i became friends with gabby giffords last year, my good friend, larine jobs introduced me to gabby and mark and we instantly became friends. my wife and i started doing work on gabby and mark's effort which was then the institute for civil discourse but has now converted to being more active on the violence issues in america. because we are friends, i invited mark and gabby to our home for our holiday party, which coincidentally was on december 14th. when gabby arrived at my home and in my home that night, were literally the leaders of all of the great tech companies in the bay area. and we had our two great mayors, willie brown and ed lee. and the minute that they saw gabby they said ron, get everyone's attention here. we can make 200 people be quiet. we have to make a tribute to what happened today in sandy hook, and a tribute to gabby. and during that tribute which was pallpable, i could tell that the tech community was going to do something. and we did. on december 15th, we started an ad hoc committee of tech volunteers, many of them luminaries in the industry. and we convened thre