Speaker mixes business and engineering

Wharton kids aren't the only students getting tips from high-powered CEOs. Joseph Nacchio, chairman and chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International, spoke at an Engineering School-sponsored talk last night to a packed crowd of students, faculty and business executives in the Towne Building. Nacchio, who was recently featured on the cover of Forbes magazine, discussed the importance of technology, both in business and in life. "Though technology will always change, how technology changes life doesn't change," he said. Nacchio's speech, called "Business in the Information Age: What's New, What's Not," focused on how e-commerce, e-business, the Internet and broadband technologies are changing the nature of business. His talk was part of the Technology, Business and Government Distinguished Lecture series. Nacchio, prior to joining Qwest, spent 26 years at AT&T; in both engineering and management. He joined Qwest in 1997 and led it through a public stock offering. Qwest, headquartered in Denver, is a provider of broadband Internet-based data, voice and image communications, with revenues of more than $19 billion and 72,000 employees. Nacchio explained that modern technology, and in particular, the Internet, has been changing the way people conduct business. "The Internet was adapted faster than the telephone, telegraph and electricity," he said. Nacchio also said technology has particularly affected college students. "Average college students spend 100 minutes a day on the Internet," he said. "It seems that college students are now more interested in data than dating." Nacchio also discussed management and the skills required to run a large corporation. "Managing a company is like doing a second-degree differential equation with nine variables," he said. "You have to figure out which variables in the business are changing." Sponsored in part by the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments, the lecture was aimed at discussing the interrelationships between the growth of new technologies and the business and government sectors. "The lecture shows that Penn Engineering is committed as a full-menu university by providing students not only with the technical skills, but also with interpersonal and business skills," Engineering Dean Eduardo Glandt said. "And judging by the size and enthusiasm of the audience, he was more than an appropriate speaker." The members of the audience also seemed to enjoy the talk by an executive from such a large corporation. "It was really good to hear him talk in person, because rather than reading an article in Forbes, we got to hear him talk about business in a more personal level," Engineering junior Allison Schlaff said.