In Perú, Yes You Can – INFOTEK 2010

Some of you have asked me to publish the text of my presentation at INFOTEK 2010. Here is the first piece, and one of the most important messages:

Before we go on, I would like to share with you something i learned the night before last.

After giving an interview for Peru TV, I spent some time chatting with my friend el Inginiero Paul Perez – he will be speaking tomorrow.

I realized something while talking with him and that is something I want to make very clear to you.

Just because we are in Peru, and not in Canada, Europe, India, Australia or Japan or wherever, it DOES NOT mean that cloud computing is out of our reach.

It does not mean that we have to wait 10 years for the technology to come here. It is here now. Right now. Today.

It does not mean that Peruvian informaticos cannot be among the best in the world. You can.

It does not mean that Peruvian business cannot leverage the very same technologies that US businesses use and compete on the same world stage. They can.

Sure, I am Canadian. Sure, I have clients in the United States, Europe and Japan. Sure, I have every advantage. But guess what? For the last several years I have been living in, and working from a very small town in Mexico. What do I have? An Internet connection and a brain. That is all.

This country is connected to the Internet just like any other. We need to stop thinking about countries. We need to stop thinking about borders. We need to stop thinking like second class citizens. The Internet DOES NOT HAVE countries, or borders, or classes. The Internet is hardware, software and smart people.

It doesn’t matter where you were born. It doesn’t matter where you live. If you can learn, work hard, and have confidence in yourselves, you WILL succeed.

OK. That is enough of the self-help seminar. I will stop before I ask you all to stand up and hug your neighbour.

[PAUSE]

That is unless you want to

This post is also available in: Spanish