Watching Tigers, Wolves and Webelos brought to memory my personal story of discovering America.
It all started with Bill Gates quote about The Art of Computer Programming (author Donald E. Knuth) with statement that if you read whole thing you should send him resume. Just graduate of Uzhgorod National University and not sure what to do i took it literally. Volumes #2 and #3 were easy to find and they are still on my book shelve at my parents house in Uzhgorod, but volume #1 had long wait list in all libraries (i guess i was not the only one inspired by Bill Gates quote). Impatient to wait i managed to offer bribe to librarian to get ahead of wait line. When she realized that i offered her money to rent the book she smiled and said something like "Young man, you are probably the only person in the world that attempted to bribe librarian". She refused money, but promised to let me know when volume #1 will be returned. I never actually read the "whole thing".
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| Book shelve at my parents house in Uzhgorod |
- build library of computer books available for club members to rent for free;
- and to popularize computer science in Transcarpathia region of Ukraine.
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| Business card from year 1997 - the only survived proof of Uzhgorod Computer Club existence. |
Reality check very quickly showed that younger generation has no interest in books, but they did like computer games. So our club very quickly became known as place to hang out and play games. But it all changed when a women asked my colleague Valera for computer lessons for her kid. Teenager was in wheelchair and it didn't feel right to take money, though his mom did offered to pay for lessons. So I asked Valera to give few lessons for free. The first time kid saw computer and laid his hands on keyboard his eyes lit like Christmas tree. I haven't since then seen person being more excited about computer. Those free lessons to wheelchair teenager completely changed our club. His mom was a teacher in kindergarten and recommended our club to parents, effectively starting "word of mouth" marketing. Club didn't (and couldn't) charge for computer lessons, as education business was highly regulated and licensed business with high bureaucratic barrier to enter. So our response to increased number of requests for private computer education was that we provide place with computer to our members for free based on availability and schedule; parents would arrange private lesson with geek (usually university student or young software developer) and pay him directly. It was soon a known place for geeks to make quick buck: pay $1 per month membership fee and schedule private lessons (approximately $2 per one hour lesson). Please note that back then in 1997-1998 the average salary for computer professional was $50 per month, or $0.25-$0.30 per hour.
Our club expanded to offer free dial-up service to its members and even registered newspaper "Uzhgorod Online", which may sounds oxymoron to have word "online" in paper media but back then it was significantly cheaper to spread news via paper then it was by internet.
But most amazing thing is that my experience with Uzhgorod Computer allowed me to win internship program at San Antonio, Texas, sponsored by US AID. In March-April 1998 i spent 2 months as intern in companies like ISP TexasNet, San Antonio Express News, and Pitney Bowes.
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| ISP TexasNet, San Antonio, Texas, 1998 |
Nowadays Bill Gates is heavily investing in education technology but his vision of pure online experience doesn't resonate as strong as his famous quote from last century. It lacks mentor-mentee personal relationship, which is strange considering his reference of Yoda and Luke Skywalker.
The future education should rely more on how Boy Scouts of America approach training: Den Leader prepares materials, gives theoretical background followed immediately by practice in father-son pairs or in scout groups. But that is another topic worthy another lengthy post...
Roman Havrylyak
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