On a rather cold February morning in NYC in 1999, I ran up the stairs into Barnes & Noble on 54th & Lex.  Running to keep warm and quickly check if the latest WIRED or Fast Company edition was in.  I grabbed the March edition of WIRED and a triple espresso then dashed out. Starbucks operated inside Barnes & Noble just several feet behind the magazine stand. Back then you could buy a coffee and read the magazine. Then put it back on the stand!

Jeff Bezos ablazed the yellow cover. The term, “boy billionaire”, now forever burnt into my memory. The idea of start-ups was gaining momentum and fuelled by the .com mania. Those with proper business models survived the impending crash. On that cold morning the average person on the street would likely be unfamiliar with the term start-up.  These days it’s common parlance.

Despite the .com and mortgage crisis market crashes, the fame, glamour and riches often associated remains.  It’s rather disappointing majority press and PR glamourise technology start-ups focusing near wholly on the money with vox pops abound.  Rarely attending, unfortunately, to value, innovation and affect.

I believe in the art, the creative, the deep thinking of building a masterpiece – in your own context.  The Manet, the Monet, not for the money. Technology as art. Do it well and the riches will follow.

Technology invention, across all domains, is incredibly creative. It warrants and it deserves the label of creative art. Using the painting analogy, a noddy shell script perhaps akin to child’s crayon drawing. A cloud platform could be considered a Monet. Cloud computing was invented in the early 1960s by J.C.R Licklider (Psychologist and Computer Scientist) and truly brought to life in 2002 by Amazon. Followed a decade later by Azure and others.

Create a work of art, stop at nothing, and share it as best you can.