Wow....

Went to a benefit tonight for the Longmont Community Foundation. It's a city foundation that controls assets of more than $7 million, and uses the profits from the funds to support the non-profits in Longmont, CO.

My hometown. It's a conglomeration of a good deal of the local businesses, the people in the city, and lots of other people acting together to make life better in the St. Vrain Valley. They help everyone and everything from the schools to women at risk to the homeless to those planting trees to the local museum to... well... you can look at their website.

They invited us and a whole table full of people that knew myJohn from all his work in Longmont to combat homelessness. John was up as one of the four nominees for the Bright Spark award, a single person who has inspired many to contribute to the non-profits of the city. And they were pretty detailed about what each of the people had done in the community. The process was pretty intense, with lots of applicants, and they narrowed them down to these four. But the scores were so close, that while they had to pick one, it was sooooo close that they decided to split the thousand dollars to be given to them to donate to the non-profit of their choice. They split it evenly, four ways among them. And, after, they all congratulated each other, and the organizers gave John a lovely fused glass bowl for a marker for his involvement.

That was really cool!

One of the more amusing things was that Xilinx, the company that brought us here from Redmond, was up as one of the corporate sponsors, and they outright won their prize. That was kind of funny, especially since the boss of our group, who all moved over with him, was the one that accepted the prize.

So it was a very interesting night. I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted on the second installment of my Oakland adventures, so you'll just get this tonight. But I am pretty confident I'll get it posted tomorrow.