[SCC_Active_Members] Steve Mills on software pioneers

[Paul McJones]

In the attached editorial (which appeared in this morning's San Jose 
Mercury News), Steve Mills of IBM says, "We need to find creative ways 
to transfer technical knowledge and skills of retiring workers to a new 
generation, while at the same time, inspiring young people to pursue 
careers in math, science and engineering. Failure to do so could have 
serious economic ramifications for our nation, California and Santa 
Clara County." He then gives several examples of  ways to "capture the 
experience of the baby boomers and encourage them to pass along their 
experience in classrooms to help meet the shortage of teachers 
accredited in math and science."

It occurs to me that an additional way to address Mills' concern is to 
recruit the IBM corporation and current/former baby boomer IBM employees 
to participate with us in collecting and preserving historic software, 
and then in figuring out how to create exhibits and teaching materials 
for schools based on that software.

As a baby boomer who became involved with computers in high school, I 
felt a visceral excitement that has led to intellectual stimulation 
continuing to the present. Folks in the SCC may think of me as fixated 
on dusty decks, but in my "day job" I'm working in an area of software 
(image processing using GPUs) that is new to me and still in its 
infancy. I have the sense that many of my peers in college in the late 
60s and at work in the 70s felt the same kind of excitement and 
intellectual stimulation, but I rarely encounter this among young 
software engineers today. Perhaps as computers have permeated society, 
familiarity has insulated younger people from the "shock" I experienced.

In any case, I think promoting software collection/preservation by baby 
boomers could provide an excellent way to first reawaken the excitement 
in them and then convey both historical knowledge and excitement to a 
new generation of software engineers and computer scientists.

Does anyone on the SCC know Steve Mills and think he would be interested 
in discussing this with us?


Paul McJones

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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/13200172.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Posted on Fri, Nov. 18, 2005 	
**
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Our challenge: Find talent to replace software pioneers
**
*By Steve Mills*
**

The ``space race'' of the 1960s between the United States and the Soviet 
Union demonstrated that successful execution of a technology strategy 
can benefit a nation politically. In 1961, when President Kennedy 
pledged to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade, 
schools, parents and students responded with a regimen of math and 
science courses designed to help the nation accomplish that goal.

As we mark the anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 
22, it's important to remember the profound effect his challenge had on 
education.

Those students were part of the baby boomer generation of 76 million 
Americans born between 1946 and 1964 -- the largest segment of the U.S. 
population. We continue to benefit from that generation's emphasis on 
scientific achievement and the new industries they created.

In Santa Clara County, the information technology industry took root, 
transforming apricot and almond groves into the labs, research 
institutions and headquarters of some of the world's leading corporations.

However, in the current best-seller, ``The World is Flat,'' Tom Friedman 
observes, ``the generation of scientists and engineers who were 
motivated to go into science by the threat of Sputnik in 1957 and the 
inspiration of JFK are reaching their retirement age and are not being 
replaced.''

Nowhere is that trend more apparent than in the software industry, where 
California is the clear leader in software engineering and development 
-- employing 132,200 people statewide, or 18 percent of the nation's 
total. Santa Clara County has the highest concentration of software 
engineers and developers in the nation, with more than 32,500 workers.

Beginning Jan. 1, the baby boomers will start turning 60. Many of the 
early software pioneers are quickly reaching retirement age, yet their 
skills remain in high demand.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Standards says software development and 
engineering are among the Top 10 fastest-growing occupations through 2012.

According to UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, the nationwide 
percentage of incoming college freshmen who want to major in computer 
sciences declined by more than 60 percent from 2000 to 2004, and is now 
70 percent lower than peak levels in the early 1980s. The proportion of 
freshmen women who showed interest in computer sciences as a major has 
fallen to levels unseen since the early 1970s.

We need to find creative ways to transfer technical knowledge and skills 
of retiring workers to a new generation, while at the same time, 
inspiring young people to pursue careers in math, science and 
engineering. Failure to do so could have serious economic ramifications 
for our nation, California and Santa Clara County.

While we still have time, it's appropriate to think about ways to meet 
the challenge.

We need to capture the experience of the baby boomers and encourage them 
to pass along their experience in classrooms to help meet the shortage 
of teachers accredited in math and science. We need to take steps at an 
early age to ensure that all students, including girls, minorities and 
youngsters with disabilities, have accessibility to math and science 
courses in middle school years, which will enable them to take the 
college and post-graduate courses to pursue technical careers.

Sometimes that involves unusual methods of teaching. Based upon the 
popularity of ``CSI,'' a TV program about forensic scientists, IBM has 
offered forensic science activities as part of its math and science 
camps for pre-teen girls around the world, such as a camp held in June 
in San Jose. The girls learned how to solve a ``mystery'' using 
scientific methods and, more importantly, realize the integral part that 
technical knowledge plays in our daily lives.

Computers, video games and iPods, among other devices, give today's 
students a familiarity with technology not possible by earlier 
generations. We need to channel the enthusiasm of early adopters of the 
latest video games into a transferable technical skill they will pursue 
for the rest of their lives.

Santa Clara County has been at the forefront of technical innovation for 
the past 50 years. As the pioneers of the IT industry begin to retire, 
we need to ensure there's a pipeline of new talent waiting to take their 
places for the Silicon Valley workforce of the next 50 years and beyond.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
/*STEVE MILLS* is senior vice president and group executive of IBM's 
Software Group, the second largest software business in the world. He 
led IBM's Silicon Valley Lab in the early 1990s. He wrote this article 
for the Mercury News./