Some years back, I attended a conference on web development. It was a conference organized by the developers of the web itself, the W3C.org, for which I was consulting in marketing communications and press liaison.
I organized a facet of the conference and such and was credited here as W3C Sessions Subcommittee
Kathryn Esplin, World Wide Web Consortium, USA.
Being in Brisbane was absolutely the best thing.
Being at the conference was pretty special, too, with its aboriginal theme, all the media from Australia, (ABC TV AUS) US and Europe and the guest speakers and panel presentations.
One guest speaker struck my attention more than others.
He was a vice president at IBM in White Plains, New York.
He spoke about how we adults always think we develop the future.
Then he went on to say that a high school student in the White Plains, NY area showed him a web project he was doing.
It was so much better than anything he'd ever seen at IBM or from any adult.
A kid. A high school student in the White Plains area. Not just any kid, but a kid destined to go places, according to the White Plains VP.
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This kid is the future, he'd said.
Consider this:
Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains, NY. (Dobbs Ferry), NY. He attended Ardsley High School in 1998 in Westchester County in the White Plains area before he transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in Massachusetts in 2000.
It was at Phillips Exeter Academy that Zuckerberg first experimented with a face-mash prototype before he entered Harvard. Clearly, this was not his first foray into the web. The web was pretty well developed by 1998, since the W3C.org itself was founded in 1994.
So, who showed what to the White Plains IBM executive in 1998?
Mark Zuckerberg studied classics in high school and computer science at Harvard.
The IBM executive realized that when he saw this kid's web site --- in 1998 -- that it was then he realized that kids would rule the world--- and this kid, in particular.
I took note to remember this guest speaker and the guest speaker's message.
It is highly likely that the guest speaker was talking about Mark Zuckerberg, who blew away the web world more than any other person at the time -- kid or no kid.
Mark Zuckerberg at the eG8 Forum in Deauville, France, 2011.
Guillaume Paumier Wikimedia Commons
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Comments: 36
Sounds like more than a coincidence.
He is 4 years older than my son.
'more than a coincidence.'
Exactly. No other kid in the region at the time had done or has done what he has. Other whiz kids or up comers like what's his name who runs Twitter... are older and interesting, but FB is unique. And for anybody to knock MySpace out, had to be pretty ingenious. The peeps who run Google are older.
SAYING HELLO
Thanks for sharing with Gather’s Luminous Writers & Artists.
If you look at both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, both of them had access and resources just at the perfect time and place to leap way ahead of those who did not have access to computers and mentors. I hardly think it is fair or an equal playing field when as time goes by these advantages play more and more of a role in people's career success.
It also sort of inflames me a bit that those advantages and status do not seem to be enough for these people, they have to also lobby government for more advantages while also calling for lower taxes and lower responsibilities towards the country and other people.
All of these people accomplished a lot in life, I just wish they were not such egotistical artistocrats that success for themselves is not enough and they have to actually take down others.
It is amazing about the rise of Mark Zuckerberg.
So, wot do the Americans think of Orstrylia?
Oh, it is better than California and better than Hawaii. It is the American dream. Better than the American dream.
Oh rally?Oh good. No worries.
No not for more, but to know how they (my daughters Gen) rebel the present!