OPENforum’09 was well attended, albeit on a Saturday, with a full audience at the large auditorium at the Computer History Museum. I saw 2 of the 3 keynotes and I found both inspiring.Warren Packard of DFJ described 3 curves that drive technology, entrepreneurship, and the economy:
- Bell curve: the statistical nature of the world
- S-curve: dynamics of competition and relationship between effort and product improvement and eventually replacement by new technology breakthroughs
- turkey curve (ala Taleb’s Black Swan): there are the unpredictable, high impact rare events
Turkey Curve
Packard projected optimism in emerging technologies and in entrepreneurship being key to solve the difficult problems in the world. He spoke on the positive contributions of the real time web, social networks, MEMS, new materials, dramatic cost reduction of DNA sequencing that would lead to new ways of medical diagnosis, data center transformations, emerging user interfaces that combine the virtual and the real world. These disruptive changes would bring about good.
When asked about today’s economic and environment calamities, Packard’s response was that these are huge issues, absolutely surmountable, by the drive of entrepreneurs to develop solutions to take advantage of the economic opportunities offered by these challenges. Packard’s answer to political oppression in the world is to give people hope, to lead them to see the future, and people will work toward that future.
What an inspiration! Just consider: our actions are driven by our beliefs. So believe in hope and the positive future, then we can work toward that future.
Masood Jabbar, formerly of Sun Microsystems, gave the second 
keynote and he spoke from his life experiences and lessons learned:
- 10 years of experience is a myth, it is more like 1 year of experience, 10 times. We learn quickly when we hit the wall or when things are new and uncomfortable. But we are not good at learning when things change very slowly or the environment is familiar and comfortable (i.e., over 10 years of doing similar things). Lesson is: when it ain’t broken, change it; lest the world changes on us and it becomes very costly for us to change.
- There is over-emphasis on team work. If the team does not have active debates, the result one gets is the lowest common denominator of the team members. Lesson: teams without debate produce mediocre results.
- Todays’ economy is like a Formula One race car going into the pitstop, where the actions of the pit crew would determine the outcome of the race. Lesson: act now to take advantage of the opportunities as the economy recovers.
- Lesson from Fred Smith of Fedex: “No company can ever get customer satisfaction without employee satisfaction.”
I consider the following the best insight from Jabbar: To win for the future, you have got to move the ball forward today, and every day.
This was a great event. Very inspiring.
Copyright (c) 2009 by Waiming Mok
