Our International Business class, BUS310, recently had the privilege to see Steve Wozniak speak in person. He was speaking at the Place des Arts which is only a two minute walk from the residence hall. The show did not start until 8pm, but the venue was packed well before.
Although we did not have front row seats, the theatre had great acoustics and a layout where everybody could see the show. There were four pairs of chairs on mini stages each having a different theme to them. We would later find out that they were themed after either the topic of the conversation or based on who the next speaker was going to be. Some of the topics covered where how Wozniak or “The Woz” came to know Steve Jobs, education, technology and global views. One thing that became almost immediately clear was that Woz had done this before. He has spoken at hundreds of conventions and events over the past 20 years and he was completely comfortable responding to questions and even going on and on about unrelated things. He definitely knew how to play the crowd saying things like “French sounds way cooler than english” or “Yeah this is why I like Canada more than the United States.” He travels around the globe performing similar talks and it made us wonder if he tailors all his shows that heavily based on his location.
Stating how he does roughly 100 talks he certainly has had to answer the same exact questions about his past. We chuckled at how much he talked himself up and Steve Jobs down. Wozniak had no problem calling himself a genius while painting Jobs as an almost homeless guy in sandals that came by occasionally to try to sell something for some quick cash. It was nice to see some of the famous apple myths debunked as well. The famous myth that Apple was based out of a garage is completely false. Very minor Apple I testing was done in the garage but mainly business was done elsewhere in a professional environment.
Matt and I are both Business majors at Champlain College of Vermont, the Woz shared intelligent insight that not only we can take away from but everybody in the audience, including non business majors, can as well. He revealed tips to aspiring entrepreneurs, thoughts on education and the implementation of computers in school and lastly where he saw the world in a near future. He is afraid of computer artificial intelligence becoming too advanced for humans. Similar to how the Terminator movies turned out.
We highly recommend people of all audience groups to listen in on one of his talks. It was nice to receive a professional opinion on global matters directly from the mouth they came from.
– Colin Rebord & Matthew Leta, Management of Creative Media Major, Spring 2015