Irving Wladawsky-Berger

The SDForum Visionary Awards - Lou Gerstner

Last week, I attended the SDForum Visionary Awards event in Silicon Valley.   SDForum is a non-for-profit organization for the technical and business community in Silicon Valley aimed at helping them exchange information on emerging technologies and best practices.  The Visionary Awards are given each year to honor industry leaders who have pioneered innovation and fostered the spirit of entrepreneurship. 

This year, Lou Gerstner received a 2006 Visionary Award, along with Vint Cerf - Internet founding father and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google; John Hennessy - President of Stanford University;  and Terry Semel - Chairman and CEO of Yahoo. 

I had the pleasure and honor to introduce Lou at the event.  In my remarks, I talked about Lou's impact on IBM and the IT industry, as well as offered some personal memories from my time working with him at IBM. 

Below is the draft of my remarks

The Search for Clean, Plentiful Energy - BP's Energy Biosciences Institute

I became very sensitive to the idea that energy may well be the most important problem facing the world when I attended a lecture by Richard Smalley in October of 2002.  Rick, who died last October, was a Professor at Rice University and in 1996 received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of a new form of carbon called buckminsterfullerenes or "buckyballs."

In recent years Rick was relentless in his advocacy for cheap, plentiful, clean energy.  He was passionate on the subject.  In his articles and talks he pointed out that energy is directly linked to some of the top problems we face in the 21st century, such as water, food, poverty, transportation, terrorism and war, let alone the all important issues surrounding climate change and the environment.  He felt that the energy challenge should serve as a wake-up call and inspiration to the next generation of scientists and engineers, as was Sputnik in the early 1960s.    

In 2003, I was invited to join BP's Technical Advisory Council and quickly accepted, seeing it as an opportunity to both learn more about energy issues, as well as hopefully contribute in whatever modest way I could to the search for solutions.  I was particularly happy to be associated with BP because the company has taken a strong, public position on the responsibility of industry to the environment and society.    

Informal Learning and Community Libraries

Last week I attended a fascinating lecture by John Seely Brown on "Rethinking Learning and the Community Library in the Networked Age” at the Westport (CT) Public Library.  His talk explored whether there might be a way to reinvent the community library as a new kind of complementary asset to both the school and the Internet – reinvent it in a way that deeply engages digital kids (and everyone else) and increases their passion to learn. 

I have known John for many years and have served with him on a few committees and boards.  He was Chief Scientist at Xerox and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) for almost twenty years.  Since retiring from Xerox, John has continued to be very busy as a speaker, writer, member of the boards of several public and private companies and lots of other activities.  One of his main areas of interest is education, in particular how our Internet culture is introducing whole new ways of learning. 

Life and Business in the Virtual World

The IT industry has experienced three main eras of computing:  the centralized, client/server and network eras.  Each is distinguishable by the flagship technologies, products and applications that made them prominent:   mainframes and transaction processing for the centralized era; microprocessors, PCs and personal productivity for client/server; and the Internet, World Wide Web, e-mail and e-business for the networked era.   

While it may be still too early to tell, I am beginning to sense the shape of the next major era of computing.  It feels much more ubiquitous and collaborative.  It also feels much more "intelligent," realistic and human.  I almost get the sense that we are creating a very rich virtual world that complements our physical world, with all kinds of capabilities to help us in our life and in our work.  Let me discuss a few of the key factors that are coming together and that may herald this next era of computing.