« Solutions in the Eye of the Storm | Main | The Green Meetings Portal Goes Live »
What Are You Waiting For?
By Woody Huizenga | April 9, 2009
In 1968, while most of his classmates were playing ball or watching Gilligan’s Island or sleeping, one 13-year-old boy was programming his heart out on a powerful (for its day) mainframe computer. It was a unique and improbable opportunity and he took full advantage of it. Reflecting on the experience today, Bill Gates says, “I was very lucky.”
I know it’s fashionable to hate Microsoft® and its founder, but I find it hard to imagine a world without Windows XP, MS Word, and Excel. I know other products could have been developed to do what they do, but they were not. For good or evil, Bill Gates has profoundly changed the shape of our world and the course of history. But as Gates has said, a lot of luck was involved.
That is the underlying premise of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. What changes the world is a combination of luck, and effort, and timing. If we find it difficult to imagine a world without Microsoft, we might find it equally difficult to imagine a world with 1,000 Microsofts.
But what if in 1968 tens of thousands of 13-year-olds had had the sort of access that only Gates enjoyed? What a different world we might live in!
In this, Gladwell recalls the fundamental premise of his earlier work, The Tipping Point: that the world is changed profoundly not by a single act or event, but by an accumulation of those acts and events, interacting in ways too complex to understand or measure. I find this empowering, because I suspect that our natural desire to see the difference that we’re making may, ironically, be the biggest impediment to our making a difference.
This leads me to a simple answer: get over it! (Or, if you prefer a paraphrase of the Nike slogan, Just do something!)
Those who criticize Microsoft should realize that the problem is not that we have one Bill Gates too many, but a thousand too few.
How would we create more? Well, timing is everything, and the window in which the last Bill Gates was “created” has long passed. It’s too late to provide hundreds or thousands of teenagers with computers in 1968.
We can’t create opportunities in a way that allows us to predict or control the outcomes. But we can create more opportunities for more kids to succeed in a huge range of ways.
For example, for the last couple of years The Conference Publishers has sent a student from Algonquin College’s Event Management program to Meeting Professionals International’s MeetDifferent conference. Both “our” students told us that this conference provided some of their most important learning in what is already a highly regarded program that grooms people who will eventually lead our industry.
I don’t know where that learning will take these people. But I believe they will benefit from it, and I believe our community will benefit.
In the past The Conference Publishers has supported the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation’s School Breakfast Program. Every year this program provides hot breakfasts to thousands of elementary school students who would otherwise go without. The premise is simple: kids learn better on full stomachs.
As a society we face some enormous challenges, and we need to do everything we can to equip our kids to conquer those challenges. The young people who benefit from such efforts will eventually be our leaders, our teachers, and our researchers.
We need to do everything we can to create opportunities for those young people to learn, to experience, and to excel. And while I don’t want to take governments, most of which are guilty of grossly underfunding education, off the hook, some of the best and most creative solutions may be very close at hand—your hand.
This needn’t involve great—or any—personal sacrifice. I’ve always loved to read, and I always wanted to be a teacher. So I spent several years as a volunteer literacy tutor. It was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.
Give a kid a computer—or even a meal. Take a student along the next time you go to a conference. That’s the lesson I take from Gladwell’s work: Just because you can’t see the difference you’re making, doesn’t mean you’re not making a difference.
Topics: Conference Content, Meeting Professionals International, The Conference Publishers |
Comments Feed
April 10th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
woody,
The heart of this article, as far as I’m concerned, is your emphasis on te importance of teaching “the young”. I’ve found that even in any workplace the “overseer” of younger employees becomes a teacher by example. Without this approach you are also a leader by example.
After all, to teach is to learn, as well; and to learn is to grow.
More power to you guys in this direction.
Reuben