Friday, August 22, 2008

guy kawasaki on bytemarks cafe

guy kawasaki was on bytemarks cafe the other day. i got a little quote (from the hawaii blog) about what he said on hawaii education.

Calling himself a “supply-side guy,” he said the best thing Hawaii could do is “to properly fund and create the school of Engineering at the University of Hawaii.”

“If you have a great School of Engineering, you have great engineering professors and great students and those great students will come up with great ideas. And if you have students with ideas, the money will flow, the corporate financial attorneys will flow, the PR firms will flow… everything is because of two guys in a garage with a great idea. Yes, you can create funds to make that easier for two guys in a garage, but if you don’t have two guys in a garage, it doesn’t matter how many funds you have.”


first of all, i absolutely agree. its all about the students and generating awesome talent. but, i'd like to point out to mr kawasaki that there is a College of Engineering and a Department of Information and Computer Sciences.

I felt like i had to make this comment because I'm starting an ICS alumni group, and its hard to shine the spotlight on the smaller ICS department. in general there is a lot of support for the CoE, but not so much for the ICS department (for example the engineering banquet vs the ics alumni lunch). my goal is to change this. even if it takes one student at a time; i'm going help make them awesome.

and you can help me! check out the ICS topcoder competition.

3 comments:

Hawaii Hackathons said...

Good point. Can't forget ICS! Though it is astonishing to me that it's "just" a department.

I think ultimately Guy is saying, "Make Hawaii's College of Engineering world class." As he went on to note, creating the best faculty lineup couldn't be much more expensive than what we're spending on economic development in other ways. The challenge is the benefits would take 20 years to be fully realized.

aaron said...

sure. and make the ICS department world class too. Actually, i take that back. All we need to do is support the ICS dept and CoE. The students and faculty are world class they just need more room to shine.

austen.ito said...

I totally agree. It all starts with the students.