Buck’s Restaurant in Woodside, CA
To end our Silicon Valley Day Tour, we went to Buck’s Restaurant in Woodside for dinner. What might look like an Ali Baba’s cave is really a wonderful place to enjoy a burger while looking at a funny collection of random items. The Treasure Hunt Buck’s provides kids with a great treasure hunt, listing more than 20 items displayed in the restaurant, such as: San Francisco in shaky Jell-O, Miss Liberty with hot fudge sundae, Huge hand prints, Five green iguanas, ON AIR over door, a “Part plane, part tiger, part shark, look out !” the Back Door And yes, even if the treasure hunt was made for kids, are we not all big kids? The History of Buck’s of Woodside The owner, Jamis MacNiven, opened Buck’s of Woodside in 1991. He has a collection of random items which he fancies or which were given to him. From things with real value (historic or monetary) to gifts, each item of the collection has an interesting story behind it. The place is well-known in the area for being the place where venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs meet in the Valley “to hammer out the Information Age”. Over the last 20 years, Buck’s of Woodside was the site of monumental moments, from the first demos of PayPal – which secured its funding there – to the foundation of Tesla and Hotmail. Fun facts Steve Jobs is one of the few Silicon Valley icons that never set foot in the restaurant. However, there is a picture of him hanging somewhere on the walls. Paradox : Buck’s was the first place in the country to offer a public wifi spot but still use a 27 year old point of sale system (which happen to be the oldest in the world). The only customer who had a meal named after him is Dr Perkins, a local ear surgeon who used to order the same thing every time : omelette of egg whites, Boca Burger soy patty, green onions and fat free Swiss cheese Buck’s has the world’s largest Swiss Army Knife, worth $1’200! Learn more about Buck’s Restaurant and its owner here.
Conference « View from the Top » @ Stanford University with Virginia M. “Ginni” Rometty, IBM CEO
Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO since January 2012, spoke about many topics during the conference, such as which aspects we must take into consideration when looking for a position, how to build a long term relationship with stakeholders and IBM mindset regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Her key for an happy professional life Ginni Rometty gave us her key for choosing a new position and/or a career path: be passionate about what you do – no matter the field you are working in – and do something with purpose as it will be important in the long run. In addition to those, she mentioned building trust as the last key factor for a successful business. How to build trust Ms Rometty explained how IBM succeeded in building a long-term relationship with its stakeholders when working with AI and datas. Giving purpose by working with technology and not replacing human being with it. Moreover, transparency is very important for people and giving them information about how datas are collected, by whom and explaining what they are used for will help the company build trust with its clients. Indeed explainability can help stakeholders to better understand the company’s vision and operating model. The use of AI In order to create value for customers, the results of datas analysis should be only for them and not going to their competitors. Therefore, using AI should help them identifying useful information among their own existing datas. Rometty considers IBM responsibility not only to develop new products but also to commercialize them “safely”. WEF 2018 and the importance of skills Ginni Rometty attended the 2018 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, and took part in conferences related to the WEF System Initiatives about skills development, “Shaping the future of Education, Gender and Work”, a topic which really matters to her and is applied by IBM. Indeed gender and religion play no role for the company and developing employees’ skills is recognized as a necessity. Furthermore, Mrs Rometty insisted on inclusion as it plays a significant role in the workplace nowadays. My point of view I really enjoyed listening to her during this conference as she was witty, playful with the moderator and not self-centered. She presented her experience working for IBM and as a CEO, a position she never really thought about in her early career. Guest speaker bio Ms Rometty joined IBM in 1981 and occupied various positions inside the company before being chosen as the CEO. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree with high honors in computer science and electrical engineering from Northwestern University. Ginni Rometty is recognized for a long-term strategic thinking and client focus. Over the last few years, she focused the company efforts on the cloud and cognitive computing systems, such as Watson (an AI platform targeted at professional, amongst which the most discussed, the doctors), for which she played an important role to commercialize it. More information about Ginni Rometty nomination as IBM CEO here, the conference @ Stanford and the WEF Initiative “Shaping the future of Education, Gender and Work”.