Disruptive Technology

Lesson of the day: it is not about what you do, it is about who you know.

Today can be described in one word, Google. It was an experience I will never soon forget. We meet our host for the day, Craig Cornelius, at his office and then walked over to the GooglePlex. For the next hour and a half we met with Googlers from different projects within Google. Our first meeting was with Davidson Young from University Relations who discussed recruiting for engineering and product management. Next, we met with Michael Braderman from Google Enterprise who focuses on selling Google Apps to businesses and other organizations to use for their intranet. Xuefu Wang from Google Books talked about the Google Books product and the copyright issues and the goals for the product. Google Maps was next on the list and Jessica Pfund opened discussion to include the maps product, the creation of your own maps, and the challenges in producing maps including localization and the fact that more than just text needs to be translated in order for the product to work. Our final meeting was with Rick Klau from the Blogger department. Rick discussed more than just the Blogger product, he discussed keeping one step ahead of innovation (so basically keeping up with themselves). He also discussed about how Google employees are encouraged to share any idea, no matter how silly or crazy, because it may spark another idea or revolutionize a product.

Something that Davidson Young talked about stayed with me for the rest of the day. He was talking about getting a job or an internship at Google and that the best way to become employeed is to have someone in the company recommend you. So basically, it is not all about what you know, but who you know within the company.

After all of our meetings, we get to tour the GooglePlex and see all of the cool gadgets before eating for free in the Google cafeteria. (Sorry, no pictures of the gadgets since we were not allowed to take them in the GooglePlex). Let me just say that the Google cafeteria is ten times better than the Luther cafeteria. I wandered around before settling on a salad and a grilled chicken sandwich. We talked with Craig during lunch then headed to the Google store. Afterwards, we looked at the Android building, took some pictures with the big Android symbol, and then headed to the Computer History Museum.

We watched a demonstration of a Babbage, a computing device designed in 1849, but not actually produced until it was pointless because computers can do it the same function, but much easier and faster. It was still interesting to see the machine that Babbage thought up so long ago in action. We looked around and found out more about the history of computers before heading to drinks and snacks with Al Brutos, a Luther alum, at the Circus Club, his country club.

Again, Al reiterated the concept that in order to succeed in business, you need to surround yourself with good people that are good at managing others. It was fun to meet such a successful Luther alum and get to talk about the school that shaped his life and that is shaping our futures.

After our dinner meeting with Al, a few of us headed to Coldstone for ice cream, rich, delicious ice cream. It was fantastic!

Once again, we ended the evening blogging and getting ready for our final full day in Silicon Valley.

Until next time,
Kaitlin