Please read Part II below before reading this post.
Vignette #2 continued:
And mind you, these are not my words. I captured the essence of comments I heard over and over again during the reception that followed this discussion. In my view, Richard McNulty was brilliant in the way he conducted the discussion, kept his pulse on the panelists, really brought out the best in each speaker. And of course, in so doing, he helped dispel any remaining fallacies I might have developed over time, about Microfinance being synonymous with not-for-profit.
On Friday, I had the good fortune of hearing Mr. Bob Metcalfe deliver the keynote address. Bob is a partner at Polaris Venture Partners, a Boston-based VC, and is the inventor (yes, inventor) of the Ethernet. He founded 3Com Corporation, the networking company that has been so wildly successful. Bob’s speech will be etched in my memory for a long time. He was funny, irreverent, sarcastic, thoughtful, iconoclastic, and, to use a word I’ve already used in this blog elsewhere, brilliant!
Comparing the energy imperative with the evolution of the Internet, he challenged the audience to think about energy in terms of a network problem and not as a stand-alone issue. He drew parallels between the Internet and the energy network (what he called Enernet) and called for the energy enthusiasts to take advantage of what lessons the Internet already teaches us. He was thought-provoking, to say the least. His talk brought back to mind, things I had heard just a few days back from Peter Brooke and David Rubenstein.
After the conference, I hugged and congratulated the two friends and classmates who chaired and made this event possible and told them how amazing it was. I came home that evening enthralled at how much I had learned in the last few days simply by taking part in two back-to-back conferences – one as a helper/organizer and the other as an attendee. The enthusiasm with which people came forward to help with the events was admirable, putting together every last detail, and making it all come together so beautifully in the end. With that kind of effort, the conference just had to be a resounding success.
Every Tuckie will vouch that there’s always something going on at Tuck, and 24 hours a day is not enough for anyone to make the most of all the events that are going on. The whole point is to prioritize, and do the things you absolutely want to do, learn the things you so want to learn, such that two years later, when you look back at how you spent the time at Tuck, you can be sure you lived without regrets. In retrospect, maybe, that philosophy is applicable to life as a whole! (Continue to Part IV above)
Read the full article: Vignettes from the past two weeks – Part III