Rendezvous with a Silicon Valley scientist !

An interesting rendezvous occured while I was flying back from SFO. An extremely eclectic company - an IBM IT Specialist who was earlier an researcher in one of the Silicon valley firms. He was my co-seat passenger!

It started off with him cautioning me about my coffee and helping me with something. Random small talk started...from why I was in SFO and then it moved on to his background and an arbitrary mention of Knowledge Management (KM) from me sparked the talk. He found the idea really interesting and wanted it to be implemented for his group.

Initially, when I got to know that he is from IBM and asking me more details, I thought he was testing me or something and I became cynical. Here's person in his late 50s, early 60s - travelling as an IT specialist for the Big Blue - and asking me help with implementation concepts on KM. Extremely eloquent, and articulate scientist - he exposed me to what he used to do 25 years ago in IT !


He suddenly asked me to elaborate on the KM idea and asked for an estimate. I said - it is difficult to estimate without details. I used my probing skills to gather high level requirements. While getting requirements from him he elaborated on how the Big Blue was organized and structured. He also mentioned how his group was structured. I clarified that his scope must be limited to making business plan and needs emergence rather than implementation details. He must mention requirements to management and design, engineering, etc will be done by other specialists. I gave him the usual house-building analogy !

Apparently, from the scope, cost, and schedule, I came up with a figure and he was taken aback - so much !? I said - this is if you get it done from a team at US costs and including license costs. If he did it using IBM systems and manhours, I was not sure what will be his estimates. However, he mentioned an instance regarding how cost-charging is done internally and blue-dollars move at a very costly rate.

Clearly, in my recommendations, I had also included the org-feasibility aspect because this had a slightly heavy political interaction in various groups.

Finally, we came to a point where we discussed about how he got to the Bay Area because he had done his PhD from SUNY Buffalo. He was working in SFO since 25 years. In the first 5 years, he rented apartments and later, got his own house. Man, he was lucky !(I wondered if I would ever be able to buy a house in that area. My SFO tour had some interesting insights which I will blog in a separate post !)

He gave me his visiting card and I gave him mine. My attire was misleading(too casual) and may have initially made him think that I was another young punk. Soon to realise that he needed me for helping him with his business case to his executives. I tried getting it in form of a final semester project - however, somehow, he was reluctant because it wasn't in his hands ! Well, I was ready to help him anyways - I just tried negotiating something which will help both of us.

Finally, I suggested him to consult one of his teams internally before we could even discuss further. We departed on a great note to contact each other and that was it for my rendezvous with a Silicon Valley scientist - a whole 4 hours of stimulating discussion!