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Tales from Rotterdam or how I met a Princess and killed the Computer Division of Philips

February 24, 2012

How I killed Europe’s Larges Computer Company
There I was getting off the train in Appledorn,the Netherlands. It was probably  about 1972 or 73 and I was around 28  years old and looked more like a hippie than a scientist.  The CEO of Philips asked me to give him my opinion of the viability of his company’s Computer Division.  Philips at that time was one of the leading electronic companies in the world and extremely important in Holland where I lived. When I got off the train, I found a limo and driver waiting for me.  I was taken to the Computer Divisions facilities.   Leaving the limo, I walked into a very large lobby.  Besides the receptionist, there was only one man standing there.  He turned out to be  the head of the division.  I walked in the door and he looked passed me. I had long black curly hair and bushy full  beard.  I am not sure what I was wearing but it certainly was not a suite and tie like this man.

So I said, ‘are you looking for  me?  I am Avram Miller”.   He said “The Avram Miller”.  I thought that was pretty funny but did not laugh.  It seems that the CEO of Philips and sent a handwritten letter to the Director of the Division telling him to make arrangements for my visit and instructing him to provide me with any information I requested.  The note said that I was his personal advisor and would be reporting directly back to him about my views regarding the future of division.

I spent the day meeting with different dept. heads and their staffs. It was a different time for computers. IBM was still king as were mainframes.  Sperry, Bourughs, Univac where still successful companies. HP and Digital Equipment were just beginning to ascend as mini computers became more popular.  Personal computers as we know them did not exist.   I can’t really remember much about what I learned that day  but I knew that this part of Philips was not going to be successful.  The technology was mediocre and there was  a lack of energy in the place. The best way to describe the Division was to say it was “middle aged”.

The next day, I called the CEO of Philips and said in a nice way “you can’t be serious”.  I told him that I could not see how the Computer  Division could be successful and I recommended that they get out of the business.  He thanked me and told me he had come to that conclusion himself but he wanted an outside (and I was really an outside because not only was I not a Philips employee but I was not Dutch either even thought I did speak Dutch). The company did not actually close the division but reduce investment significantly over the next several years.

Oh, I forgot to explain how it was that the CEO of one of the world larges companies came to ask a 28 year old former hippie for advice on one of his major business.  Readers of this blog will know (but may not remember) that I went to Rotterdam in 1969 to lead the computer activities of a new Medical Institution focused on Cardiovascular Medicine called the Thoraxcenter.  In addition to the government money behind this new facility which cost 50 million dollars  back in 1969, there were some contributions from Industry. The largest contributor was Philips.  That activity was connected to their research lab (Natlab) under the leadership of  Henrick Casimir, a truly great physicist and a wonderful man.  He was one of the people that was involved in recruiting me to come to Holland to join the Thoraxcenter (I came in 1969 having just turn 24 years old).  One day the top management  of Philips came to visit us.  I remember that the Director  the Thoraxcenter, Prof. Paul Hugenholtz a few others on his staff including me, went to the small Rotterdam Airport to welcome the CEO, Dr. Casimir and some other Philips notables.  And then we had a “site visit”.  I gave a presentation about our computer activities to this group.  The next day I got a call from the CEO asking me to do him a favor and visit the Computer DIvision. I guess I made a good impression.

Meeting the current Queen of the Netherlands.
For some reason, it was decided the princess Beatrix would visit the Thoraxcenter along with her husband Claus.  Claus was actually a German and there was a lot of negative feelings about him in Holland in those days.  Anyway, we were to get a royal visit in which we would discuss the work of the Thoraxcenter.  I was to present the computer stuff.  A protocol  officer of the court contact all of us to tell us how to behave during the visit.  One of the things they did was to specify the kind of clothes we were to wear.  I remember that  I  had a choice between a gray suite and a blue suite with the appropriate tie.  Well, the only suit I actually owned was purple.  I told the officer that I was trying to decided if I should wear a purple suite  for Royalty (which I ultimately did) or a Orange suit since the royal family was from the House of Orange.   They almost died!  I said, ok, if I have to wear a blue or gray suit, I am not coming.  Not sure what happened next  but they must have made an exception since I ended up meeting  Beatrix, now Queen of the Netherlands and  her husband, Claus.  We were at a rather informal (I use that phrase lightly) reception.  In the room, there were only two men that were not wearing blue or gray suits.  I was one and Claus was the other.  He and I kind of hit it off.  I liked him.  Sadly, he died in 2002.  Beatrix was also nice.  By the way, Beatrix’s mother, Queen Juliana  signed off on my appointment to the Academic Staff of Erasmus.

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Life Blues: My reaction to Outlaw Blues by Jonathan Taplin

February 20, 2012

“Outlaw Blues is a story of the American counter-culture — the artists who created an American Avant-garde that pushed the culture forward into what we now call modernity. Though much of the book is centered on a group of musicians and filmmakers that Taplin worked with from 1965-1995, it is also the story of the roots of that era. The book examines rebel artists of America’s past — H.D. Thoreau, Mark Twain, Louis Armstrong, Orson Welles, Billie Holiday, Allen Ginsberg — the “mad ones” who made us who we are as a culture”.  From the book launch at the Annenberg Innovation Lab, Oct. 11, 2011

Just finished reading the Outlaw Blues by Jonathan TapIin. I recently reconnected with Jonathan, an amazing man and the director of the Anneberg Innovation Lab at USC.  We probably had not seen each other for over tweleve years. We found each other on Facebook.  Since I am now living in LA part of the year, I reached out to him and he invited me to meet him at his lab. I also found out that he had written a book called, Outlaw-Blues last year.  The book had a powerful effect on me which I will explain later. It is an experimental e-book that I bought on iTunes and read on my iPad.  Actually, I expected more from the “experimental” part than just short embedded videos even thought they were very effective. Outlaw Blues is the name of a Bob Dylan’s song and also a movie staring Peter Fonda.

This post is not a book review but I will say a few things about the book.  First of all, I strongly recommend it to anyone that is interested in the history of popular music and in particular, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones and/or the history of independent  film makers like  Martin Scorsese  (Taplin produced his first film, Mean Streets).  Or if you are interested in people like Jonathan that have found their own unconventional way  through life and has impacted the development of today’s media industry. The book is a combination Jonathan’s recollections and experience  from the mid 60s to the end of the 90s.  Intersperse are stories of key figures that had profound effects on the evolution of media and culture.

I first meet Jonathan in 1997 or 1998, I think.  In 1996, Intel and Creative Artist Agency created a lab to educate talent about the coming possibilities of broadband residential Internet and personal computers to create a new medium.  I  drove this project from the Intel side after meeting with Michael Ovtiz who was the founder and principle owner of CAA.  I knew that we were creating a new medium that would effect every aspect of our lives from commerce and education to communications and entertainment.  In my position as Vice President of Business Development,  and my additional  role as “Czar” of Intel’s broadband development activities and a leading investor in early stage companies dealing with the consumer market. I wanted to accelerate the development of these “applications”.  I was particularly concerned with how entertainment content would finds its way to this new world.  I was pretty sure that the folks in Silcon Valley would not be able to create compelling and entertaining content with the exception of computer games.  So I thought, lets get the people that make todays entertainment excited about the opportunity.  We set up the lab  within CAA with state of the art computing technology. CAA’s clients and others would come by the lab for demonstrations.  They key person on my side was Sriram Viswanathan.  In addition, we decided to invest in early stage companies dealing with entertainment and to do this together with CAA.  This activity was lead by Matthew Cowan from the Intel side and Hassan Miah from the CCA side.    We had some hits like Launch Media which was founded by Dave Goldberg. Launch was selling enhanced  CD’s.  I required that they move to the Internet as part of our investment.    Launch was eventually sold to Yahoo where Dave ran the Yahoo music business.  Lucky for him, he meet Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook , soon to be one of the richest women in the world….and a lovely person by the  way.  We also invested in Mark Cuban’s  Broadcast.com which went public and then was bought by Yahoo for more than five billion dollars. Of course they were not all successful and we invested in some duds like American Cybercast.

During this period we learned of Intertainer, founded by Jonathan Taplin.  While I was aware that Jonathan had a background as a movie producer, I did not know anything about his extensive history in the music industry.  Intertainer  was one of the first companies to make deals with the movie industry and provide download-able movies.  Remember this was 1997/98. There were not that many consumers that had broadband in their homes. Intertainer did very well until the movie industry, lead by Sony, created an alternative called Movielink.  The result was that  studios cut off access to movies by Intertainer; bringing that company to its knees.  Intertainer sued a number of companies for Anti-Trust Violations in 2002.  In 2006, the suits were settled out of court.

As I began to read the book, I was shocked to learn that Jonathan and I had a lot of overlap in our early days.  Jonathan, at 65 is two years younger than I am.  He grew up, went to school and lived  on the East Coast during the 60s.  If he had been living in San Francisco, we would have surely known each other.  Jonathan became Bob Dylan’s road manager.  In the early 60s, I was surrounded by the San Francisco music scene but in a very peripheral way. Bob Dylan showed up sometimes at the Blue Unicorn where I hung out.   I met Janis Joplin  while she was rehearsing with the Big Brother and Holding Company (she was not a very nice person I thought but when she sang it would bring tears to my eyes).   I hung out at the home of the Jefferson Airplane and went to a few parties at Gerry Garcia’s home.  But I was not into rock. I had studied classical music, composition and arranging.  I preferred Jazz (and life long addition) and so I spent my time listening to Jazz players when they came to San Francisco.   My engagement with first the “beatniks” and later the “hippies” was more extensive.  I would listen to Allen Gingsburg read poetry in North Beach even though I was just a kid.  I spent lots of time at the  City Lights Book Store.   Later, I became  friendly with Allen and was invited to his apartment a few times.  Outlaw Blues deals a lot with these people. I was also drawn to Jewish Mysticism and was for a while a follower of Shlomo Carelbach and very politically active in the anti war and civil rights movements.

In reading Outlaw Blues, I realized how easily my life could have gone in a different direction.  Maybe, if I liked the music better, I would have become part of the rock music scene. My management and leadership skills might have taken me on a path similar to Jonathan and eventually my creative side might have emerged as it did for him.  I had a similar experience reading Holy Beggars by  Aryae Coopersmith  whom I recently met.  In reading Aryae’s book, I realized that I could have easily continued to explore the spiritual side of myself and may have ended up in Israel as a Rabbi. But I fell in love with technology. By 1966, I was working at the Langley Porter Institute, UCSF Medical School, designing equipment for brainwave bio feedback.  From that point on, I had a continuing connection to technology.  Now I am back to studying music.  Jonathan is a Professor at USC.

At this point in my life, it is interesting to speculate on  the different paths I could have taken.  Life is so strange and random… or is it?

Some relevant links:
Outlaw Blues, the song  
Outlaw Blues, the film 

WSJ  on the book  
Jonathan Taplin 
Allen Ginsberg
Michael Ovitz   
Dave Goldberg

Mark Cuban
Broadcast.com 
Intel/CAA Media Lab
Holly Beggars   

Shlomo Carlebach 

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Hong Kong and Me: How I became the highest compensated advisor in the world (for a little while)

February 8, 2012

Hong Kong 1963-Courtesy of Tim Brown

Here I am in Hong Kong some 49 years after I first arrived here.  I wrote about that experience recently here.   In looking for photos to use with this post, I found  some that were taken in 1963 by a family that actually traveled on the President Cleveland,the ship on which I worked.  I was able to make contact with Tim Brown who published the photos.  He was eleven years old when he sailed on that ship at the same time I served on it.

President Cleveland in Hong Kong 1963-Courtsey of Time Brown

The next time I came to Hong Kong was about 30 years later, 1992.    I was working for Intel at the time.  Of course by 1992, a lot had changed.  I remember there was still an electronics industry in Hong Kong then.  And it was still a place to buy cheap goods. But in the late 90s, my relationship with Hong Kong changed dramatically.  As readers of this blog will know, my major activity (and  professional accomplishment) was driving the development of residential broadband utilizing my position as   Vice President of Business Development for Intel Corp.  This was accomplished in the US and in many other  parts of the world  by working with the cable industry to utilize their infrastructure  to provide two way high speed communications to homes.  At the same time, we worked with phone companies through out the world to use their infrastructure  to provide broadband (DSL).  While the combination of cable and telephone infrastructure reached much of the developed world, it could not reach most of the developing world.  That is when I became interested in Satellite communications.  An example of this is a joint venture which I put together between Intel and SES Astra  (Europe’s largest Satellite Operator) to provide broadband to be delivered to PC’s via Satellite.

Avram signs his deal with Richard Li

Sometime in late 1996 I was asked by my friend, the late John Evans,   to meet Richard Li, the son of Li Ka-Shing, one of the riches and most powerful men in the world.   When I meet Richard he was about 30 years old and already a billionaire in his own right having created Star TV in 1990 and selling it to  Rupert Murdoch in 1993.  Richard had a strong interest in technology although he did not really  know much about it.  It turned out that he was considering  acquiring a startup called WebTV and wanted my advice.  WebTV was founded by Steve Perlman, a serial entrepreneur that I have known for about 20 years. It made sense in a way for Richard but at that time, I was convinced it would not succeed in the market.  It was too early for Interactive TV and it still has not really happen.  Soon after, and lucky for Steve, WebTV was bought by Microsoft for about 400 million dollars.  Steve is now the founder and CEO of OnLive.

A few months after that, I was contacted by Michael Johnson and George Chan both of whom played key roles  in the creation and operation of StarTV.   Michael was the “idea guy” and George was the “get it done guy”.  Both still worked for Richard Li  and they were figuring out what their next moves might be after Richard’s non-compete lapsed.  One idea was to bring the Internet to China.  This was the mid 90s and there was very little Internet penetration in China.  Strange to think that less then 20 years later, there would be more Internet users in china than any other country in the world.    Michael wanted to take advantage of the cable TV systems that were installed  in cities  throughout China.  The idea was to use satieties to download content into servers that would be located in these cities.  The cable TV structure would be used to  connect homes to the server.  The device at home would be similar to WebTV. The company providing do the service would  do the actual programing. The cable operator would get paid for the use of their infrastructure.   It was kind of a hybrid of TV and interactivity.  We were going to support some amount of upstream (to the Satellite) bandwidth so that email could be sent an received.  I know it probably sounds like a dumb idea but please think about the mid 90s and China.  Richard’s company, Pacific Century CyberWorks and Intel formed a joint venture called  Pacific Convergence Group (PCC).   We set up a development organization in California.  Michael Johnson came over to lead the effort.

Avram and Michael Johnson

About a year later, I resigned from Intel (April 1999) to start up The Avram Miller Company which was pretty much a way to brand me.  That name had come to me after attending the Allen& Co Sun Valley Conference for seven years.  There was always a list of the companies present. One of those  companies was The Walt Disney Company.  Herb Allen kindly invited me to attend the conference in July 1999 even though I was no longer with Intel.  I loved the listing of companies.  The Avram Miller Company was right above The Walt Disney Company.

Just before I left Intel, I told my plans to leave to  a select number of CEO’s in the companies I was working closely with.  I had lead Intel’s investment in CMGI in December 1997 and was a board observer.  When I informed the then CEO of CMGI, Dave Wetherell that I was leaving Intel, he asked me to join his board as an independent  director which I did.  When I told Richard I was leaving Intel, I mentioned I would be joining the CMGI board.   He then asked me to join his board as well.  Frankly, I was not too keen on joining his board.  While I had developed a close relationship with Dave Wetherell, I did not feel very close to Richard and was concerned that I would not have a lot of impact. This turned out to be correct.   But I was also intrigued with the idea of have my own global reach. Richard asked me what it would take financially to get me to join.  I was pretty “hot” in those days.   So I was asking for a lot.  So I said, I wanted 0.5% of the company in options and 500k dollars.  And that is what we agreed to.  I actually asked for the cash because I had no idea how things worked on the Hong Kong stock exchange and was not sure if I would actually ever be able to get my options.

So this is what happens  next:   Richard, acquired this public company and renames it as the Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW).  Intel invest $50 million into PCCW and eventually folds PCC into that company as well. Intel then folds in the joint venture.  I am not yet on the board.  I am advising Richard and we do a number of things including setting up a venture capital group within PCCW. I introduce Dave Wetherell to Richard Li and they decided to have each company invest in the other and enter into a number of strategic relationships.  By that time, I  also joined the board of World Online (based in the Netherlands) , which was one of Europe’s leading Internet Service Providers.  I liked having the Asian, European and USA reach.  It was a critical part of the strategy for my own company.

For a number of reasons, my appointment to the board was delayed.  One of the key reasons is that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange requires that my compensation be appraised by an independent  company to determine if it is was fair and reasonable.  In the meantime,  PCCW stock is going crazy.  The strike price for my options where set at about $2.40 (Hong Kong Dollar).  But the company is ridding the Internet bubble of the 1999.  Soon, the stock is trading up in the 20s.  I believe that at one time PCCW might have been the most valuable Internet stock in the world.

PCCW stock chart during the time I was involved

My stock options were valued at 90 million dollars.  One of the major HR companies did the Appraisal and sure enough, they agreed that it was fair and reasonable compensation.  I wish I could find their report.  Of course, by the time all this work was done and my option package  was finally approved at a stock holders meeting, the bubble burst and my options were underwater. I never realized a dime from them.

I continued on the board for a number of years.  A long the way, PCCW acquired the phone company of Hong Kong  (Cable and Wireless HKT) for 28 billion dollars. The Company was able to buy that asset with Internet Dollars.  So there I was 36 years after sailing into Hong Kong as an 18 year merchant seaman, serving as a board member the Hong Kong Phone company, meeting with the top officials of Hong Kong including the Chief Executive.

PCCW continues to function and is the leading provider of broadband in Hong Kong.  Richard Li is still chairman of PCCW.  He tried to take it private recently but was prevented by Hong Kong Stock Exchange.  George Chan is he managing director.  Michael Johnson left PCCW many years ago and lives in South Africa. As for me, well those days are over.  And I am stopping in Hong Kong my wife Deborah on our way back from Thailand.  I can still afford a limo from the Airport and an amazing hotel room with a beautiful view of an amazing city that has played such an interesting role in my life.

www.upperhouse.com

View from Upper House Hotel Room

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How I got the iPad right in 1994 but was wrong about the Information Furnace

January 9, 2012

Today is the 5th anniversary of the announcement iPhone by the late Steve Jobs.  It is hard to imagine that it was just such a short time ago. Something seem to happen so quickly in technology while other things  seem to take a very long time.

I recently came across an article written in June of 1994 (almost 18 years ago). You can find the article at the end of this post or you can go to this link.    It talks about the evolution of computing in the home and in particular discusses something called “The information Furnace”  a term, I believe I created, to describe a Home Server. In 1994, most homes did not have even a single computer.  Typically the computers in the home of early adopters were used for productivity applications like Personal Finance such as Quicken or for hobbies.  Probably less than a million homes were connected to on-line services like Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL – which was less than 1% of the nation. They used dial up modems.   Broadband connectivity was just starting to be tested.

Of course the number of homes that had more than one computer was extremely small.  Home networking as we now know it did not really exist.  The floppy disk was the way information would be moved from one computer in the home to another.  This was called sneaker net many years later.  This was also before the development of what we now cal WiFi.  That meant that early networking within the home required running Ethernet cables.

I was  convinced that  computers would dominate home interactivity. Many at the time thought it would be the interactive set top box. Because I was so involved with the creation of residential broadband technologies in my role as Vice President, Business Development at Intel,  I knew we were creating the technical foundation of a new medium.  A medium  that would impact all aspects of our lives from the way we communicated, learned, shopped, were entertained and informed. The article mentioned above was written about a year before Amazon was established.  A few months after it was published, I was quoted in Fortune Magazine as saying “that the killer app for the Internet would be advertising.”  Google was started about four years later and started selling advertising a few years after that.

Now before you think this post is all about how insightful I was, and I was, it is really about how things turned out differently than I thought and wanted.  It really is about a failure to implement a vision and an exploration of the possibility that things could have ended up differently.

In that very same article (again 1994), I coined the term i-pad (see the Article).  Sixteen years later, Apple announced the iPad on Jan. 27th, 2010. Coincidentally, it happened to be my  65th birthday.

So now back to the story.  I envisioned  pervasive computing throughout the house.  At that time most computers were desktop devices and rather expensive. So I thought there would be one central computer in the home that would have the broadband connection.  Then there would be devices around the home that would provide access to this central computer
(remember I am old enough to have lived through the time sharing days).  The central computer would have the main storage for the home.  For instance it could maintain a family calendar, home files,  etc.   I also felt that this would reduce the complexity of managing information since all information (including  media) would be located in just one place (of course it would be automatically backed-up).

At that time, I was engaged with a number of engineers in the Intel Architecture Lab (IAL).  I was funding a number of programs within the Lab then licensing the resulting technology for equity in early stage companies.  So I am pretty sure that that I discussed these concepts with members of IAL and probably they had a major impact on my thinking.

The problem was that Intel was a chip company and we had a very strong strategic relationship with Microsoft.   We actually had many software designers but every time we got close to some area that Bill Gates considered  Microsoft’s birthright there would be a major battle and Intel would give in.

Microsoft was actually slow to understand how the home computing would develop.  They believed that intelligent set top’s would be the way along with game machines and various appliances.  After working with Microsoft and General Instruments  (the leader in cable boxes at the time) on the development of an Interactive Set Top Box, I became convinced that this was not the way things would develop. This view was also held by Matt Miller (no relation) who was the CTO of General Instruments.  Together, Matt and I persuaded  GI and Intel decided to develop residential broadband technologies and to do it without Microsoft.  Microsoft spent a lot of effort to develop Set Top Box software and made various deals with cable companies including investing a billion dollars into Comcast in 1997.

However, I was not able to get executive management at Intel or Microsoft to understand the need for a home-server.  Andy Grove never really bought into my vision of how computers would be used in the home and invested a great deal of money into a flawed scheme to use ISDN to do video conferencing in the home.  Microsoft would not announce a home-server until 2007.

So computing evolved in the home with more and more homes having multiple computers and eventually sharing a home network.  This network had at its center a router which allowed the devices in the home to easily share one broadband connection. This was one of the tasks that I thought the Information Furnace would do.  But complexity of sharing information in the home increased.  This provided an opportunity  for Apple, to address this need by creating software to synchronize information between computers and devices (iTunes/ iPod is an example). At the same time Web service companies (like Yahoo) dealt with the complexity of email, calendars and contacts by storing them on the Net. Microsoft even bought HotMail in 1997 and started up MSN.

Now most of the functions that I had envisioned for the Information Furnace will be provided by Apple’s iCloud.  Other companies will create similar capabilities.

In away, it is a better solution that the Information Furnace since these capabilities can be professionally managed and maintained. They can be improved without consumer involvement.  But it has taken a long time in coming, and we’re still not there.

Of course the way it played out had a major impact on the companies involved.

Image

AP Article

PCs Evolving Into Information Furnaces :
Technology: Experts predict computers
are evolving into control centers, linking
the telephone, TV, thermostat and other
household electronic devices.

June 30, 1994 | EVAN RAMSTAD | ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — In the metaphor-mad world of technology, there’s a new phrase making the rounds, one that experts believe describes the direction that personal computers are taking. After 20 years as an independent box, the PC is evolving into a control center that ties together the
phone, TV, thermostat and other electronic devices in every room in the house. An information furnace, they call it.

“It’s equivalent to central heating,” said Avram Miller, Intel’s vice president of corporate business development. “This analogy with power is very good. If you look at electricity, electricity was designed to do only one thing–lighting. Clearly, there’s a lot more to it than that now.” Like a furnace, the PC of the future could be hidden from view, in the basement, a closet or drawer. The devices it links would take different shapes depending on their use and location. A unit in the den might have a keyboard and screen while one in the living room might be a big screen with stereo speakers and a
player for programs on compact disc. The incorporation of telephone-answering machines into consumer PCs last summer was an early
example of this trend, which will be a key topic at the annual PC Expo this week at New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center.

Intel CEO Andrew Grove has titled his keynote speech for the show “The Ubiquitous Information Appliance.”
The acceleration of the trend is important for Intel to drive demand for advances in its key product–the microprocessor or “brain” of a PC.
Packard Bell Inc. earlier this month rolled out PCs with built-in TV and radio receivers as well as phone answering and fax capabilities. With them, a technician played a Bach compact disc, the radio and TV and worked on a word-processing program simultaneously.
It’s not just today’s electronic items that could be hooked up but those on the drawing board of technologists and inventors. Last week, Timex Corp. and Microsoft Corp. even demonstrated a watch that can take in messages from a computer. “One of the devices that’s interesting, we call it an I-pad, an information pad,” Miller said. “It would be a device that has a flat-panel screen. You can write on it, touch it. You might be able to speak into it and it might speak back. It would be wireless, cheap and have different forms in the house.”  Some early forms of an “I-pad” are Apple Computer Inc.’s Newton, Motorola Inc.’s Envoy and IBM’s
Simon devices, which have both computing and communication features.
“You will see all kinds of combinations be possible,” said Safi Qureshey, chief executive of AST Research
Inc. in Irvine. “We want to provide the glue so the user can go in between all of these different access mechanisms.”

The concept of a computer network in the home is rooted in the workplace. Portable computers, for instance, linked to the main one in an office are allowing more people to work at home or on the road. “The same technologies are going to be used in the home environment,” said Alan Soucy, vice president of mobile computers at Zenith Data Systems. “They’re going to be repackaged, more specific, more like an appliance.”
The vision isn’t just Intel’s or the computer industry’s. At a cable TV trade show last month, General Instrument Corp., the leading maker of set-top channel controls, described a plan for “component” TVs built around a computer-like box. The monitor–which in time will be a flat panel screen–and game player, video recorder or telephone would all be separate pieces.
“Exactly how much it all gets centralized in one place, I’m a little hard pressed to predict right now,” said Jeff Roman, vice president of technology and new business development for General Instrument.
The first personal computer sold to the general public, the Altair 8800, appeared in Popular Electronics magazine in December, 1974. It was a box of circuits and lights that cost about $250 but had no software
or screen and required 50 commands, executed by flipping switches, just to get started. Today, the most popular PCs take just a few minutes to set up, have dozens of megabytes of software
already installed, and can link through a phone line to millions of others worldwide.

Very few people anticipated the computers of today in 1974. Even fewer know what to expect in another
two decades. Something as futuristic as an information furnace, while still vague, is probably only a decade away. There is certainty in the industry only about the next year or two.
“It’s not possible to conceive 20 years from now,” said Intel’s Miller. “The computers of 20 years from now will probably be 10,000 times more powerful than they are today”

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Rotterdam 1969-1974: The Thoraxcenter

December 28, 2011

Towards the end of 1968, I accepted a position at the Thoraxcenter in Rotterdam. My task was to create and run the computer dept.  It was actually two depts.  One was part of the medical school at Erasmus University and the other was part of the  Dijkzigt University Medical Center.  Accepting the position was both and easy and difficult decision.  It was easy to accept an offer that would mean relocating to Holland, a country I had visited before and liked.  I was pretty negative about the USA at the time, particularly because of the Vietnam War.  And to make matters worse, Ronald Reagan was governor of California.  I was employed  by UC San Francisco Medical School  and worked at the Langley Porter Institute so I actually work for the state  But it was hard to leave Joe Kamiya who was not only my boss, but also my mentor and friend.  Furthermore, while I was very interested in our work in brainwave bio feedback (I designed some of the first equipment to do brainwave bio feedback)  and the idea of designing systems to diagnose and treat heart patients was not nearly as interesting.

Professor Paul Hugenholtz MD, was the founder and Executive Director  of the Thoraxcenter (Thoraxcentrum) .  He was a Dutch cardiologist who had spent many years working at  Boston Hospital and doing some experimental work with people at MIT.  Paul’s vision for the Thoraxcenter included fully integrating computer technology into the care of patience.  This was  a pretty advanced concept in 1968.   Paul would call me in San Francisco early in the morning  from Holland to try to convince me join his staff. I eventually agreed.  I was to report to Jerry  Russel who was an american bio-technologest.   Jerry also had experience in using computers in cardiology.  He had decided  use computers from Digital Equipment Corp and ordered two PDP-9s for the Thoraxcenter.    I already knew how to program  the PDP-7 and sometime before I left Joe’s lab, we had also gotten a PDP-9.  So this was a familiar  base for me.   I don’t remember what exactly what happened but sometime soon after my arrival, I ended up reporting directly to Paul Hugenholtz.    Paul was/is and amazing man.  Here is a link to a pretty detailed interview with him about his life.  Paul, thought me much and I will always be grateful to him for his support and coaching.  The day I arrived at the Thoraxcenter, I was greeted by his assistant, Arianne van der Klooster, who became my wife of 25 years (we are no longer married but still close)  and the mother of my three children.

This was my first management  position. I had just turned 24 years old.  I also had not graduated from college and was about to fill a position on the academic staff.   I think by the time I left some five years later to immigrate with my family to Israel, there were over 30 people working my group and and held a position that was something between an assistant and associate professor.  We accomplished much both in terms of the development of  computer technology and in terms of cardiovascular medicine. It is almost funny to think about the technology we had to use and how we improvised so much which is really the main point of this blog post.

Let me start by describing the basic set up.  We had two nearly identical PDP-9s.  The PDP-9 had an 18 bit word length (today computers have either 8, 16, 32 or 64 bit word lengths).  The maximum memory was 32,000 words. To put into bytes (8 bits) which we now commonly use to describe computer memory, it had 72,000  bytes (72kb).      Most of the photos I take on my iPhone are about three times as large as the total memory of the computer.  We had no disk memory.  We had a small tape unit which had a capacity about equal to the main memory.  We did not swap programs.  All the software had to be in main memory.  We got really good at writing very tight programs in assembly code as you can imagine.  One of the computers was used for our real time Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Monitoring System.  The other was used for program development.  Only one programer could work on that computer at a time.  The programing computer was also used as backup to the mission critical ICU system.  To facility that ability to switch, we had a small bus switch which would move all the peripherals  we used for the clinical system to the backup/programing computer.

I think the computer system monitored heart rate, blood pressure, temperature  and breath  I don’t remember if we were able to monitor arrhythmia.  I doubt it.  We actually got the raw signal in for the EKG, blood pressure and breath.  We used a Digital to Analog Converter which was multiplex to sample four signals for six patient and from that we computed the key values we monitored Not only could we provide the nursing staff with continuous instantaneous values but the could set alarm thresholds. We were also able to provided graphs so that trend lines could be seen.   There  were six patients on line, I believe.   The displays at the nurses desk were TV monitors turned on their sides.  We used a head per track video disk to create the images and text. This desk  was actually developed for the television industry.  But the craziest things was the keyboard.  At first, we used rotary  phone to send commands from the nurses to the computer.  In other words, the nurse would dial a command.  The computer would monitor the signal from the phone and count the pulses.  Later, we built a specialized keyboard using keys that were designed for elevators.  The company that developed the specialized equipment for us was Mennen Medical. ( I would later work for that company in Israel where I was able to commercialize some of the work I had done at the Thoraxcenter. I also joined the staff at the dept. of cardiology, Tel Aviv Medical School as Adjunct Associate Professor.)   Later, we  wanted to increased  to look at other aspects of the EKG such a t-waves but we did not have enough computing power.  It was then that I ordered a PDP-15 which was the successor of the PDP-9.  But I treated it in a way like a microprocessor.  I just got a small version without any peripherals and we created a high speed connection to the ICU computer system. It was the beginning of my love of networking computers.  I had a special love for the PDP-15.  When I was still working at Langley Porter, I found that there was a design problem with the PDP-9 which made it difficult to use for real time programing (it had to do with the interrupt structure).  I modified the micro code of PDP-9 to fix the problem and Digital took that change and applied it to the PDP-15.

We then got one of the very first PDP-11s. I think it might have had 32kb of memory.  We used it to develop a system for the catheterization lab.  That system was later licensed to Mennen Greatbatch.  We also developed software for some of the first work in echo-cardiogram as well as creating a computer simulation model of the heart.  It would take the computer a whole day just to have one heart beat I think.

I have been working with computer for 45 years.  The capabilities have grown by something great than 50,000 times.  I remember making circuits with just one transistor, a few resistors and a couple of capacitors.  If you look at the evolution of biological intelligence and compare it with computer intelligence, there is just one conclusion that I can make:  That in my life time we will go from a single cell to a human capability. And then what?  More about that some other time when I explain why the universe is the way it is.

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Promise we make to our future selves

December 23, 2011

I found this Ted talk interesting (as most).  It dealt with the relationship between ourselves now and ourselves in the future.  It is a topic I think about often.  We make trade offs all the time between what we would want now and what we will want later.  Human beings have a pretty good ability to project into the future.  But I am also interested in the relationship and obligation of our future self to who were are now and what that means for our future self.

Let me give an example that plays a big role in my life,  to illustrate this.    As frequent readers of this blog will know, I had studied music composition in my late teens.  I felt that I had a gift  for composing.  When I started working with computer in 1966 and dealing medical research, I pretty much gave up composing.  Over the years, I continued to play piano but more as something to relax me.

I joined Intel in 1984 and until 1988 and was based at the Oregon Facility. In 1998,  my  wife was accepted into a Ph.d program at Stanford.  Intel kindly relocated us to Palo Alto and I worked out of the Santa Clara campus (which certainly had  very positive consequence for my career at Intel).  I decided to take piano lessons again and found a teacher named Glenn Spencer who thought Jazz Piano.

Glenn was a good teacher and very interesting man who sadly died too young from cancer.  Glenn was the founder and leader of a Midi  user group called Musig. Midi is a software protocol that was first developed in 1982 and is still used today to transfer information between electronic music instruments, computers and other devices.  I got interested in Midi and joined Musig. I started learning about the capabilities of Midi.  I bought an electronic piano that had some programmable  features.  Musiq had periodic lectures from companies that were developing Midi products.  One of these companies was OpCode and it a leading company in Midi software.  It had one of the best  if not the best  Sequencer called Studio Vision.  A Sequencer is like a word processor for music.  When OpCode started up, most Sequencers were special purpose hardware.  Personal computers were just starting up.  OpCode developed products for the Mac.  I was amazed when I saw Vision demonstrated by someone from OpCode at one of the meetings.  I understood how powerful the combination of an electronic  keyboard,  and a synthesizer where.   Synthesizers were around since the 60s when Robert Moog introduced the first commercially available product.  The synthesizer did just that, it synthesized  sounds of musical instruments. Later, sampled sounds would be used.

A whole new world of technology related to music opened up for me.  It was very exciting.  I wanted to get involved.  I also thought that there was an opportunity for Intel to develop some technology that would allow the actual product of the musical sounds to be done in software.  You can read a bit about that part of the story here.  I organized a meeting with the CEO of OpCode, Chris Halaby (who is strange not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about OpCode).  I had a number of discussion with Chris and eventually  he asked me to join the board of OpCode which I did in an individual capacity and not in my role as VP Corp, Development at Intel.  I bought a Mac to run the companies software.  I got a really good synthesizer/sampler from Roland which was one of the leading companies in midi hardware.  And there I was with what was pretty much a music studio in my home office. I first used it to recording my playing so that I could improve my piano skills.  But one day something I did not expect happened. I began to compose  music again.

I knew I had a talent for composing.  It came to me naturally.  My friend Rich Falvey had thought me the basics of music theory one afternoon and I wrote my first piece a few days later.  I was 15 years old and never played a musical instrument.  I started to learn the piano but only so that I could play the pieces of music I was writing.  I never thought I would be a pianist but over the years my piano skills developed.  But there I was again in my mid 40s, writing music.  Now I had amazing tools to capture my compositions.  I could compose at the keyboard, edit on the computer and orchestrate.  I began to write complex orchestral  music.  In my teens, I just wrote for the piano or for small combinations of instruments and singers.  It was all that I could hear in my head and I had no other way to hear it performed unless I could get musicians together.  There seemed to be no limits.  I could experiment with my music change the instruments, the tempo and even create new sounds.

I would stay up late at night with ear phones on my head and write music.  I began to work on one piece in particular that had a very powerful effect on me.  I found it overwhelming.  It was not so much that I was impressed with myself for being able to create this music but it was more that I was actually overcome by the beauty of it.    But I was also suffering.  I really needed to spend long amounts of time and concentration to work on this piece.  But I did not have that time.  I had a very demanding  and exciting job  at Intel and a family I loved very much.  So I made a decision.  I decided to stop composing.  But I also made a promise.  I  promised  myself of the future that one day when I had achieved my professional and financial goals, I would come back to composing.

So here I am with this promise I made to myself of the past some  twenty years ago. have even greater tools to work with. I have kept up on music technology.  I play the piano a lot.  I am still improving and take lessons in jazz piano and theory. But  I would not be here today, comfortably  retired since my mid 50s, if it was not for the efforts  I made in my 40s.  I have yet kept that promise.  I think I know why.  What if I find out that I am not longer capable of composing with the skills and talent of that 40 year old me. What if I find out that I am not capable of keeping the promise.

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Avram, the Merchant Seaman

November 4, 2011

Reading the Steve Jobs bio made me want to share a bit more about my past just in case Walter Isaacson does not write my bio.

I got my high school diploma because my mother pretty much  bought  for me from a private school called Drew in San Francisco were we lived..  I took a bunch of tests, showed up a few times and there I was a  graduate.  It was clear by that time that I would never succeed in college and I had no interest in going there anyway.  My teen years had prepared me for little more than being a poet, political protester, fledging jazz pianist and composer and one of the skinniest guys around (107 pounds and 5.8 tall).  I was human laser beam and could walk through walls by turning sideways.

My maternal  grandmother, Della Silverman, was married to her second husband, Jack Silverman.  Her former husband, Mark Harris, my grandfather had committed suicide  in 1948 at the age of 50.  Not too much later, Della married Jack.   He was an interesting man that played a pretty significant role in my life from time to time.  For instance, Della and Jack lived for many years in Las Vegas where Jack worked in a casino as a dealer and Della managed the gift shop at the Sahara Hotel.  My younger sister, Beverly, and I would visit them for the summer when we were young. She would park us at the hotel pool.  I remember Betty Grable watching out for me as did a number of show girls.   Jack thought me how to tip the captain to get a good seat at some of the Vegas shows (Bev and I saw most of the Rat Pack).  I use to joke that I gave 20 dollars to the captain of the airplane to sit up front.

Anyway, there I was turning 18 and every one in the family was worried about my future. They thought  I would end up as a failure.  My mom did not care since she would love me no matter what.  Then Jack had an idea.  I should join the merchant marines, specifically,  the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards.   They had a training facility in Santa Rosa (strangely my home in Kenwood CA is just ten miles away), and he could get me in (by paying some people off).  Since I had no other plans I said yes.

The training school  was located  Santa Rosa, California and had two programs.  One was for  cooks and the other was for stewards and waiters. I was enrolled in the stewards program where we learned to be waiters (of the five star type) and stewards (which was like being a maid with trousers).  Associated with the school was a retirement home for merchant seamen.  So these guys had their rooms tended to by the trainees and they had the same kind of meals you would get on a luxury liner (Baked Alaska was a favorite desert I recall).  They were mostly a group of assholes.

I actually enjoyed learning to wait tables.  I could take the orders for a table of ten people in my head.  I loved carrying a fifty pound tray filled with plates of food (which turn out to be very damaging to me which I will explain later).  I liked the other trainees.  About half of them were gay and it was the first time I really interacted with gay men. One of them thought me how to use  creams to keep my skin in good shape.  I also developed a close friendship with a man named Nate who  was also the head waiter at the Purple Onion in San Francisco.  He did not really need to be trained but he had to go through  the program part of the time to get his diploma. He wanted to sail to Japan.   I would spend my free days staying with Nate and his Japanese wife at their apartment on Bush Street.   They were the guardians of two Japanese  twin girls my exact age.  The girls were singers and had steady job in San Francisco.  I  fell for one of them, Kaiko and we were sort of dating.  But we were always chaperoned. I would go to the club where they were performing and then a large group of us would go to some after hour club where we could dance.  I still remember  dancing with her to “I left my heart in San Francisco”.  I only got to kiss her a few times.  She and her sister did not speak english and I started learning  Japanese.   I really got into Japanese culture for a while.  Unfortunately, I took a roll of photos which were taken of  the two of us to my grandfather, Bill Goldfinger to develop. He owned a camera shop on Post Street near Market Street.  I did not know how much he hated Japanese people (WWII). He would not talk to me after this for many years.  Eventually, Kaiko and her sister went to Las Vegas to work.  I was invited to join them but I decided this was not the life I wanted to live.

Merchant  seamen jobs were controlled by their union.  If you were qualified for certain time you would put a card  in for the job.  The cards would age up to 90 days and then reset.  The person with the oldest card would get the job.  So you had to kind of bet on a bunch  of factors to decide what and when to bid on a Job.   I really wanted to get a job on the President Roosevelt because it was one of the few ships that sailed around the world.  I would have gotten it I think if I had not almost died first.

One day as I was waiting to put in my card, I felt a very strong pain in my left chest.  If I had that now, I would think I had a heart attack but I was only 18 and was eating a cheeseburger at the time.  I called my mom in terror because the pain was so great.   She said I should go directly to my doctors office.  So somehow I drove there.  He examined me and then called an ambulance.  The next thing I knew, I was at Mt. Zion Hospital with what they call a Spontaneous Pneumothorax.  Mine was really bad.  They tried a number of treatments but nothing worked.  My left lung was collapsed and would not heal.  They ended up having to do a Thoracoscopy which involved opening my chest wall (I am missing a few ribs) and basically gluing my lung to the chest wall.  Anyway, I was in the hospital for a number of weeks and almost died.  I was left with the equivalent of 1 1/2 lungs and a massive scare.  The really awful thing was I was not able to put my card in for the Roosevelt.  But I did mange to get a gig on the President Cleveland as the Steward for the officers.

The ship was it own world.  There were thousands of passengers and four times as many crew.  The crew was divided into those that interfaced with passengers or officers  and who had blue union cards and those that did not and had red union cards. Most of  the red card holders  where chinese and did not associate with the rest of us other than at the gambling  tables that were set up for the crew.  Of those that interfaced with the passengers, about half were gay and half were straight.  I found that out the fist night we sailed when I was walking around in ship and found a party going on with some of the most beautiful women I had ever seen (they were not actually women).   So we sailed to Honolulu where I went to the beach.  It was crazy because I had the biggest and yet unhealed  scare up my back.   I didn’t care. I was alive.  When we were at sea, I  get up early and go up to the highest deck on the ship and watch the sun rise.  Given the earth curvature, I felt that I was sitting on a dime.  Everything in ever direction was round.

While at the school I had developed a friendship with an American Japanese person.  He was a  Nisei (second generation Japanese) named Ken. He could speak Japanese but not that well. However, he married a very sweet woman from Japan and brought her back to San Francisco. I spent a lot of time at their home.  When we  went to Japan (Yokohama ) for the first time, Ken took me on a little trip.  He knew that I was still a virgin (at 18) so he took me to this bar.  It was actually very nice and there was no one there.  Then a very sweet 18 year old girl was introduced to me.  Her name was Miyoko.  I still did not know what was going on. She took my hand and brought me to a room.  I will not go into details but when I left, I was no longer a virgin.  Then Ken came back with two girls. I remember I said “I did not know you could do it with two”.

Things were pretty dangerous on the ship. There would be fights with knives and people actually got killed. Sometimes men were thrown over board. I am not kidding!!  I have not idea how I survived.  The fist time I went to Hong Kong (Hong Kong in 1963 was very different then now), I went to a bar where the officers that I served happen to be. Each had to buy my a drink.  We were on the mainland (Kowloon).  I got totally drunk.  I wanted to go to Mt. Victoria because  I had seen the movie “Love is a many  splendor thing” . So I got onto a Star  Ferry boat.  And of course I choose to buy he lowest class ticket.  I ended up on the bottom level of the boat where the Coolies were.  It was a sea of black clothes.  I got scared as we were traveling across the bay and got closer to the side of the boat. Then I fell over.  They stopped the boat and and I was pulled in.  I was all wet but took a tram up to Victoria Peak.   By the way, Hong Kong was a third world country in 1963 with people sleeping in the streets on bare mattress.

After Hong Kong we went to Manila.  There were bars that said “please check your guns”. I was warned to stay away from the bar girls because they were really transvestites. I did.  People constantly tried to rob me especially young children. I was once shot at.  I did not like the place but Ken and I found that we could sell cigarettes for a lot of money and then buy purses which we could sell in Japan for a lot of money. They we too the money back to the USA were could buy Yen cheap (black market) and then buy cigarettes in Japan which we sold in Manila to buy purses and around and around we went.  By the time I was 19 years old I made about $100,000 in todays dollars  this way.  I stopped in around Sept. 1963 when I met Holly.  But that is another story.

 

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Steve Jobs and me

October 7, 2011

This is not so much about Steve Jobs but about how Steve effected me.

Like so many, the death of Steve Jobs has played a  big role in my thinking since hearing the news on Wednesday.    Steve played an important role in my life although he hardly knew me.  The first time I met Steve was at the PC Forum in 1982 which was started by Ben Rosen and later taken over by Ester Dyson.  There are some great photos of the PC Forum over the years,  but unfortunately, they start at 1984. I remember setting next to  Steve in the audience  and having some discussion. He was 26 years old and I was 36 years old.  I wish I could remember what we discussed.  At that time Apple was selling the  Apple II.  I had come to announce the Pro 300 series (I was responsible for that product line at Digital Equipment Company which was the number two computer company in the world  then).  It is probably hard for those that know me now to imagine that  I was probably as passionate tabout product design then as Steve was to become later.  Here is the Pro 350:

Here is the Apple II

I will come back to this a bit later because it really  has the most to do with what I am trying to express in this blog.  It is easy to imagine  during my  conversation with  Steve that he could have asked me to join Apple Maybe I would have but probably not.  I doubt that could have seen myself working for someone so much younger than me (ego) and I probably would not have been willing to take the financial  risk.  At that point, my career at Digital was ascending.  I had the strong sponsorship of the CEO (Ken Olsen) and I really thought my efforts with the Pro would change the world of computing.  I could hardly have guess that just two years later, I would be the president of an Apple II Clone company, Franklin Computer, and locked in a legal battle with Apple and Steve Jobs.

The evening before the forum,  I attended the speakers dinner. It was an amazing dinner and really my first real introduction to the world of PC entrepreneurs.  Amongst the attendees were Steve Jobs, Bill Gates (also 26), Don Estridge who lead the development of the IBM PC,   and Adam Osborne.  Adam I recall said the key to wining in the personal computer market place was building and adequate but low cost product (similar to the net book argument). Steve eventually took the opposite approach.  Of these, only Bill is still alive and is no longer active in the computer industry.   Don died a few years later at the age of 48.  Adam died in 2003 at the age of 64. Steve died just now at the age of 56.  These and some of the others attending were really the founders of the PC era.   My own contribution(not to be compared to Bill and Steve of course)  to creating the computer industry we now know would have to wait a decade more,  when I as Vice President of Corp Development at Intel, drove much of the early development of today’s residential broadband networks.

I left Digital Equipment in early in 1983.  It was clear to me that my work there was not going to be successful.  The Professional 300 series computer that I had developed with so much love and passion was incomplete and two expensive albeit way ahead of their time with the first 5 inch winchester disk, bit map graphics and Ethernet connectivity (all this in 1983).   Digital did not have the desire or ability to really market in the developing PC world.  So for a while, I considered leaving with a few of my most talented staff and to start a local area networking company (by that time I was in love with networking technology).   However, I was too scared to do a start up and when I got the offer to join Franklin Computer, I took it.  You can read a pretty funny article about me and Franklin here. Franklin had a clone of the Apple II just as Compaq had  clone of the IBM PC.  But there were lots of legal differences and Apple sued Franklin in a landmark case.  Apple never actually won but the destroyed Franklin’s ability to raise capital.   We were growing very quickly and approaching 100 million dollars in sales in a first full year of operations.  But without the ability to raise additional cash and with our bank canceling our line of credit the company was headed for disaster.  I had joined  Franklin to use its  momentum  and the money we expected to raise in an IPO (were in registration when the appeal court decided to re hear the case)  to build a real computer company to fully compete in the market.  We tried to work things out with Apple.  We offered to pay them a big licensing fee and help develop the market.    John Sculley who was then CEO of Apple seemed interested in some possible arrangement and settlement but evidently Steve Jobs would hear nothing of it and wanted us dead.  He got his wish.  I left  a few months before Franklin went into bankruptcy for a brief period in order to wipe out the common shareholders.

A few months later, I joined Intel in 1984.   About ten years later, Andy Grove asked me and Les Vadasz  to join him  and visit Pixar with Steve Job.  We went to Steve’s house in Palo Alto. The same house where he died.  We sat in the kitchen with Steve and talked for a while.  His wife Laurene was there and maybe one or two of the kids I seem to remember.  Steve then drove us to Pixar and introduced us to John Lasseter. We learned about the computer automation process they were using.  The purpose of the visit was to expose Intel to the high end needs of graphic rendering and the idea of using multiple PCs to do it.  I was a bit nervous that Steve would remember me and my role at Franklin.  Either he did not remember or he did not care because he was very  civil to me.  That was probably the last time I actually interacted with Steve.  And while that meeting was a good experience, I was no fan of Steve Jobs at the time.  And later when he rejoined Apple,   I felt his closed business strategy was mistake and I was a strong proponent of the Microsoft/Intel approach which was a very open architecture (as long as it was based on Intel and Microsoft).

The amazing transformation of Apple in the last ten years has been and will  continue to be discussed  by so many.  Frankly, I still do not understand  how it could have happened. The combination of insight, marketing and execution under Jobs leadership was exceptional.    About three years ago, I became a convert to all things Apple.  I am writing this post on a Macbook Air.  I read about Steve’s death on my iPhone and later in more detail on my iPad.  My email is housed at www.me.com.  I can’t wait for iCloud.

I am left feeling sad for his death, admiration for his accomplishment and frankly, disappointment that I was no Steve Jobs. And grateful  that I am still alive to love my wife, children and friends.

Steve contributions will stay with us but  his greatest gift  may yet  to come; the book he allowed and helped Water Isaacson to write,”Steve Jobs”.  Maybe, we will finally understand.  We need to understand.

 

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The Idea Man by Paul Allen

April 24, 2011

Just read the Idea Man by Paul Allen.  I don’t usually review books and certainly not here on my blog.  And this post is not really a review as much as it is a commentary.

The first 50% of the book deals mostly with Paul’s experiences with Bill Gates including the formation of Microsoft and the first  seven years of it’s  existence until  Paul left Microsoft (although he stayed on the boad until 2000).  I am eight yeas older than Paul and ten year older than Bill but our computer careers started about the same time (the second half of the 60s),  so I can relate very much to many of the experiences that Paul discussed about that time. I enjoyed Paul reminiscing about his feelings when he saw a transistor for the first time or what it was like to use a ASR-33 teletype for programing.  So the early part of the book was like “home week” for me..

Paul’s description of his relationship with Bill Gates rang true as did his description of Bill himself.   I meet Bill the first time in 1981 when I was at Digital Equipment Corp.  Bill was 26 by then. IBM had brought out the IBM PC and Microsoft was marketing  MS DOS.  We interacted  a few time  over  the next several years. From about 1992 to the time I left Intel in 1999, I had much more contact with him.  I meet Paul Allen during the 90s.  I certainly had a lot less interaction  with him and he did not impress me. I use to call him the richest 80 thousand-dollar-a-year programer in the world.

The book is an attempt to demonstrate that Paul actually played an imporant role in creating Microsoft i.e. he was the “idea man” and Bill was the “implementor” and therefore he played an  important role in creating the computer industry.  I think this  is probably true from what I read but Paul tries to demonstrate that the relationship was balanced and he contributed as much to Microsoft as  Bill.  This I doubt. There could have been many Paul Allen’s but there is only one Bill Gates (thank god).

Then there is the part of his story that deals with his first diagnoise of Cancer ( Hodgkin’s lymphoma).  I could easily relate to that having my own bout with cancer (although at a much later stage of my life). Later, he discusses his second cancer ( non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma). Paul also suffers from heart problems and has a pacemaker.

There is a lot about his investments in the second part of the book.  I have to say that during the 90s Paul was considered “dumb money” by many in the venture business.  He describes his investments and I think is pretty open about what went well and what went badly but you can tell that while Paul had a pretty good insight into what would happen in the future,  his  judgment about timing was pretty bad.  Also, I don’t think he was a good judge of people. Most importantly, he was spread way to thin.  Paul does not explain why he made these investments.  He was/is extremely rich.  Did he do this for money or to influence  the future?   I thought he was very honest about his investment in Interval. I had a lot of dealings with Interval.  There was a lot of value in the concept but the implementation was problem.  Again, Paul was not on top of what was happening.

I skipped over his discussion of investing in sport teams.  I have no interest in sports.  He discusses his involvement in entertainment. I was glad to see that he now realizes that he was “taken”  by SKG Dreamworks although I am surprised that he actually made money on his investment.

There was a lot about his philanthropic efforts.  Again, you can see he is all over the map.  It is interesting to compare the Gates Foundation with the Allen Foundation.

There is little about his personal life as  an adult.  He mentions two girl friends in the book.  This link  has some speculations.  When I was active in “Hollywood” in the 90s, I heard some stories but who knows if they are true.   Then again, there are some interesting stories about Bill and show girls. I always thought of Paul as a pretty lonely guy.  I remember that once I was in Portofino, maybe around 1997,   with the woman in my life at that time.  Paul showed up in one of his Yacht’s -  the  Méduse.  He was by himself.  I thought about saying hello but was afriad he would ask us to join him on his Yacht.  Paul was rich but in my opinion not very interesting.  We walked the other way.

Then there is Paul the consumer. The way he spends money is distasteful.  He appears to live like I imagine Donald Trump would like to live.  And sadly, I think there are a lot of hangers-on.   I once stood next to Paul at an Allen Conference (Herb Allen who is not a relation to Paul)  and listen to Paul discuss Yacht building with a woman I did not know.  The woman asked if he had a Helicopter Port on his boat.  Paul looked at her as if she was from Mars and said ” where else could you put your Helicopter?”.  He then told her that his boat had two. I wanted to puke.

Paul clearly wrote this book to demonstrate that he was and is relevant.  He was of course, and after reading this book, I raised his salarly.  He is now the richest 100 thousand-dollar-a-year programer in the world.

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Intel Alumni Panel Discussion

February 10, 2011

Last month, I chaired a panel at an event held by the Intel Alumni Group.  Like many companies with strong cultures, the alumni still identify with the company and therefore with each other.  It was an unusual event for me. I had not participated in any high tech event in some ten years with this one exception.  While at Intel, I had been a very active participant at industry events as a key note speaker, speaker, panelist and panel chair.  The Intel PR people found that I was “user friendly” and I realized that the difference between being a dreamer and a visionary was having a PR dept so I cooperated.  In fact, I loved public speaking.  But after I left Intel  in 1999, I no longer had a platform or anyone  to pay for my expenses to attend conferences.    I am still not sure why I agreed to chair the panel  Maybe it was because I feel I owe Intel much and the much of the Intel that I owe is now alumni.  But probably it was just that I was asked and asked in such a nice way by Bruce Schechter, the founder and president of the Intel Alumni Network.  A summary of the event with photos can be seen here.

I had two  key requirement. The first  was that I  could pick the panel.  I knew from my past experience that the purpose of a panel (or a talk) is not only to provide information but also to provide entertainment.  I am pretty good at both of these but probably better at the later.  So in order to do that I had to pick people that I knew to have opinions and most importantly attitude. Here is a link to the bios for the panel members. The second was that the panel discussion would be video taped and made available on the Internet. You can see it here.

I decided to break the panel discussion into three parts.  The first part was the question:  In what way did you experience at Intel help you to become an entrepreneur or early stage investor.  The second questions was:  In what way did your experience at Intel not prepare you to become an entrepreneur and/or early stage investor.  The third question had to do with follow on interest by the group  in the topic of venture investing.

The event had a pretty big turn out by the standards of the other Alumni events.  And many  former senior executives attended.  I was amazed that Andy Grove actually came.  I was very happy to see him and was very pleased when he later send an email to Bruce complimenting the panel discussion  (I had not gotten very many compliments from him during my time at Intel).  But it was also sad to see how frail  Andy  had become.  He suffers from Parkinson Disease. I am sure his mind (and his tongue) is as sharp as ever and he must be so frustrated by his physical disabilities.

The video is the best way to understand the panel discussion.  It starts at the 12th minutes. Prior to that is the normal introduction stuff and a brief speech by Ted Jenkins one of the first Intel Employees.  He spoke about Intel as a start up which may be of interest to some of you.  Here is a link to a paper the Ted co wrote on the early days.

One of the thing I had to consider when talking about Intel was the life cycle of the company.  The company  was founded in 1968.  Intel had two lives. The first was as the leader in semi conductor memory.  The second was at the leader in microprocessors.  The memory business had been under attach in the early 80s by Japaneses companies.  The survival of Intel was at stake.  The companies revenue was under a billion dollars.  That is when one of the bravest and most significant management decisions was ever taken. Gordon Moore and  Andy Grove decided to get out of the memory business and become an microprocessor company which meant laying off more than a third of the company. In my opinion, the company had an opportunity in the mid 90s to have a third life as  Network/Internet company but there was no one at the company left capable of leading that transition. Here is a link to a time line of the company.    So in thinking about how the Intel experience informed people, it is  important to keep in mind when the person was working at the company.

I have often been critical of Intel but I have great respect for the company and what I learned there.  Andy really appreciated it when I said during the panel discussion that I find myself trying to teaching entrepreneurs to do the things I would not do when I was at Intel.

The panel generally felt that the experience of working at Intel provided them with with the skills to be more a board member or an advisor to an early stage company than  to be the entrepreneur that  started it.  That makes sense since Intel was a pretty large company when everyone on the panel work there.  It is hard for someone that works for a large company to start or go to an early stage company.  It seems that there are very few successful companies that were started by former Intel employees.

Towards the end of the panel there was a discussion about what happened to Intel and how the culture had changed.  It was pretty interesting but maybe had a little too much Intel bashing.

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