Ryan Talk: CSSS Grad Banquet

Last Friday I had the honour of giving the keynote address to the College of Computer Science grad class at the University of Saskatchewan. Preparing this talk was actually a little bit stressful. I wanted to inspire and motivate the graduating class to move forward in life while remembering some of their lasting memories from their four years at school.

One of the main points of my presentation was the increasing pace of change in technology. I cited numbers that showed that radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users; tv took 13 years to reach the same point; the Internet took four years and the iPod took three. Facebook reached 100 million users in only 9 months. The iTunes app store did 1 billion downloads in 9 months. The point is that technology is no longer taking years to develop, only months.

For a computer science student, this is good news as there are more jobs available in more fields. For businesses the increasing speed of technological improvement is something that you cannot ignore.

Organizations need to start spotting the technology trends earlier to remain ahead of the competition. Monitoring hardware blogs will let you know about new advances in devices. Following social media will provide you with real time information and allow you to stay tuned in to the world’s social network.

So as these students enter the work force and carpe diem, they should have faith in the outlook for technology. Maybe one of them will invent the new ‘Facebook’ and vastly impact the direction of information technology. Either way, they have finished their degree in an industry that is always changing and evolving. The future looks bright for these kids and for those of us who employ them.