"The human is more important than technology". Nothing new about this, thoughI think it can't be said often enough. The comment was made Monday by, and this is also not a surprise, the co-founder of Apple Computer, Steve Wozniak. "The Woz" was keynote speaker at a Communitech breakfast event (sponsored by, among others, RIM). It was an event attended by over 700 people, while Iain Klugman, director of Communitech, beforehand thought it would be nice to invite Wozniak to visit Kitchener/Waterloo and have a meeting with 80 people or so. The room was filled by people of all kinds of organizations, gadget lovers (like Wozniak) or not - everybody wanted to hear his story.
Steve Wozniak spoke with a lot of enthusiasme and passion, whether it was about segway polo, the design of the first Apple computers or his vision in general on design. I missed the jokes about segway, because I didn't know what it was until someone explained. One of the stories that struck me is how Steve, when he developed the Apple 1 computer, first gave away (for free) the documentary so others could work on it and how his employer HP rejected to build this personal computer up to five times. Think about a missed opportunity! Maybe it was an inability of Steve to communicate his ideas, a lesson we learned from the second speaker of that morning: however good your idea or design is, it will not get anywhere if you cannot sell or communicate your idea.
Anyway, Steve met Steve and we know the rest of the Apple story. Good advice in the beginning of Apple Computers (I forgot from whom) was not to sell the product too cheap, since the new company needed the margin in profits, instead of borrowing, to work on the next version. (Is this were the suggestion comes from that Apple sells expensive computers?) Steve learned that it's all about the user, not the technology. People who design technology can help to make the world better, make people smile a bit more. I like that thought.
The presentation could have go on for much longer than the time planned on that Monday morning. The word that keeps singing in my mind, when I think about the presentation and the speaker, is 'fun'. Steve obviously has fun in what he does, even after such long time in this business. So probably the message behind this all is to have fun, in work and outside work.
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