COMP 301R – Summer 2019 – Speaker Paper

Student Name: Nicholas Arvanitas

Date of Presentation: 9-6-18

Title of Presentation: The Digital Age

Speaker Name: David Huber

Introduction

David Huber is the speaker who works for EMC, a company that is now owned by Dell. He talked
about IT Problems and what we should do when we meet challenges. He’s worked with the Navy,
Circuit board design, and now with Data Centers.

Summary

David was more from an IT background and did a lot of talking using acronyms that frankly I didn’t
understand coming from a design background. He talked about Experian getting hacked and solving
performance issues. But a lot of what I learned wasn’t necessarily from the problems he solved, rather
the mottos he lived by and his worth ethic. He was the type of person to always help out and get
involved with problem solving. He was willing to let other people try and teach them as well quoting
“If you give a man a fish etc…”

Experian got hacked. Worked at Pacific Dell. Day after Labor Day everyone was moving (college +
families) brought IBMs processor to ‘its knees’.

Reflection

As I stated previously, coming from a design background I found Davids questions and answers not
really relevant to someone like me. It was a lot of talking about dealing with problems with IT,
however from someone that’s never dealt with IT I didn’t find any of his solutions to be that innovative
or exciting. I hardly even understood what he was talking about with all the web security terminology
though.

I do however feel like his life ‘mantras’ we’re invaluable. At one point when discussing performance
issue solutions he said there were 4 things he felt like he could do. Either do nothing, tune the system,
distribute the load, or something about being bigger badder meaner and faster.

Now I don’t understand a lot about the limits of technology, but perhaps I should. Through working in
a data center he had a lot of knowledge about what’s possible and what is not possible. He was
impressed by the fact that an unnamed chip manufacturing company uploaded their data every morning
because it was faster. He threw out words like petabyte, something unimaginable to me, with full
knowledge of their capacity and limits.

As far as his performance issue solutions go, it taught me that there’s never quite one way to solve an
issue. Sometimes we get caught up with our first solution that we forget to think about the alternatives.

These solutions can also be applied to our lives. We might always see the solution to be better in our
respective career fields to learn more, study harder, and go at the fastest pace possible. But if we tried
to apply “tuning the system,” we might take a break and reflect on what we’ve already accomplished.
To me this might me revising old designs and trying them again from a new angle or new perspective.
This way I can focus on honing my skills, instead of always trying to learn something new.

Along with that same analogy, I could try distributing the load. As a designer it’s easy to fall in the
‘dictator, my opinion trumps all’ mindset. I can get better as well by listening to my fellow designers,
and looking at the good things they do in their work. Just because something is different, doesn’t mean
it’s necessarily wrong.

Another great point that David mentioned is that not all IT people are ‘equal.’ He says that a ‘large part
of your experience depends on what you like doing.’ Whereas some people enjoy working with servers
and data centers, what he always enjoyed doing was solving problems.

As he was talking about this I was considering my own experience in the UX field, and what part of it I
enjoy doing. UX compasses a large variety of things too. Whether it by meeting with people, designing
mockups, solving people problems aka. putting out fires (either with the developers or PMs), or doing
more ‘artsy’ stuff like making logos. I notice that I really like interacting with people (whether it be on
the user or corporate side of things) and getting feedback and answers from them. I enjoy listening to
their concerns and trying to come up with solutions for them.

Conclusion

If we are observant enough we can always learn something new if we take time to listen to what’s
being said. It doesn’t matter what field of work someone comes from, each person has unique life
experiences that they take with them that effects who they are, and how they find solutions to
problems. It’s through listening to these solutions that we find answers to our own problems, and better
ourselves along the way.