The Bay Area is home to the world-renown hub of technological innovation and explosive economic growth called Silicon Valley.  Silicon Valley veteran Paul Wesling explored how and why that engine of progress happened here.

Going back to 1910, Wesling showed how the more egalitarian culture of California and the educational institutions of Silicon Valley encouraged entrepreneurs there to create companies more flexible, collaborative, and inter-dependent than the hierarchical behemoths in the East. Silicon Valley helped redefine the way we work as it produced decades of remarkable technological achievements.

Paul Wesling has witnessed much of the development of Silicon Valley. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer, he spent his professional life working for several of the Valley’s most successful companies, including Amdahl, Tandem, and Hewlett Packard. An award-winning Life Fellow of the Bay Area Council of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and its Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology (CPMT) Society, he has a particular interest in the Valley’s history and in preserving it for others. He has given this talk across the country and overseas. Like so much of his other work, it is a labor of love.