COFES Saturday Morning: Joel Orr’s Keynote

Joel Orr's fascintating keynote Saturday Morning at COFES 2009:

"Remembering The Future"

Joel showed some really cool old web pages from 1999.  Check out the Internet WayBack Machine at https://www.archive.org.  Search there on https://joelorr.com.  Click on his 1996 webpage and read a little about SolidWorks.  Then click on a link there to see the 1996 SolidWorks web page https://web.archive.org/web/19970624174939/www.solidworks.com/index.htm.

Joel talked about the origins of COFES: he and Brad wanted an "All Hallways" conference (they succeeded!).

Joel went over his career journey.  Early computer job at COMPAT working on "data concentrators" (squeeze 96 phone lines into 1).  Moved to Nashville job automating mapping, working with M&S Systems that became Intergraph.

Joel proudly notes that he quickly got beyond "real work" and moved into consulting and writing about people doing the "real work".

Interesting factoid: the average age of the engineers in mission control in 1969 when we put a man on the moon: 26 years old!

"Pyramids are places where great things are buried…so are 'pyramidal' business organizations"

Great talk from a great guy.