After Thiel, What Next?
Jack M. Wilson,
Thiel College ‘67
President, The
University of Massachusetts
May, 2004
President (Lance) Masters,
Chair (Ronald) Anderson, Distinguished guests, faculty, and especially the
graduating class of 2004. I am
honored and pleased to be here today to receive this honorary doctorate of
Science. Thank you for this
recognition which is so much the better coming from my own alma mater.
When I learned that I would
be the graduation speaker this year, I emailed many of my old friends from
Thiel. Several of them are here
today: Jim Bergman, Fred McCullough, ? One
of them, my old roommate, Gary Fincke, is an internationally known author.
His advice to me in return was: "Give a memorable graduation speech."
Thanks a lot Gary!
A memorable graduation speech?
Isn't that an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, or
cafeteria food?
I asked several friends who
had given graduation speeches, how they made them memorable, but they all just
blushed and confessed that they probably were not!
So, I decided to give up on
that foolish idea and instead concentrate on leaving you with a message for
today, that you may remember long after you forget what I said and even who I
was. In the end, that is better
anyway.
That message is:
"Work hard, play hard, focus on the things that matter to you (especially
people), laugh at everything including your own mistakes, and set your goals
high. You can get there."
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One of the
things that research has taught us about problem solvers is that poor
problem solvers often try to analyze the entire problem at once and see their
way all the way through to the solution.
Expert problem solvers, on the other hand, never spend much time trying
to see the complete solution.
They just look at the
problem and break off a chunk that they think they understand.
They solve that chunk and then look again.
Eventually, one chunk at a time, they solve the problem that they never
thought they could solve.
That is the way life is.
It is almost impossible to see all the way to the end, but if you do your
best on every chunk, you are sure to have life and life evermore abundant.
How could a small town kid
from Western Pennsylvania ever aspire to become a Physics Professor, head the
worlds major physics organizations, found a 500 million dollar company, meet
three Presidents and the last leader of the Soviet Union, get surrounded by
Russian tanks on the plains of Jena, be honored by several national
organizations for innovation in higher education, travel to many of the
interesting corners of the world, and become the President of a major
University?
The answer?
He or she cannot. No chance.
Unimaginable. Forget it.
Simply put it out of your
mind. Can't happen.
...... But it did.
Was this a grand plan on my
part? Hardly!
Is the story over? I don't
know. I am still trying to decide
what I want to do when I grow up.
Was this a grand plan that
I put together in my youth. Surely
you jest.
Even the decision to become
a physicist was somewhat random.
When I was about twelve, I got sick and had to stay home in bed for over a week.
My uncle brought me a great book that introduced me to the world of
physics at a level that was only slightly above my head.
I loved it. Besides,
interesting and challenging things were going on in the world.
The Russians launched Sputnik and the world was abuzz with discussions
about nuclear energy and how that would change the world for good or evil.
Besides, physics sounded hard, and I love challenges.
So at twelve years old, I decided to be a physicist.
Of course, I really had no idea what that even meant!
When it came time to look
for a college, I was completely clueless.
No one in my family had ever gone to college except my grandfather and he
had done that in
(I was always good at
standardized tests. I found it so
upsetting that the rest of life had no standardized tests!)
I scored very high on the
PSAT and SAT tests and was named a National Merit Scholar.
That attracted college recruiters from all over the country, but I still
had no idea of where I wanted to go.
I narrowed the choices to
My father convinced me that
I could not go to
In retrospect, even though
any logical analysis of this decision would never stand up, it turned out to be
the right decision for me. I had a
great four years at Thiel. I worked
with some truly outstanding faculty, had great peers in class with me, got a
world class education and had a great time.
Yes, I even discovered that
Thiel had girls too, so I broke up with my girlfriend and stopped hitchhiking
home on weekends. I remember my
last
hitchhike home very well.
It was November 22, 1963.
As I waited downtown near the corner with Rt. 58, a screaming woman ran
up to me wailing that the President had been shot.
I assumed that she was deranged and pushed her away.
A trucker came by and I climbed up into the cab.
He said “hello” and then looked over and asked me to try to tune in the
radio, because he thought he heard something about the President.
As soon as I was able to tune in the radio, the truth became apparent:
John F. Kennedy was shot in
Life really is random.
But it is not accidental.
After Thiel I went off to
graduate school, I had a wonderful time in graduate school and managed to get
out eight major publications by the time of my PhD in 1972.
Unfortunately, physics faculty jobs were essentially non-existent in that
year. First I took a job with
Hughes Aircraft Corporation, but shortly thereafter I was offered a job in
Although
I became physics department
chair after working there for 6 years.
Life was good.
I looked around the
department one day at some of my colleagues who were in their 60's and had spent
their entire career there and decided on the spot, that I would not follow in
their footsteps. I made a
resolution then that I have held to ever since:
Work at a particular job
for 7 years +- and then make a change in my career.
You have to be willing to
focus for at least five to seven years on something if you really want to make a
difference, but you begin to repeat yourself eventually and ten years is about
the outer limit. I have held to that model ever since.
It did not mean that I had to quit, it only meant that I had to change my
focus. Sometimes it surprised
people. A few years ago, when
I was working as the Director of a Research Center at RPI, I walked into the
Provost's office and told him: "Well, Gary, it is time to get together a search
committee for a replacement for me."
Dumbfounded, he looked at me and asked where I was going.
I replied that I had no plans to leave, but that it was time for a
change. It worked out fine for me.
I became a Dean and we hired a great replacement for me as the Center
Director.
For years, I had been
working on networked systems and studying the cognitive science research on how
humans learn and collaborate. My
goal was to create new learning environments in the convergence of computing,
cognition, and communication. To
make a long story short, I won a passel of awards, became an IBM consulting
scholar, and spent much of my time traveling around the world talking about new
networked learning environments at a time when networks were unknown to almost
anyone except scientists. As the
rest of the world began to learn of networks, my work became more and more
popular, and I spent a fair amount of time briefing corporate executives on what
this would do to their lives and world.
One of those briefings was
to a group of AT&T senior corporate executives at
They patted me on the head
and told me to go back to RPI and be a nice Professor.
They liked my product and did not see the need or desirability for the
follow-on.
Of course, I kept on
developing my ideas and building prototypes on my own time.
Eventually an idea for both a product and a company developed, but I was
simply to busy to take it any further.
One day, one of my graduate
students showed up in my office to announce that he was beginning to plan for
his upcoming graduation and that he wanted to share that plan with me.
He explained that he did not want to go to work for a large company and
that he wanted to start a business in software.
When I asked him what he wanted to do, he said he wasn't sure, but that
he wanted me to be the President of the company.
Life is random, but it is
not accidental.
He had recruited one of his
classmates with strong sales experience to join us in the venture.
I laid out my idea for a new product that used multicasting on networks,
but I did NOT point out to him that no one had really been able to make
multicasting work reliably and that most of the Internet did not support it
anyway. I was confident (foolishly)
that these were all solvable problems.
The story of LearnLinc is
far too long to go into here, and you can read it on my web site if you are
interested, but the end of the story is that I sold out of the company on
February 29, 2000. In March 2000,
our market capitalization on NASDAQ was over $500 million dollars.
The rest of the story is too ugly to tell here.
If I stop the story here, I sound either lucky or intelligent.
However, the truth is that I reinvested most of the proceeds and watched
the market crash of 2001-2002 devour my expected retirement fund.
Now I found myself back at
RPI as a professor, but profoundly restless when a headhunter found me and asked
me to be the CEO of UMassOnline for the
When the President of the
University resigned last summer, I was asked to step in on an interim basis and
by last month, I was asked to take the Presidency permanently.
And, I am having a ball. (Editors note:
I still feel the same way after 6 years service in the summer of 2009.)
So there it is.
How could anyone plan such a random life?
Impossible.
Life has to be lived one
chunk at a time, just like problems have to be solved one piece at a time.
Now, please do not
misunderstand. Do not wander
aimlessly through life hoping that good things will happen.
That is a sure way to be sure that they will not.
Focus on those things that matter to you and prepare yourself as well as
you can to do that. Don't worry if you cannot see clearly all the way to your
goal. Go for it. Give it 100%.
Have a sense of humor.
That sure helps when you screw up, and believe me, when you attempt much
you will fail often. Failure is
just another lesson in life. One of
the best. Laugh, make a joke at
your own expense. Pick yourself up,
and get back to work on what matters to you.
Remember that it is the people that matter and the rest will take care of
itself.
I left out some of the best
parts. Now you will never know how
I got surrounded by Russian tanks on the plains of
Have fun.
Wish I could do it all over again with you.
I am sure I would do it differently next time.
I might go to
If I can do it.
You can do it.
Thank you.