I’ve been involved with Gloria all my adult life. It seems like such a permanent fixture, and yet in just four years there have been changes. People move on. New people arrive. Nevertheless, this year change is good. The last few years have been quite frustrating, but we now have a new direction, new development partners, the books are completely in the black, and the future looks bright. We’re shipping product (Gloria 2) and we’re looking ahead to Gloria 3.

When will I have time for all this new work? No, I don’t know either. So much to do, so little time.

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