Conference Colleagues
The Master and Margarita, District Dining, Dave Matthews Band, Chauncey Billups, Supersized Sushi
Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This issue includes colleagues I met up with in Washington, a Russian underground masterpiece, meals I had in DC, a Charlottesville jam band, Mister Big Shot, and a different kind of California cake. I hope you like the picks and pics.
Barb and I have been in the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) for over a week. I had the honor of being presented with the KM Community Award last week at the annual KMWorld conference.
My former Deloitte colleague and great friend, Adriaan Jooste, took the photo above, and then posed with me for the one below.
I was touched by the lovely video tribute from knowledge management thought leader Patrick Lambe, who introduced my award:
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Fave Five 112: Conference Colleagues
Mikhail and Michael (The Master and Margarita), District Dining (Joe's Seafood, Old Ebbitt Grill, Le Diplomate, Founding Farmers), DMB in the DMV (Dave Matthews Band), Colorado Cager (Chauncey Billups, and Supersized Sushi.
Fave Five List: Photos of Colleagues at KMWorld 2024
KMWorld is where I get to have an annual reunion with friends and colleagues in my profession—knowledge management (KM). I met up with many of them last week in downtown Washington, DC, and here are photos of ten of them.
Cindy Hubert of APQC, Maggie Starkey of Kraton, Lynda Braksiek of APQC, and Rachel Teague of Disruption Learning & Technology
Moria Levy of ROM Global (from Israel) and Ninez Piezas-Jerbi of Ninez Now Coaching
Emily Harburg of PairUp
Adriana Jacinto of United Nations Human Rights (from Switzerland)
Rebecka Isaksson of KnowFlow Value and Dawn Brushammar of Sugarwork (both from Sweden)—they interviewed me for a Knowledge Fika podcast episode that will be available in January 2025.
Honorable Mention: Rebecka’s feet next to her signed copy of my book
Book Best Bet
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Michael Glenny
I read this book while in high school, borrowing it from my mom. I met the translator, Michael Glenny, in St. Louis in the 1970s. He and his second wife, Valery Hartley-Brewer, were friends of my parents. He was a delightful man.
I read some of Bulgakov’s stories in a class on Russian literature my freshman year at Northwestern University. I had studied Russian in high school and had read and enjoyed several Russian novels (in translation), but I bit off more that I could chew when I enrolled in that upper-level class. It started out well, but I couldn’t keep up with all of the reading as the quarter progressed. I preferred my introductory computer programming class, which foreshadowed changing my major from journalism to computer science.
From Amazon: This underground masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian fiction was written during Stalin’s regime and could not be published until many years after its author’s death. The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil's onslaught.
When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a psychiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.
Suppressed in the Soviet Union for twenty-six years, Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece is an ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on human frailty and the strength of love. Featuring Satan, accompanied by a retinue that includes the large, fast-talking vodka-drinking black tom cat Behemoth, the beautiful Margarita, her beloved—a distraught writer known only as the Master—Pontius Pilate, and Jesus Christ, The Master and Margarita combines fable, fantasy, political satire, and slapstick comedy into a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale that is commonly considered one of the greatest novels ever to come out of the Soviet Union.
Satan, Judas, a Soviet writer, and a talking black cat named Behemoth populate this satire, “a classic of twentieth-century fiction” (The New York Times).
In 1930s Moscow, Satan decides to pay the good people of the Soviet Union a visit. In old Jerusalem, the fateful meeting of Pilate and Yeshua and the murder of Judas in the garden of Gethsemane unfold.
At the intersection of fantasy and realism, satire and unflinching emotional truths, Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic The Master and Margarita eloquently lampoons every aspect of Soviet life under Stalin’s regime, from politics to art to religion, while interrogating the complexities between good and evil, innocence and guilt, and freedom and oppression. Spanning from Moscow to Biblical Jerusalem, a vibrant cast of characters—a “magician” who is actually the devil in disguise, a giant cat, a witch, a fanged assassin—sow mayhem and madness wherever they go, mocking artists, intellectuals, and politicians alike. In and out of the fray weaves a man known only as the Master, a writer demoralized by government censorship, and his mysterious lover, Margarita.
Burned in 1928 by the author and restarted in 1930, The Master and Margarita was Bulgakov’s last completed creative work before his death. It remained unpublished until 1966—and went on to become one of the most well-regarded works of Russian literature of the twentieth century, adapted or referenced in film, television, radio, comic strips, theater productions, music, and opera.
Michael Glenny
Glenny began working as a part-time translator, and his first published translations were from German. However, translations from Russian became the main focus of his life. Indeed, his specialty was the discovery and transmission of contemporary Russian literature that was unavailable to an English readership. His translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita in 1967 established his fame. He followed up with several other Bulgakov novels.
Glenny made several trips to the Soviet Union in his search for significant works for translation. An early work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, came out in translation in 1968 by Michael Guybon; it was later revealed that this was the pen name of a trio of translators: Glenny, Max Hayward and Manya Harari. His translation of Yuri Trifonov's The House on the Embankment was well received.
He was instrumental in bringing to public attention the works of Russian émigré and exiled writers such as Georgy Vladimov, Zinovy Zinik, and Vasily Aksyonov. Glenny co-authored, with Norman Stone, an oral history of the experiences of Russian emigres, titled The Other Russia, for which he also conducted many of the interviews. One of his most monumental works was the translation of Boris Yeltsin's memoirs, 100,000 words of text, which he accomplished in two months in 1990.
Significant among his interests was theatre. Following the Chernobyl disaster, Vladimir Gubaryev's play Sarcophagus came out in September 1986. Glenny obtained a copy of the script and translated it, and it was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Centre in 1987. Glenny's Five Plays from the Soviet Union came out in 1989.
At the time of his death in Moscow in 1990, Glenny was researching the works of Soviet writers who had perished in the gulags, and was awaiting documents from the KGB.
Restaurant Recommendations
District Dining
Barb and I took advantage of four nights in downtown Washington last week. This week we are in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland, and I will report on that next week.
Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab 750 15th St NW, Washington, DC 20005
Barb and I had dined here once before, hosted by Lucidea on Barb’s birthday. This year, Cindy Hubert and Lynda Braksiek of APQC hosted us on Monday, the first night of KMWorld. The food was as good as we remembered it.
Oysters
Crab Cakes
Old Ebbitt Grill 675 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
I try to dine here every November and wrote about it last year. I offered to schedule a dinner for those attending KMWorld, and Emily Harburg, Arno Boersma, and James Bickham joined me here on Tuesday. My meal was:
Lobster Cocktail: One-pound Maine lobster, horseradish cream sauce
Jumbo Shrimp (2)
Le Diplomate 1601 14th St NW, Washington, DC 20009
Barb and I had dined here before and liked it, so we reserved a table for Wednesday. It was a 25-minute walk straight north on14th Street. The dinner was exquisite.
Warm Shrimp Salad: lemon beurre blanc, avocado
Scallops Provençal: Yukon gold potato, almond, roasted tomato, caper butter
Steak Au Poivre: black pepper crusted New York strip, garlic spinach, cognac demi-glace
Founding Farmers DC 600 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001
One of our favorites, we have dined at three different locations on multiple occasions, and I featured it last year. It was a 23-minute walk from our hotel, the JW Marriott.
Farmhouse Platter: fried chicken, BBQ pork ribs, two baby cheeseburgers, street corn, coleslaw — it’s enough for two, and at $28, a rare good deal in DC.
Marvelous Musicians
Dave Matthews Band (D\MB)
I am currently in the DMV listening to the DMB. This is the third in a series of recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees.
I bought Under the Table and Dreaming in 1994 and liked "Ants Marching," "Satellite." and "Typical Situation." My son Roger absconded with my CD when he became a huge fan of the band, which he remains to this day. I saw DMB at the Final Four in Atlanta on April 7, 2013 in Centennial Olympic Park right after Sting. Our friends Barbara and David Osher watched from up front and center, but Barb and I were wedged in farther back on the right side and we never felt more claustrophobic in our lives.
From Wikipedia: Dave Matthews Band (also known by the initials DMB) is an American rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. The band's founding members were singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer and backing vocalist Carter Beauford, violinist and backing vocalist Boyd Tinsley, and saxophonist LeRoi Moore. As of 2020, Matthews, Lessard, and Beauford are the only remaining founding members still performing with the band.
Dave Matthews Band's 1994 major label debut album, Under the Table and Dreaming, was certified platinum six times. The band won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for "So Much to Say". A jam band, Dave Matthews Band is renowned for its live shows. The band is known for playing songs differently each performance; this practice has become a staple of their live shows since the early 1990s. Dave Matthews Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.
David John Matthews (born January 9, 1967 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record label owner. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band (DMB). Matthews was born in Johannesburg, and moved frequently among South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States while growing up. Matthews started playing acoustic guitar at the age of nine.
From 1991 to 2003, Matthews predominantly focused on songwriting and performing with the Dave Matthews Band, which he started in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. He also has done various solo performances and produced other records. During the period from 2000 to 2010, his band sold more tickets and earned more money than any other act in North America. The band's 2012 album Away from the World made them the only group to have six consecutive studio albums debut at number one on the Billboard charts. This record was extended to seven consecutive number one albums with the 2018 release, Come Tomorrow.
In addition to music, Matthews has had multiple acting roles. He has also won two Grammy Awards: one with the Dave Matthews Band in 1997 for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group ("So Much to Say") and one in 2004 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance ("Gravedigger") from his solo album.
Ants Marching
What Would You Say
Satellite
Typical Situation
My Playlist
Sports Star
On October 13, 2024, Chauncey was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He led the Detroit Pistons to their most recent NBA Championship in 2004, winning Finals MVP in the process.
In 2008, the Pistons traded Chauncey for Allen Iverson, ending their conference final run and dooming them to mediocrity ever since. Here’s what he had to say about it:
I still feel like if they didn't make that move and move me, we'd still be an elite team in the league.
From Wikipedia: Chauncey Ray Billups (born September 25, 1976 in Denver, Colorado) is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is the head coach for the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). After playing college basketball with the Colorado Buffaloes, he was selected third overall in the 1997 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. Billups spent the majority of his 17-year basketball career playing for the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association (NBA), where he won the NBA Finals MVP in 2004 after helping the Pistons beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals. He was given the nickname "Mr. Big Shot" for making late-game shots with Detroit. A five-time NBA All-Star, a three-time All-NBA selection and two-time NBA All-Defensive selection, Billups also played for the Celtics, Toronto Raptors, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, New York Knicks, and Los Angeles Clippers during his NBA career.
Billups worked as a studio analyst after retiring from playing in 2014. The Pistons retired his No. 1 jersey in 2016. He started coaching as an assistant for the Los Angeles Clippers during the 2020–21 season. Billups was appointed as head coach of the Trail Blazers in 2021.
MVP Highlights Of 2004 NBA Finals vs Lakers - 21 PPG, 5.2 APG
Top 10 Career Plays
Hall of Fame Enshrinement Speech
I could go on forever about what Detroit means to me, but I will just say this: It was in Detroit where I became an NBA Champion; it was in Detroit where I became “Mr. Big Shot”; it was in Detroit where I finally became an All-Star; it was in Detroit where I became known as a winner, which is all I ever wanted; and it was in Detroit where that No. 1 jersey is hanging in the rafters.
Picture Pun
When it comes to cakes in California, this is how they roll.
Big up The Master and Margarita! Love that book. Heart of a Dog and A Young Doctor’s Notebook are also good.
Michael Glenny was Mischa Glenny’s dad. Glenny Jr has written a lot about international crime and has a great podcast series on national history.