My time with Bob Metcalfe

I was very fortunate to catch one of the final events of Txstate MC Week, the interview of Bob Metcalfe (co-creator of Ethernet and currently teaching at University of Texas).
The evening started with a social reception at 5pm with finger foods and door prizes. During the reception, I met and briefly chatted with Bob about his current stint at University of Texas and a few other subjects including my educational background.

(the photo above contains Bob Metcalfe engaging in conversation with Texas State professors Dave Nolan, Sandy Rao, a Texas State student, and Cindy Royal)

At 6:30 the interview began. Center stage on the 3rd floor of Old Main, Dr. Cindy Royal began by inciting Bob to talk about his background in the tech field. Bob's long list of achievements begins back in 1973 co-inventing ethernet technology while working for Xerox. It is amazing to see the evolution of internet technology evolve in such a short period of time. The first ethernet cables ran at 10mb/s (megabytes per second), today there are ethernet networks that can run at 100 gb/s (gigabytes!!!! per second). Bob was quite the animated speaker, he displayed child-like ebullience when speaking about the current capacities of ethernet technology.

The interview contained some interesting topics, for instance his experience with Steve Jobs and explaining the theoretical side of ethernet. I personally enjoyed when the topic steered towards innovation of technology. Very rewarding to listen to a professor of innovation talk about innovation; inspiring to say the least. The interview ran about 30 minutes over the scheduled time but that was a minor concern for most in the audience were hunkered down in Old Main's reception hall enjoying the positive resonance of curious queries and useful feedback .
This Video is a segment of the original interview when bob spoke about his relationship with Steve jobs, specifically the "Flat tire Incidient