Biography

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is a New Zealand innovation award winner, social entrepreneur and holds a number of company directorships. He has gained success through a variety of ventures, encompassing education, ethnic communications, and international distribution of technology. Travis dropped out of high school, saying a system that measured memory rather than critical thinking and application of knowledge did not work for him. He gained a non-traditional education consisting of mentoring from several of New Zealand’s finest business leaders and learning from a number of the best minds on the planet, including lessons from Peter Drucker, Al Reis, Jack Trout, Richard Branson, Jim Collins, Dale Carnegie, Anthony Robbins, and Jack Welch. Travis was born into poverty in Cannons Creek, Wellington. He experienced considerable hardship during his childhood, including living in an overcrowded house with a couch as a bed, in a benefit-dependant family, having to grow their own food as a result of poverty, and surrounded by a multitude of other social ills. These experiences taught him to be self sufficient through hard work and are why he is motivated to help others.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Alan Kay shares a powerful idea about ideas


With all the intensity and brilliance for which he is known, Alan Kay envisions better techniques for teaching kids by using computers to illustrate experience in ways -– mathematically and scientifically -- that only computers can.


Why you should listen to him:

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay not only coined this favorite tech-world adage, but has proven its truth several times. A true polymath, as well as inventor, he has combined engineering brilliance with knowledge of child development, epistemology, molecular biology and more.

In the 1960s, Kay joined the computer team at XeroxPARC, where he worked on world-changing inventions like the graphical interface, object-oriented programming, and the personal computer itself. Later, at Apple, Atari, HP, Disney, and now at his own nonprofits, he has helped refine the tools he anticipated long before they were realized.

As the industry has blossomed, however, Kay continues to grapple with the deeper purpose of computing, struggling to create the machine that won't only recapitulate patterns in the world as we know it but will teach both children and adults to think, to see what otherwise is beyond them.

"One of the computer industry's most prolific inventors."
Electronic Engineering Times


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