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On Wednesday night, some lucky students and staff members from The University of Western Australia (UWA) attended the highly anticipated ‘An evening with Steve Wozniak’, one of the pioneers of personal computing and co-founder of Apple, at HBF stadium.

Through a sponsorship partnership between the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics and the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research), UWA gained exciting ticket packages and exclusive access to meet Steve Wozniak.

Before Steve Wozniak took to the stage to address his awaiting fans, the Faculty’s Dr David Glance, Director at the Centre for Software Practice, had the opportunity to sit down and interview Wozniak about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), including Wozniak’s vast perceptions and sharp insights into the future of technology for generations to come.

Watch the full interview between Dr David Glance and Steve Wozniak in the online video

Wozniak explained that although early in his career he had been famously successful; his main motivation was to bring great computers to people, as an engineer.

Wozniak left Apple in 1985 to finish a degree of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. He did this under the pseudonym of Rocky Raccoon Clark. After that time, he spent 10 years teaching computing primary school children from Grade 5 – 9.

Wozniak could foresee how education would be transformed once personal computers existed. A device that ‘reteaches you’ after an input of questions and computations, Wozniak could see that education was going to be like never before.

Commenting on the interview, Dr David Glance said it was a pleasure to meet Steve Wozniak.

“In many ways, Wozniak is a stereotypical engineer. He is a very nice and largely self-effacing person who just happened to use his passion to create something that was truly great.”

“Over the last ten years in Australia, Wozniak has noticed an increasing interest in digitising the landscape of enterprise – this is good news for future generations who will have more and more opportunity to learn programing languages pioneered by a STEM champion who made it all possible,” said Dr David Glance.

Associate Professor Mark Reynolds, head of the UWA School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE), also attended the event and said Wozniak was “An inspiring person to converse with, who discussed important Computer Science history, and future, innovation and entrepreneurship. The entire event was interesting and very entertaining.”

Video

Media references

Lauren Humfrey (UWA Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics) (+61 8) 6488 8516
Dr David Glance (UWA Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics) (+61 8) 6488 4706
Professor Mark Reynolds (UWA Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics) (+61 8) 6488 2279