Channel 9

Jobs -What do tech companies owe students?

Joe Wilson — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:29:25 GMT

I decided to ditch the HS reunion information any further, comments were light and its clear that's not somethign anyone wants to really re-live. Especially me now that I've had some time to look behind me. Whew.....scary stuff, you should have seen my hair!

This week I'm thinking a lot about jobs for students and to what degree major corporations are responsible for this. You'd think we should be out there singing praises of students to make them come to work to our company or any others but it seems that we always come up short with the really hard work of connecting them to jobs. Sure, we have training programs and so on but what they really want is for every company to say...hey! I want you to come to work here right now! I'll change your life and give you a big fat paycheck.

I think corporations however, stop at the edge of skills training and the concept of employability when they should push right on over the edge to setting up job boards that cater to their set of partners and customers looking for talent. Let's just take it all the way and connect the freakin dots here.

There is however, liability with this and an expectation that comes with it. Just becasue we make technology does that automatically equal a job? Hmmmmm.....if we're asking you to learn and use our stuff should we connect you to jobs??

Love to hear the opinions on this one.

Joe

20th High School Reunion a.k.a. We Should all Have Viking Names

Joe Wilson — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 05:31:52 GMT

This weekend I stepped through the looking glass and attended my 20^th high school reunion in Marion, Arkansas here in the US. This is an odd ritual that we in the US perform to return to secondary school and see how everyone turned out. It was……the be blunt…..surreal. I know now that we do this to punish ourselves for apparently not being far enough off the grid. I was tracked down, found and invited and for some inexplicable reason, I went.

My plane ticket was the first sign that this was going to be strange. I left Seattle, had a layover in Denver and ended up landing in Memphis. Yes, this is the exact path of my migration west from where I grew up and represented the major cities that I lived in along the way. Too freakin’ weird.

I changed schools my 11^th grade year and moved to live with my dad in West Memphis, Arkansas. West Memphis is best known for being the place where two great American highways cross. I-55 and I-40 meet up for a few miles, then go their own way, and create this magnificent “X” of concrete and asphalt that cuts the land like it was a alien ship just dropped form the sky. The good news is Memphis is only 15 minutes away and this was sort of like having a mini New Orleans close by and as a teen-age kid who wanted to play the blues this was a slice of pecan pie complete with ice cream.

My cast of characters at the reunion could rival any you could think of, I don’t care if you went to school in a mental institution, it must be something in the water or the food that’s all fried, in fact I swear I had fried water but no one told me what it was. Ours was a rural school and we were rural people, we lived on farms, ran restaurants, worked in factories lived out the blue collar American dream as best we could. But it seems now a few of us had made an art out of getting in trouble.

At the Flying Saucer beer emporium (yes, alien reference #2 but it’s the name of the place I swear) I approached a few people who couldn’t quite place me because I didn’t grow up there. Then, I found the person who was giving out the nametags with our high school pictures on it. Great, now they had me and from that moment on, I was no longer anonymous.

Complete with my earlier and slightly thinner version of myself pasted to my chest I set out to find some of my fellow inmates that I had been close to. The cast of characters was small, we were a small high school. But let me recount a few of the stand outs for me and give them names you’ll understand.

Kim the strong whom I swear could kick anyone’s ass although she doesn’t weigh anything but something about here just resonates strength inside and out.

Allison the doctor who seems to have an addiction to school, beside the PhD she teaches but wants to go into real estate and build houses she’s smart and fun.

Nancy the funny who drove 6hrs to be there but forgot sunscreen and we made fun of the sunburn the whole time but seems to really just enjoy life.

Jim the same who just didn’t really change at all as far as I could tell.

Mendy the tracker who apparently used dark secret powers to find me and bring me to the reunion but I rarely got to spend any time with.

Danny the quiet - who lived only 20 blocks from me in when I was Colorado and we didn’t know it.

Melissa the organizer – seems she and one other person really made all this happen.

Bill the missing great friend who wouldn’t come.

Kathy the friend I should have had - she left before I went to school but we laughed a ton in the hour or two we knew each other.

Lee the great – who was my best friend then and clearly a great friend now despite all the water under the bridge 20 yrs ago about me dating his sister and all J. This guy and I shared memories and time and knew each other in a way few people will know you. It’s a deep friendship and likely will continue now. He was the gem of the event for me and we told stories that are the makings of a Mark Twain novel and I’ll have to get these down on paper someday.

Yes they all sound like Viking names here and maybe they are. We came in remembering how we were and left remembering how we are.

I realized school was there to teach us how to learn and some basic subject matter that would allow us to at least go on to find a vocation and go on to be contributing citizens. But it was us….these people, not the school, that taught each other how to start to live. We were a social group of people who got along and people who didn’t and we were not a group of highly polarized clicks. We gave ourselves the kick start to go get jobs and communicate. This walk into the past reminded me about how schools in most places around the world neglect to teach us hot to get along with one another and instead probably rewarded the extroverts without helping the introverts. This is crazy.

The social aspects of learning are in my opinion just as important as the subject matter. School leads to work and work is all about people for 99% of everyone who takes a job. My achievements have been about my experience and my skill with people. Even ig you are the most hardcore software developer, living in a cave at some point you have to sneak out to the light of day and share your work if you want to earn a living. However, schools all over the world skip this subject. Go Figure.

After the pounding of Prince, U2, the Go Gos, Outfield and A-ha had left my ears and my head cleared the next morning I realized that I was coming out of the looking glass and heading home that day. I drove around and looked at where I’d lived and gone to school. I was saddened by the lack of change and tortured by the sameness. Physically nothing had changed in this place and I remember I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I wish the school had taught us more, I wish we’d been smart enough to ask it too.

In some ways that is why I do what I do here. Why I like working with students everyday and why I like seeing people all over the world be serious about this subject. I’m in a company that does great things and can make a big difference and there’s notway I won’t make sure it does. Goodnight Marion....Bill I hope you’re ok wherever you are.

Recap –

20^th reunions are weird and carry an inordinate number of strange coincidences
Everyone should have a Viking name (Joe the prolific)
No one can dance as well as they used to
Lost friends are good friends
Schools are neglecting to help us learn to communicate and work together
I will make a difference.

Education Schmeducation

Joe Wilson — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:31:03 GMT

BaaaaaaBoooooomm!!! That's just to get your attention that this is going to be different.

If you're hear by accident that's good I think chance is a cool thing to mess with. If you're here on purpose and you so choose you can check out my rants on this concept of learning that you've landed on, I won't talk about gov'ts or journals or stuff like that, I'm going to tell stories about growing up in the US educations system in Tennessee (yep, not the best one we have but it was mine) and the people and things I did. I'm going to try to embarass myself as little as possible but that will be tough. I'm also going to try and connect the dots to what we SHOULD be doing. If you are a good reader you will find the point but I promise I won't make it too easy each week.

First, I DO NOT want to talk about Education. I think its a silly word and overused concept that just fits conveniently into gov't lexicons and just reminds me of Mr. Neil from my 8th Jr high who always said to us "You are here for your education" didn't know what that meant then, don't know now. I do know that I have some very vivid memories of Education as it was put to me growing up and that they don't fit what I know now about learning and doing. But before I pontificate on that, I'd like to share Mr Neil with you.

Mr Neil was an uninteresting guy and I think an archetype of what we in the US run into throughout our school time (my first substitute for education, I'll try a few and see what I like) the most significant thing about him was how red he was. Always red, rouge laden red haired handlebar moustached freckled fella who seemed perpetually pissed off. That was my image of "Education: for a long time. Please, please tell me about the crazy ass characters you grew up when you read this...we all have them and I could use a few good characters in my brain.

He was a part time coach, part time teacher, part time associate, vice, assitant, sub principal that was only full time on being irritated (and red of course). He stood in the center of the cafeteria at each lunch shift and when it was time to shut up and get ready to go back to class after the world famous square pizza (a trend that the pizza deliveries servies in the US have finally picked up on) he would raise is freckled arm with a fist at the end, a seat spot or two on his short sleeved shirt would show and he'd simply hold it there and wait for the kids to be quiet. Amazing assumption of power. AND IT FREAKIN WORKED!! If we didn't zip it right away, he'd scowl and look at us and occiasionally call on someone to shut up and then...................silence.

If you made it this far you're asking yourself why I'm telling you this. Other than Mr. Neil being a memorable guy it's the type of system I grew up in, a teacher centered one, not a student centered one. This is the view of the world that the teacher has all the information, sits behind the desk and holds the keys (grades) to whether you are learning or not. Very Darwinian view of the world that we all have to cross through this GATE of knowledge to become smart.

But what if we're already smart? What is the student is really the center of learning and like every great coach in the world someone is just trying to bring out what they are already capable of? Holy Crap what a concept - kids are smart, and decent and goofy and fun and we can figure out a way to make this thing fun. God I wish I was my teacher back then.

On Friday I will attend my 20th High School reunion, yes I can't believe it either I'm eternally convinced that my brain didn't make it past 21 so this comes as quite a suprise to me as well. What is this body that agreed to go to such a thing and what do i expect to get from it? I changed school in my Junion year (11th grade for those of you not from the US) and it was a real humdinger of a change. I'll spare you why I changed but say I ended going to a smaller town, smaller school and was an instant odd man out for a little while.

Now I'm going back to this strange place, purely for the "surrealness" of seeing how things but also to see a couple of people I counted as very close friends at one time. Unfortunately my wife and 4 kids can't come with me because we're traveling so much this year and I'll be going it alone. I will share details of this on next post and respond to anythign that comes in. But it's a hell of way to kick off a blog ain't it?

Let's summarize:

Education as a word sucks
Mr. Neil was really red and uninteresting but had a weird power noone could explain.
Kids might actually be the center of learning instead of teachers
I'm old enough to go to my 20th HS reunion and have to do it alone because my wife is smarter than me and chose not to go.

Joe