Last Thursday I was lucky enough to attend SDForum’s 12th Annual Visionary Awards in Atherton and I have never been in a crowd of such distinguished people. Between past years award recipients, top tier press and this years winners, it was a group of people who have molded and shaped our world as we know it.
For the first time ever, this years Visionary recipients included two Girls in Tech, Judith L. Estrin, CEO, JLabs LLC, and Kay Koplovitz, Founder of USA Network, as well as James H. Clark, Co-Founder, Silicon Graphics and Netscape and Vinod Khosla, Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems.
It was such a privilege to sit and listen to the speeches and stories these four phenomenal individuals shared with the audience. Kay’s story was about the first live satellite television broadcast, the “Rumble in the Jungle,” George Foreman versus former world champion and challenger Muhammad Ali. Vinod reflected on being called a ‘visionary’ and saying he believed what is recognized as “vision” is “bumbling around long enough” to finally get something right. Jim gave us all a good chuckle when he said his first ‘vision’ was getting out of Plainview, Texas, which lead him into the Navy and then his “next visionary step was getting out the Navy.” Judy did a wonderful job of bringing us all back to college by recalling how she was “not completely sober” when she first discussed Ethernet with Bob Metcalfe.
Included is an excerpt of Judy Estrin’s acceptance speech captured by Tom Foremski:
Judy Estrin at SDForum's Visionaries
