Electro-ramblings

I just read Howard Johnson's column on the EDN website, where he talks of the difference between those people who are forced to trade their time for money, and those who trade knowledge, experience and their own intellectual property.

Howard, a guru of high speed digital design, argues in Why teach science? that people who make the effort to learn something useful in life (like engineering) have the most valuable commodities to trade:

People lacking useful skills or knowledge are forced to trade their time for money. Time is all they have to offer. An hour of uneducated time pays only about $7 in the United States. Successful people cut a different deal with life. They do not trade their time for money. As Robert Kiyosaki outlines in his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, successful people directly create value and then trade that value for money.

But it's not just about that knowledge: The way in which concepts and information are transferred is just as important:

My clients pay me not for the time I spend in the classroom, but for the lifetime of experience I bring with me and for my ability to communicate that experience in a way that improves their technical capabilities and, often, changes their lives. That’s value.

I met Howard a couple of years ago at Oxford University, and he's one of the most charismatic likeable guys I've ever met. Here's a shameless plug for his very successful digital design course which you can find at Oxford's CPD centre. The next week is in June.