My good friend Ben Casnocha, who was recently recognized as one of Business Week's Best Entrepreneurs Under 25, recently asked me to review a pre-release copy of his forthcoming book. (I was flattered and am enjoying the read.)
Everyone knows Ben as an incredibly thoughtful and wise young man who has somehow balanced his role as CEO of a successful web company with the rigors of high school life and chronicled on his blog many of his adventures along the way.
Ben is 18 now and, though we all note his youth with admiration when considering how bright and successful he is, it never occurred to me how young Ben really is, until I read this sentence from his manuscript:
"I still remember what started as a routine day in the year 2000 when my 6th grade technology teachers . . . wrote on the board our class concept for a new web site."
Haha. Sixth grade in 2000? That same year I was putting the capstone on a six-figure pile of law school debt. He was just in elementary school and I was studying for the bar exam. It is just as interesting for me to consider that he had "technology teachers" covering web topics. I always thought I was lucky that there was one computer in my entire primary school building (an Apple II+) and I got a regular chance to use it. I always felt like I had a headstart on all the geezers who hadn't seen one before.
I read this sentence out loud to a group of engineers from my team at lunch the other day and they cracked up like I did. It touched off such a wave of nostalgia for the first machines we all used and when we first discovered the Internet. We all felt so old and yet so lucky.
So, cheers to Ben and his generation and double cheers to the kids in 6th grade today who will show us all up soon enough.