CEOs of information technology companies from around the country are set to descend on campus as part of a new lecture series hosted by Computing and Information Services entitled “Leadership in Technology.” Chairman and CEO of EMC Corporation Joseph Tucci kicked off the series Thursday, and two more lectures will likely be held this semester, said Ravi Pendse, vice president and chief information officer for CIS.
CIS hopes the industry forerunners who speak in the series will “engage us in a dialogue” and share their “visions of the future,” Pendse said.
Expected future speakers include a senior leader from Cisco and representatives from Qualcomm, General Electric and Ubiquiti, he added.
Around 150 students, faculty members and community members attended Tucci’s event Thursday, which involved a 45-minute lecture followed by a question-and-answer session. The event was live-streamed to the rest of the campus community on the University’s website.
In his talk, which was entitled “Cloud Meets Big Data: An Insider’s Look at the Information Technology Industry,” Tucci focused on the emergence of big data, the importance of the cloud — Internet-based computing that allows storage and access of data — and other developments in the technological world.
“I challenge you to think of any area, anything in life, where you can get significant productivity gains and significant innovation without using information technology,” Tucci said.
Pendse said he hopes the speakers are able to provide “great opportunities for students” such as internship offers.
Mason DiMarco ’16, who attended Tucci’s talk, may have landed himself such an offer. After asking a question during the event, DiMarco spoke with Tucci, got his business card and emailed him about the possibility of an internship at EMC, he said.
“It seemed that (Tucci) was interested in finding something for me that would align with something like artificial intelligence,” DiMarco said. “I felt pretty good that I was able to find something that would align with my interests just by talking to someone in the professional world.”
Kassie Wang ’17 called Tucci’s lecture an “eye-opening experience,” noting that “It was really interesting to see how much data increased since you don’t really realize this until someone points it out to you.”
“There really aren’t a lot of opportunities to hear the heads of companies and other distinguished people speak, and we tend to live in a bubble at Brown where we see students and professors and not much else,” said Isaac Davis ’18. “I think this breaks that (bubble) a little bit.”
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