Compassion and Wealth Together

Given the last post on this blog, this weeks announcement of the astoundingly magnanimous and generous gift that Warren Buffett made to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is worthy of comment.  Simply put, Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest man in the United States, after Bill Gates, gave more than 80% of his total net worth or, $31 billion dollars to his friend Bill’s foundation.  This is more than doubles the size of the Gates Foundation which, at $30 billion was three times larger than the next biggest foundation.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focuses on grants …

The announcement last week that Bill Gates would, over the next two years, relinquish day to day oversight of Microsoft made me think about history and the future.  The first thought of course was that in some way it was the end of an era. The second thought was, well, what era, where does that fit historically, and how will it be described in history books in the future? The third thought was that there might be some precedent to Gates’ decision worth investigating.

The Transition into the Information Age

When Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, the United States was …

This is a departure from most posts here as it is not ruminations about some event or trend or prediction about the future gleaned from developments in the world.  Instead it is taken from a personal experience that was unique, pleasant and perhaps an idea to be embraced by individuals and companies alike.

To set the scene, one which is all too familiar to most readers, I was sitting on a United Airlines plane at O’Hare, waiting to pull away from the gate for the 4:30p departure to Newark.  The full plane was soon told that, due to a fast moving …

The post today is an interview I recently did with Nonprofit Online Learning Update, which is being published on-line today. The interviewer was Jeff Cobb, a leader in the field of on-line learning for non-profits. Non-profits provide an incredibly valuable function in today’s world and can be even more influential in the future as they can become networks of like minded people, organized around ideas, issues, professions and agendas.

As the biographical note at the top of the interview points out, my father, Cyril O. Houle was not only the man who most popularized the phrase ‘life …