Powerful Inspiration
Last week, we hosted the ninth annual CRN Industry Hall of Fame event out in Silicon Valley with our longtime partner, the Computer History Museum. You&'ll hear more about the five unique individuals we recognized in mid-December editions of CRN and CRN TV, where we&'ll chronicle their contributions.
On paper, they couldn&'t be more different: a determined solution provider who pioneered countless channel business models over the past 30 years, a programmer compelled to unlock the secrets of business data, two hardware engineers seeking better work-life balance expressed in a mobile form factor, and a serial innovator whose very name is synonymous with text-to-speech synthesis and numerous other technology breakthroughs.
That last individual, Kurzweil, graced us with a heady keynote address a few hours before the induction ceremony. Frankly, I was a little worried after I saw some of his 86 or so presentation slides: I love geeky stuff, but let&'s just say this English literature expert isn&'t an expert in molecular theory. What&'s great about Kurzweil, though, is that he expresses his ideas in ways that simpler human beings such as myself can grasp. Likewise, the problems he tries to solve are profound, but simple.
His work on the reading machine—a system that combines OCR and speech-to-text synthesis to “read” newspapers or personal letters to the visually impaired—was driven by a casual conversation with a blind person on a plane. Today, Kurzweil writes and thinks about how nanotechnology could be applied in gene therapy or to extend human intelligence.
Actually, if there is one quality last week&'s inductees share, it&'s a fundamental desire to improve the human condition. The spark of their ideas wasn&'t lit by reams of linear market research but rather by intuition and persistence and, eventually, great timing that led other humans to be receptive.
It&'s another reminder that one of the best things all of us can do is listen, not just to our customers but to ourselves.
Where do you get your ideas? HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, is looking for inspiration at [email protected].