Andrew Valsania

This is the article I published on “Genova Impresa”, the Confindustria Genova bi-monthly newspaper.

From my eight great-grandparents, four grandparents and (May God help and keep them!) two parents, I came to this World halfway through 1980.

In my genetic baggage (ramshackle, like everyone’s, for the great weight accumulated by the accumulated debits of scatter-brained management) I, like everyone else, received the costly part of good heritage. The talents passed down from my ancestors from their primitive treasure are humility, simplicity, and honesty. Those of the peasant, the baker, the stonecutter, the blacksmith, the carpenter… strong mythical men, in their everyday affairs. It is the steadfastness, industriousness, respect for everyday work, the value of achieving a goal, responsibility for one’s own choices. Of these characteristics, the most important (before the ones you acquire on your own) are those furnished by the more recent parents.

In the present day, post “deadline” as President Giovanni Calvini called it, I tripped over the tangle of so-called “information technologies”. And now, after years of study and experience in applying them that I know them in various entrepreneurial ventures, I still work tenaciously to make them “work well.”

Up to today, the duration of training between study and practice has been a good 37,600 hours (142% more in corresponding work hours of any other coveted “job”, with all due respect for labor union orthodoxy). And so? This excessive inclination has earned me the skill required to untangle the “cases” that belong to computer science.

But what do I do? Study, teach, do consulting in the area of computer science, but most of all I try to show the use of the possibilities available for information technologies in industrial production, business and management, etc., recalling the fundamental principles of every profession.  It is well-known that acquirable knowledge is equal to the effort applied to obtain it. Even to become experts in contraptions and their relative manuals, to make the computer science gadget work (principally made up of critical elements of every type), it is necessary to study and experiment the material and immaterial tools, until you have the due command. 

The obligatory operative rigor for every serious professional is of special importance for computer science operators because of the hyperbolically high speed of the characteristic functioning of electronic apparatus. The other attribute of the computer science operator is the high level of commitment to professional development due to the continuous and rapid development of computer techniques. This is what you need to know to not be a part of the befuddled who “secrete” the confusion that disconcerts possible user-clients pushing them away from the amazing computer tool and maintains in administrators of our businesses the granite-like conviction of the un-useable quality of this unknowable computer science.

In these years, I have been committed above all to building and maintaining as functioning the solutions my clients have required, and I have invested the remaining resources in the area of associations, both as a member of the Computer Science Section of the Confindustria of Genoa, as well as a delegate for the board of Assinform for human resources and professional development.  What a few years ago was a “mugugno” or Genovese form of lament (suffocated by a guilty sloth) among the major businesses of the sector is today a unanimous “cry of pain,” that cannot be contained either in our private meetings or at public conventions: “Computer science professionals are lacking!”

But who today among entrepreneurs (who should support the value of ‘know-how’) deludes himself, telling himself that he can foolishly use “no” in place of “yes”, by trying to resolve the crisis by applying the same tools that are its cause… stop trying!

I have told the story of the “matter, from the point of view of one of the profession, especially addressing myself to young people with good intentions. 

In the crisis that seems not to have a solution, the one remedy that has already been well-experimented is that of recuperating, even if only in a small part of the system, the essential value of the truth: know-how.

Today I leave myself open and available only to those who do not refuse help, who with the welcome of those directly involved, can become valid help.