A serial Entrepreneur, Kevin Ford is currently the founder and CEO of a mobile applications platform company, Parliant Corporation (opens new window). A two-time winner of "Best Product of the Show" at MacWorld Expo and winner of "Best Product of the Year" from MacWorld Magazine. Working with the Manitoba Association of Native Languages, in 1995 Kevin's company created a website that used an on-line storehouse of Cree, Dene, Dakota, and Ojibwe Canadian Aboriginal languages. This technology will ensure that these languages won’t die with the few people who still speak them. In his spare time, Kevin has been a judge for Venture Education Innovation Challenge, where six high school teams compete for the chance to win $1000 in seed capital for their ventures courtesy of the local Community Futures Development Corporation.

What was the #1 reason you chose to attend Mohawk?

Mohawk was the only college in Ontario that I was aware of, with a Co-Op program in the field I wanted: Mechanical Engineering Technologist that would accept/advance someone with Grade 13 Credits

The Co-Op part is not so unusual today, but back then Mohawk and Waterloo were alone in that arena. Mohawk was the first community college in Ontario to recognize the value of Co-op.

What 1 piece of advice you’ve received in the past has stuck with you to this day?

There were so many. Most of my teachers were practitioners, not someone with an advanced degree from a university so the advice was based on personal real world experience and very pragmatic. Alas this cannot be said for many university engineering programs taught by people who completed a PhD then became a Prof.

If you could go back in time, what 1 piece of advice would you give to yourself on the first day of College?

Some people study to optimize their marks on the exam, some people study the subject. Make sure you get a respectable mark but don’t worry so much about optimizing your marks. Also take advantage of the experts in front of you. Don’t let school mandated curriculum interfere with your education.

What fictional character/characters do you most personally identify with or admire? Why?

MacGyver

Wikipedia says:

“The series revolved around MacGyver, whose main asset is his practical application of scientific knowledge and inventive use of common items – along with his ever-present Swiss Army knife. The clever solutions MacGyver implemented to seemingly unsolvable problems – often in life-or-death situations requiring him to improvise complex devices in a matter of minutes – were a major attraction of the show, which was praised for generating interest in the applied sciences, particularly engineering and for providing entertaining story lines.”

He uses his personal moral compass to help the needy, with materials and technologies at hand, using his scientific knowledge and creativity. What better role model for a technologist is there? We all need more MacGiyvers.

What 3 songs are included on the soundtrack to your life?

This is a tough assignment- to encapsulate a life with a few song titles, without sounding cheezy, but here goes:

“I did it my way” by Frank Sinatra,

“A Long and Winding Road”,

A song for my retirement “Sail Away” by Celtic Women.

When you have 30 minutes of free-time, how do you pass the time?

This has changed over my lifetime, but now it includes Internet surfing for positive motivational stories like those at TED and keeping up to date on technical advances or creative applications of new technologies throughout the world

If you could invite any 5 people to a dinner party who would they be?

-Richard Dean Anderson (CDN Actor-Macgyver, Star Gate)

-Ivan Ferguson (developed IMAX and OMNIMAX film systems)

-Ken Taylor (Canadian ambassador smuggled Americans out of Iran, 1980 - called The Canadian Caper)

-Jim Chamberlin (opens new window) (B.A.Sc. 1936) – (Aerodynamicist and chief designer of the Avro Arrow (opens new window), major designer for the Gemini space capsule (opens new window) and Apollo Lunar Module (opens new window))

-Malcolm T. Gladwell (author The Tipping point, Blink, Outliers)

-Don Tapscott (author Wikinomics)

All of the above are Canadian with great stories to tell.

Talk about a time that you took a risk and failed, and one where you took a risk and succeeded. What was the difference?

To consistently deliver leading edge of technology solutions, one has to be an early adopter, selecting immature technologies to develop your product around, and hope they mature by the time your product is ready to ship.

By mature, I mean a convergence of feature complete, stable, in the time frame you need, at a price your product can afford. We developed products around Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems and Genetic Algorithms, all of which failed in one or more of the above criteria.

One must be careful to build a solid product which advances the state of the art in only a few areas, with the remainder of the product being built on solid, well understood technologies. Otherwise your product will never ship or be as stable as it should be.

The art is in evaluating the appropriate level of risk in mixing mature and immature technologies into a single solution. Using these criteria, we had great success in the early adoption of speech recognition into our award winning telephony products, or WebObjects (the software library used to develop Apple’s App Store) into our Web baWeb-based administration systems or html5 into our Paperless Conference mobile applications.

If you could give advice to a new student thinking of entering your program what would it be?

Don’t let school interfere with your education. Study the subject not the test. Lose a few marks by doing so but maximize your learning. Also develop as a whole person by taking advantage of the clubs, social and recreational opportunities offered at the college.

How has your education at Mohawk prepared and supported you throughout your career?

My time at Mohawk was the best educational experience that I have ever had. The college instructors were able to connect the theory to the practical so you could see where what you were learning fit into the real world. I was very engaged contrasted dramatically with the pure theory that followed in my subsequent education.