In the past decade software has been eating the world. Silicon-based technologies are disrupting traditional industries everywhere. The publishing industry is struggling against digital content; the telecom industry is threatened by voice-over-IP; computer animation is raising the bar for producing movies; postal services are going bankrupt, and so on. Yet most leadership roles in society are still reserved for people who don't fully understand computing technologies. The recent near-disaster of SOPA screams out that many business executives and politicians have questionable understanding of the technologies that are fundamentally changing our society. Maybe engineers are partly to blame for this. Engineers are analytic by nature. They are problem-solvers: give an engineer a problem and her brain will obsess over it for days. But why do so few engineers take on leadership roles in society? Qi Lu (Microsoft) recently talked about why it's hard to find engineers that can think beyond technology, and described his personal lessons from attempting this transition. Qi leads Microsoft Bing (amongst other things) as the President of Online Services, and reports directly to Steve Ballmer. He took a red-eye flight to talk especially in the "CTO Course" at Princeton (thank you Qi!). This thought provoking talk had enough lessons to justify a series of posts. I'm going to focus on just one point right now: leadership roles and the skillset required for them.

Qi Lu speaking at Princeton

Fred Wilson talking to students

Yesterday, we had Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) as a guest speaker in a "CTO Course" at Princeton that I'm the preceptor for. During the lecture Fred mentioned that even though Princeton is just a train ride away from NYC, it's the first time he is speaking here: something he hopes to change. In this post, I'm going to follow up on that discussion (summarize the relevant parts of what Fred said), and discuss role of universities in local tech industry. I'll mainly talk about Princeton and NYC, but similar arguments can be applied to other areas/universities as well. I've often thought about the link between university research and startup activity e.g., the Silicon Valley started on land leased from Stanford University, maintained a close link with Stanford, and over the years not only did tech giants emerge from university research (recent examples are Google, VMWare), but the companies then came back full circle to support the university (funding research, hiring graduates).

Oct 2009 issue of the SIGCOMM CCR has an editorial by Kentaro Toyama and me where we ask the question if technologies for developing regions be considered a core area of computer science research? It is relatively easy to argue that technology can help improve the lives of the poorest billion people on the planet. But, is it research? More specifically, is it computer science research? This editorial stems out of our discussions at the CCC Workshop on Global Development. Keshav asked us to merge our, somewhat opposing, views into an editorial. You can read it here. In this post, I will give a summary of the Workshop on Global Development:

Entrance of the Claremont, Berkeley

CCC Workshop on Global Development: The Workshop on Global Development was held at the Claremont, Berkeley. Thanks to the CCC funding, we were able to fly 40+ participants and cover all their expenses. Although I was one of the organizers, the views presented here are mine and not of the participants or sponsors. Background: Digital technologies have done wonders for mankind. However, benefits of digital technologies (e.g., the Internet) are often limited to the “first world”, leading to the so-called “digital divide”. People in developing regions get access to a decreasing share of digital resources, which are critical for socio-economic development in the 21st century.

In Feb'09, I participated in Princeton's Annual Business Plan competition called TigerLaunch. The event was fun and had $15K cash prizes and 30+ initial teams. In the semi-finals, I enjoyed pitching in front of VCs from Sierra Ventures and Internet Capital Group. I ended up winning two awards at TigerLaunch'09 and today, after some needless university procedures, received my prize check through snail mail. I'd like to thank the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club for organizing this. Keep up the good work guys! Results of TigerLaunch 2009 are here.

TigerLaunch prize ceremony

This post is long over due. I left the Netherlands in August 2008 and joined Princeton University for my PhD. I had a great time working in Delft, specially because of Koen Langendoen. He made everything easy for me. Amazing guy. Living in the Netherlands was liberating and exciting. All good things come to an end and I have moved further west. On my first day here, I walked past the famous tigers and heard a whisper in my head. Welcome to Princeton.