October Community Slideshow: What technology are you thankful for?

Welcome to ITWC’s October  2018 community slideshow! Every month we ask leaders in the Canadian technology industry about a general life topic as a fun way to know the community a little better. This month we’re talking about one of our favourite topics, gratitude. With the memory of Thanksgiving still fresh in our minds we realize that we have so much to be thankful for.

Quality time with loved ones, delicious food and treats there’s a lot to be thankful for, but we asked tech leaders, ‘what technology are you most thankful for?’ 

Read on for answers from  Xerox, Intel Canada, Cogeco Peer 1 and more. We’d love to hear your thoughts, use the hashtag #CommunityQuestion and join the conversation.

Alex Benay, CIO, Government of Canada

“My original, Commodore 64 if I go that far back, I loved those video games and I still remember the Olympics on the Commodore 64 [Summer Games was released in 1984 – Ed.] so, you know – left, right, left, right, space bar [The key combination that resulted in an excellent javelin throw. – Ed.]. And it’s something my children would never understand. It’s probably what started getting me into technology at an early age. ”

Sarah Vollo, Global Marketing Manager of Solutions and Apps Offerings at Xerox

Mine is an app called LastPass. It’s a vault for all my passwords. I have probably 100 different logins, and I don’t know any of my passwords. I actually pay for the app that’s how valuable I think it is. Before I started using it I was always clicking on the “forgot my password” link. It’s a life saver.

Jaime Leverton, VP and General Manager, Canada & APAC with Cogeco Peer 1

The Commodore Vic 20 made a big impression on me. I loved that I could write code to affect its output. I spent hours writing pages and pages of code, just to see it write my name on the screen over and over again.

Denis Gaudreault, Country Manager, Intel Canada Ltd.

Waze. Coming from Montreal to Toronto, Waze saved my butt. And there’s no Waze if there’s no 4G connection, no cloud, and no smartphone. So it’s a perfect example of the way things are completely changing.

Mark Boyt, head of solutions and services marketing at Xerox

I’m torn between two things. One is an app called Readly.  As a traveler I’m on the plane a lot, often bored. This app gives me a huge access to huge variety magazines, from tech magazines, cycling magazines. Endless entertainment on the plane. The other is a pair of headphones called AfterShokz. They go underneath your ear around on the bone, freeing my ears, allowing me to be aware of my surroundings when I’m cycling.

Kerry Liu Co-founder and CEO of Rubikloud

It’s something pretty boring. I’m really thankful for how fast the internet is now to the average customer and everything that went into making that possible. We talk about all this other great tech but at the end of the day the amount of development in fibre that allows me to get 150 megabits down to my phone, that’s been a huge change to our life. It’s not just a phone, having a computer in my pocket is one thing but the internet is so fast now compared to what it was even just three or four years ago. I know its a weird answer but I think that’s a really important thing for me. Oh and Uber/Lyft of course.