HOW ABOUT THIS? MY RECORD AS A TECHNOLOGY LEADER!
Perspective from the 19th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.
This blog headline is wrong.
I am not a technology leader. At best, I am a follower.
I usually have to contact my grandchildren when I have a technology question or problem.
But I was part of technology leadership on two occasions in the past.
WANG WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM: Back when I worked in Congress for a representative from Oregon, our office was the first to use this system.
It was created by Wang Laboratories and it changed how all of us wrote and edited documents in the 1970s and 1980s.
It did that for me in Congress. To this day, I remember how easy it was to change a mistake in a letter. Just hit a couple correction keys. No longer did we have to use “white out” to remove a faulty letter.
Hardly anyone remembers Wang these days. I do. It was revolutionary.
BLACKBERRY OPERATING SYSTEM: Many years later, a lobbying firm of which I was a partner in Oregon bought a Blackberry system. We were the first lobbying firm to acquire the technology. It, too, was revolutionary.
BlackBerry is a software company that transitioned from manufacturing physical-keyboard mobile phones into a leading provider of automotive operating systems and enterprise cybersecurity. It was founded in 1984 as Research in Motion, shortly before my firm bought the system.
For us, it enabled individual users like me to obtain e-mail transmissions no matter where I was in the State of Oregon’s Capitol in Salem, Oregon. Or, of course, outside the Capitol, too.
That mattered to me because I could now be on a golf course with a state legislator and I could check e-mails as I played 18-holes. And, not just on the golf course. Anywhere.
As we know now, Blackberrys were a preview of what was to come in the form of mobile phones.
See, this shows that I am a leader in technology. Just don’t ask me any questions about it!
