Embracing Change: Lessons from a William & Mary Computer Science Graduate

[00:00:02] Something a little different today.

[00:00:04] On Saturday, May 18th, 2024, I deliver the commencement address

[00:00:08] for the Computer Science Department at the College of William & Mary,

[00:00:11] where I'm an alum.

[00:00:12] You may have a young person in your life you want to share some insights with.

[00:00:16] I hope this gives a little bit of value on that front.

[00:00:20] I reflect on my journey in the tech industry,

[00:00:22] the value and power of relationships,

[00:00:24] and offer insights and advice for the next generation of tech professionals.

[00:00:28] Here is that address.

[00:00:32] Members of the Computer Science faculty, staff, families, guests,

[00:00:36] and Class of 2024.

[00:00:39] I'm Dave Sobel. I'm Class of 97,

[00:00:41] and I'm a proud graduate of this department.

[00:00:44] I need to tell you how excited I am to be here.

[00:00:48] I'm not the kind of student that expected to be here,

[00:00:51] and I reflect back on my time as we spent together at Computer Science Night,

[00:00:56] and I was so impressed by your sharp engagement and insightful questions.

[00:01:02] It reminded me a lot of my own journey,

[00:01:04] which let's say felt a lot less sharp and insightful.

[00:01:10] I was a bit of a troublemaker.

[00:01:12] With the benefit of hindsight,

[00:01:14] I see my entrepreneurial independence and self-advocacy traits,

[00:01:20] but I'm sure my professors didn't see it that way at the time.

[00:01:24] I'm rather lucky that most of mine have all retired and forgotten my reputation.

[00:01:30] When I graduated, the event was in the basement of SWEM.

[00:01:35] It was actually a reception.

[00:01:38] Everyone filed in, mingled, and had drinks.

[00:01:42] My stepmother asked,

[00:01:44] well, when is the procession going to happen so that I can see Dave get his diploma?

[00:01:49] And a professor told her,

[00:01:51] well, we don't do that.

[00:01:52] The students just mingle and we talk,

[00:01:55] and then they pick them up as they leave.

[00:01:58] My stepmother, not a particularly tall woman,

[00:02:02] gets in this professor's face and says,

[00:02:05] no, I saw my son walk and get his diploma at UVA,

[00:02:10] and I saw my daughter walk and get her diploma handed to her at James Madison,

[00:02:15] and I will see my son walk and be handed his diploma at William & Mary.

[00:02:21] I have never seen people move as fast as that moment.

[00:02:26] Sometimes, even as an adult,

[00:02:30] you still fear the wrath of a parent, anyone's parents.

[00:02:35] More importantly, it's a lesson that no one will advocate more for you than yourself.

[00:02:43] My stepmother wanted that picture, and she was going to get it.

[00:02:49] You have to advocate for yourself and not be afraid to use the skill of self-promotion.

[00:02:56] We all have those moments we wish we had spoken up for ourselves.

[00:03:01] Take a moment.

[00:03:03] I'm sure you have one that jumps a little too quickly to mind.

[00:03:08] What do you wish you'd done then?

[00:03:12] And what will you do to make sure you own that moment next time?

[00:03:18] Now, when advocating for ourselves sets the stage for success,

[00:03:22] the journey is enriched and propelled by the relationships that we build.

[00:03:27] Now, again, I didn't necessarily see this as clearly then as I lived it.

[00:03:34] In fact, I lived it so much that I was on academic probation for a semester.

[00:03:40] Besides mostly going to class, I DJed at WCWM.

[00:03:44] I was active in Sigma Sigma Fraternity.

[00:03:46] I worked on the yearbook.

[00:03:47] I was a campus tour guide.

[00:03:49] And I made the friendships that continue to enrich my life to this day.

[00:03:56] We spent our years at William & Mary focused on academic achievement and our future careers.

[00:04:02] While I firmly believe that the knowledge gained here is foundational to success,

[00:04:08] don't overlook the people to your left and to your right.

[00:04:14] As a man in his late 40s, I think a lot about the research that shows it takes more than 200 hours,

[00:04:23] ideally over six weeks, for a stranger to grow into a close friend.

[00:04:29] As you become focused on jobs and responsibilities,

[00:04:33] trust me, that 200 hours are going to be a lot harder to find.

[00:04:39] Deep friendships will also lead you to a healthier life.

[00:04:44] Study after study proves that those who are connected to friends are more healthy and projected to live longer.

[00:04:52] The relationships you made here are some of the deepest time commitment ones you will experience in your lifetime.

[00:05:00] Like me, you probably picked up a lot of these relationships rather by accident.

[00:05:05] That person you met at the CAF because they knew a hallmate, that one from the radio station, that one from the department.

[00:05:12] You'll look back and absolutely treasure this time.

[00:05:16] You won't necessarily remember all the classes I supposedly took racquetball, but you'll remember the people.

[00:05:25] You've lived with these friends, with your friends, together with everybody close.

[00:05:31] One of the magic elements of the experience is that this is the one time you live, play, and work with all your friends in the same physical space.

[00:05:43] It's about to change.

[00:05:45] Remember proactively to make those small investments over and over again in your friends.

[00:05:54] If you make the effort, it grows and it compounds and it gains momentum.

[00:06:01] You'll get to experience the world together from marriages, kids, pets, and more.

[00:06:08] Plus, those friends that you had funny nicknames for in college, you'll look around one day and realize those friends are also chief muckety-mucket companies that people know the names of.

[00:06:21] This won't happen on its own, so take each moment, each day to make a small investment.

[00:06:27] Ask yourself, which friend can I call, FaceTime, send a voice memo, text, rather than spending your time doom-scrolling?

[00:06:36] These relationships not only enrich our lives, they also lead us to opportunities that require us to embrace change and lead and learn new things.

[00:06:46] That sets the stage for more learning.

[00:06:48] When I was a senior at William & Mary, the World Wide Web was a new thing.

[00:06:53] So much so we called it that.

[00:06:56] Not everybody had a website.

[00:06:58] In fact, it was a pretty rare thing for people to have websites.

[00:07:01] Most websites were built by individual people.

[00:07:05] I got really fascinated by this idea and I built this very expansive website on the computer science servers.

[00:07:12] I launched a reality blog site, getting a bunch of my friends to all write anonymous blogs each week before we even knew what the word blog was.

[00:07:21] I even won an USA Today award for it.

[00:07:24] Well, I was hauled into a professor's office who ran the network because I was taking up far more bandwidth than any student.

[00:07:33] In fact, I'm pretty sure I was taking more bandwidth than all the other students and professors combined.

[00:07:40] He wanted to know what I was doing with all that bandwidth.

[00:07:44] So after explaining all my crazy ideas, the professor looked me dead in the eyes and he said,

[00:07:49] Well, maybe you should spend more time on your classes and less on this World Wide Web thing.

[00:07:55] It's a fad.

[00:07:59] I still laugh with you on that one.

[00:08:02] Professors teach you an awful lot, but they're not infallible.

[00:08:08] I walked out of his office and instead of spending less time on the web, I promptly bought my first domain and I moved all my content elsewhere.

[00:08:16] Your professors didn't just teach you about the mechanics of computing.

[00:08:22] They also instilled into you logic, insight, deduction, and reasoning.

[00:08:28] And sometimes your insights will be different from theirs.

[00:08:33] Professors are human too.

[00:08:36] So that means they can be wrong.

[00:08:39] Because everybody's going to be wrong.

[00:08:41] Because generally, if somebody's always right, it's because they aren't particularly interesting or bold in their thinking.

[00:08:48] You've got to be wrong sometimes to get the big ones right.

[00:08:52] And if you're going to take those big swings, you've got to be comfortable being wrong.

[00:08:56] So my interests and instincts proved to be on to something.

[00:09:00] My experiences, those things, they drove me to continue to pursue the web as a medium.

[00:09:05] I'm going to tell you, that big website caused me to get recruited for my first job.

[00:09:10] Because Phil Wary, who was a fellow graduate of William & Mary, was searching through the students at the college for one to recruit for the company he was working for.

[00:09:20] And Phil not only recruited me as a systems administrator for a company here in Williamsburg, he also helped me land my first job out of college.

[00:09:29] And Phil was a dear mentor and friend until his passing.

[00:09:32] And his advice still echoes in my ears even today.

[00:09:37] So being my own advocate with an eye to the next interesting thing, and knowing my friends had my back, led me to a pretty unconventional career for a computer science major.

[00:09:47] It started a lot like I thought it would.

[00:09:49] Product and technology development for companies that needed help.

[00:09:52] First a consulting company, and then a second of what we now call a cloud software as a service contract management system.

[00:09:59] Well that second one went down in spectacular fashion when on Valentine's Day 2002, they hauled the entire development team in and laid us all off.

[00:10:09] Because the company didn't have enough money to keep going.

[00:10:11] It's obvious to me that my now wife was really into me because she actually said yes to my marriage proposal that night when I had no job.

[00:10:21] But that started my pivot as I launched my first business then, helping small companies with their technology needs.

[00:10:28] I was going to make it as an entrepreneur or I'd have to go get a job.

[00:10:32] And I combined that hard work with a little bit of luck and I landed our first big customer about a month and a half after starting the business.

[00:10:40] I ran that managed services provider for a decade in an industry I still work in.

[00:10:46] And taking from my lessons from my days here at William & Mary, I got involved in everything.

[00:10:51] And some of it was just ancillary to the business itself.

[00:10:54] Not only did I run the business, I got invited to join a peer group.

[00:10:59] I became a frequent attendee at conferences, then I started speaking at conferences, I met colleagues, I shared information, became a CompTIA trainer.

[00:11:08] I wrote that book about virtualization, I became a Microsoft MVP which is their program for recognizing leaders in the community.

[00:11:14] I helped launch peer groups in Europe.

[00:11:16] I just kept getting involved in stuff, like stuff to keep learning.

[00:11:20] And I figured if I kept learning, the business would grow and it did.

[00:11:26] But more important than the growth was the insights I gathered, discussed, and shared and explored with those colleagues.

[00:11:32] They came with new relationships as I could help others with problems and they helped me with mine.

[00:11:38] I sold that business in 2011 and I went on to lead community events for two other software firms, each of which we sold.

[00:11:44] And after we IPO'd the second one, I was ready for another change and I launched my current company.

[00:11:50] It's a media and analysis firm, but it's far more fun to call myself a podcaster and YouTuber.

[00:11:58] Like, follow, and subscribe to this video and hit the notification bell if you'd like to get more.

[00:12:04] As I said, self-promotion is a key skill.

[00:12:09] So when I look at each of those transitions, like my first job out of college, all my work then has been because of a personal relationship.

[00:12:20] That spectacular failure company I told you about, I'd worked with the CTO before.

[00:12:26] My first big customer land, I'd worked with that CEO.

[00:12:29] My first role after selling my first company, I'd been a customer and they liked working with me.

[00:12:35] Then I was introduced to the next job after that by a friend who thought I'd be great for it and connected me to the CEO.

[00:12:41] And today, people take my call and they listen to my podcast because I've invested in people.

[00:12:48] And the big one, the really big one, the sale of my first company, that deal was done over lunch with a colleague I'd known for years,

[00:12:56] who we went out every year just to catch up.

[00:13:00] Investing in relationships is just as important as investing in money, and you should do both.

[00:13:08] Make small investments over and over and over again and you'll watch them grow.

[00:13:14] So as you leave the burg for your next big adventures, I want you to remember three pillars.

[00:13:19] Advocate for yourself, cherish and invest in those relationships, and embrace change with a willingness to learn.

[00:13:27] Those principles have guided me through both successes and failures.

[00:13:31] And remember, the path to success isn't about never quitting, it's about knowing when to pivot.

[00:13:37] Learning from your experiences and most importantly, understanding the value of the connections you made along the way.

[00:13:42] So ask yourself, how will I advocate for myself?

[00:13:45] How will I invest in relationships and how will I embrace the change that comes my way?

[00:13:52] So as you move forward, may you build your own unconventional paths enriched by the relationships you cherish and the quest for knowledge.

[00:13:59] And I also hope you'll remember to invest in the relationship we started today by reaching out and telling me all about it.

[00:14:08] Thank you very much and go try it.

[00:14:10] Thanks for listening. I hope you found some value in my words.

[00:14:17] This is a touch different from my usual content.

[00:14:20] And if you're checking this out first, I'll ask that you give me a like or a follow to get more of my IT services content and learn more about the delivery of technology in business.

[00:14:30] My podcast is The Business of Tech, available wherever podcasts are found.

[00:14:35] And there's more information at businessof.tech.

[00:14:38] And if you want to support the show, visit patreon.com slash MSP radio where you can get my content early.

[00:14:45] Or if you want to advertise on the show, visit MSP radio.com slash engage.

[00:14:50] Thank you again for listening.