This article is about the social custom in ancient Greece. For other uses, see Symposium (disambiguation).

A female aulos-player entertains men at a symposium on this Attic red-figure bell-krater, c. 420 BC.

In ancient Greece, the symposium (Greek συμπόσιον symposion, from συμπίνειν sympinein, "to drink together") was a drinking party.^[1] Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara. Symposia are depicted in Greek and Etruscan art that shows similar scenes.^[1]

The equivalent in Roman society is the Latin convivium.^[1]

Setting and social occasion[link]

Banquet scene from a Temple of Athena (6th century BC relief).

The Greek symposium was a key Hellenic social institution. It was a forum for men of good family to debate, plot, boast, or simply to revel with others. They were frequently held to celebrate the introduction of young men into aristocratic society. Symposia were also held by aristocrats to celebrate other special occasions, such as victories in athletic and poetic contests.

Symposia were usually held in the andrōn (ἀνδρών), the men's quarters of the household. The participants, or "symposiasts", would recline on pillowed couches arrayed against the three walls of the room away from the door. Due to space limitations the couches would number between seven and nine, limiting the total number of participants to somewhere between fourteen and twenty seven^[2] (Oswyn Murray gives a figure of between seven and fifteen couches and reckons fourteen to thirty participants a "standard size for a drinking group").^[3] If any young men took part they did not recline but sat up.^[4]

Pietro Testa (1611–1650): The Drunken Alcibiades Interrupting the Symposium (1648).

Food and wine were served. Entertainment was provided, and depending on the occasion could include games, songs, flute-girls or boys, slaves performing various acts, and hired entertainment.

Symposia often were held for specific occasions. The most famous symposium of all, described in Plato's dialogue of that name (and rather differently in Xenophon's) was hosted by the poet Agathon on the occasion of his first victory at the theater contest of the 416 BC Dionysia. According to Plato's account, the celebration was upstaged by the unexpected entrance of the toast of the town, the young Alcibiades, dropping in drunken and nearly naked, having just left another symposium.

The men apart of the symposium would discuss a multitude of topics—from philosophy to love and the differences between genders.

Drinking[link]

A slave attends to a vomiting symposiast.

A symposium would be overseen by a "symposiarch" who would decide how strong the wine for the evening would be, depending on whether serious discussions or merely sensual indulgence were in the offing. The Greeks and Romans customarily served their wine mixed with water, as the drinking of pure wine was considered a habit of uncivilized peoples. The wine was drawn from a krater, a large jar designed to be carried by two men, and served from pitchers (oenochoe). Certain formalities were observed, most important among which were libations, the pouring of a small amount of wine in honour of various deities or the mourned dead.

In a fragment from his circa 375 BC play Semele or Dionysus Eubulus has the god of wine Dionysos describe proper and improper drinking:

For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.

In keeping with the Greek virtue of moderation, the symposiarch should have prevented festivities from getting out of hand, but Greek literature and art often indicate that the third-krater limit was not observed.

Pottery[link]

Symposiums often featured on Attic pottery and Richard Neer has argued that the chief function of Attic pottery was for use in the symposium.^[5]

Entertainments[link]

Kottabos player flinging wine-dregs (Attic red-figure kylix, ca. 510 BC).

Poetry and music were central to the pleasures of the symposium. Although free women of status did not attend symposia, female prostitutes (hetairai) and entertainers were hired to perform, consort, and converse with the guests. Among the instruments women might play was the aulos, a Greek woodwind instrument sometimes compared to an oboe. When string instruments were played, the barbiton was the traditional instrument.^[6] Slaves and boys also provided service and entertainment.

The guests also participated actively in competitive entertainments. A game sometimes played at symposia was kottabos, in which players swirled the dregs of their wine in a kylix, a platter-like stemmed drinking vessel, and flung them at a target. Another feature of the symposia were skolia, drinking songs of a patriotic or bawdy nature, performed competitively with one symposiast reciting the first part of a song and another expected to improvise the end of it. Symposiasts might also compete in rhetorical contests, for which reason the word "symposium" has come to refer in English to any event where multiple speeches are made.

Etruscan and Roman drinking parties[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Banqueting scene from the Etruscan Tomb of the Leopards.

This section requires expansion.

Etruscan art shows scenes of banqueting that recall aspects of the Greek symposia; however, one major difference is that women of status participated more fully in this as in other realms of Etruscan society.

As with many other Greek customs, the aesthetic framework of the symposium was adopted by the Romans under the name of comissatio. These revels also involved the drinking of assigned quantities of wine, and the oversight of a master of the ceremonies appointed for the occasion from among the guests. Another Roman version of the symposium was the convivium.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Symposium scenes

• Ancient Greek art depicting symposium scenes
• A kylix with symposium scene
• Learning about the Symposium. Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology.
• Metropolitan Museum
• The Wiktionary entry for symposium
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Symposium". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

v t e Pottery of ancient Greece Wine shapes Krater Kylix Oenochoe Skyphos Psykter Kyathos Rhyton Kantharos Askos Kotyle Dinos Perfume shapes and wedding shapes Lebes Gamikos Loutrophoros Epinetron Alabastron Aryballos Lekythos Funerary shapes and cultic shapes Kernos Lekythos Loutrophoros Phiale Storage shapes Amphora Hydria Kalathos Kalpis Lebes Pelike Pithos Stamnos Techniques Red-figure Black-figure Bilingual pottery Six's technique White-ground Painters List of Greek vase painters Amasis Painter Exekias Pioneer Group Douris Meidias Painter Euphronios Darius Painter Special topics in Greek pottery Typology Kalos inscription Symposium Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum John Beazley Panathenaic Amphorae South Italian Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology

Paul Muldoon (born 20 June 1951 near Portadown, Northern Ireland) is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts.^[1][2] He is also the president of the Poetry Society (U.K.)^[3]and Poetry Editor at The New Yorker.

Life and work[link]

Muldoon was born, the eldest of three children, on a farm outside The Moy, on the boundary between County Armagh^[4]and County Tyrone, near Portadown.^[5]The family was Catholic in a largely Protestant area of Northern Ireland. His father worked as a farmer (among other jobs) and his mother was a school-mistress. In 2001, Muldoon said of the Moy

It's a beautiful part of the world. It's still the place that's 'burned into the retina', and although I haven't been back there since I left for university 30 years ago, it's the place I consider to be my home. We were a fairly non-political household; my parents were nationalists, of course, but it was not something, as I recall, that was a major area of discussion. But there were patrols; an army presence; movements of troops; a sectarian divide. And that particular area was a nationalist enclave, while next door was the parish where the Orange Order was founded; we'd hear the drums on summer evenings. But I think my mother, in particular, may have tried to shelter us from it all. Besides, we didn't really socialise a great deal. We were 'blow-ins' - arrivistes - new to the area, and didn't have a lot of connections.^[6]

Talking of his home life, he continues "I'm astonished to think that, apart from some Catholic Truth Society pamphlets, some books on saints, there were, essentially, no books in the house, except one set, the Junior World Encyclopaedia, which I certainly read again and again. People would say, I suppose, that it might account for my interest in a wide range of arcane bits of information. At some level, I was self-educated." He was a '"Troubles poet" from the beginning.^[6]

In 1969, Muldoon read English at Queen's University Belfast, where he met Seamus Heaney and became close to the Belfast Group of poets which involved writers such as Michael Longley, Ciarán Carson, Medbh McGuckian and Frank Ormsby. Muldoon said of the experience, "I think it was fairly significant, certainly to me. It was exciting. But then I was 19, 20 years old, and at university, so everything was exciting, really." Muldoon was not a strong student at Queens. He recalls "I had stopped. Really, I should have dropped out. I'd basically lost interest halfway through. Not because there weren't great people teaching me, but I'd stopped going to lectures, and rather than doing the decent thing, I just hung around".^[6] During his time at Queens, his first collection New Weather was published by Faber and Faber. He met his first wife, fellow student Anne-Marie Conway, and they were married after their graduation in 1973. Their marriage broke up in 1977.

For thirteen years (1973–86), Muldoon worked as an arts producer for BBC arts in Belfast, (including the most bitter period of the Troubles). During this time he published the collections Why Brownlee Left (1980) and Quoof (1983). After leaving the BBC he taught English and creative writing at Caius College, Cambridge,^[6]and the University of East Anglia where he taught such writers as Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) and Giles Foden (Last King of Scotland). In 1987, he emigrated to the United States, and teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton. He held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for the five-year term 1999–2004, and is an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University.^[6]

Muldoon is married to novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, whom he met at an Arvon writing course. He has two children, Dorothy and Asher, and lives in Griggstown, New Jersey.^[6][7]

Poetry and other works[link]

His poetry is known for his difficult, sly, allusive style, casual use of obscure or archaic words, understated wit, punning, and deft technique in meter and slant rhyme.^[8] As Peter Davidson says in the New York Times review of books "Muldoon takes some honest-to-God reading. He's a riddler, enigmatic, distrustful of appearances, generous in allusion, doubtless a dab hand at crossword puzzles". ^[9] The Guardian cites him as "among the few significant poets of our half-century"; "the most significant English-language poet born since the second world war" - a talent off the map.^[6] (Notably, Seamus Heaney was born in 1939). Muldoon's work is often compared with Heaney, a fellow Northern Irish poet, friend and mentor to Muldoon. Heaney, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, is better known, sells widely and has enjoyed more popular success. Muldoon is more of 'the poet's poet', whose work is frequently too involved and opaque for a more casual readership. However, Muldoon's reputation as a serious poet was confirmed in 2003 with his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He has been awarded fellowships in the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize; the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, and the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry. He was also shortlisted for the 2007 Poetry Now Award. Muldoon’s poems have been collected into three books, Selected Poems 1968-1986 (1986), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), and Poems 1968-1998 (2001). In September 2007 he was hired as poetry editor of The New Yorker and is president of the British Poetry Society.

Most of Muldoon's collections contain shorter poems with an inclusion of a long concluding poem. As Muldoon produced more collections the long poems gradually took up more space in the volume, until in 1990 the poem Madoc: A Mystery took over the volume of that name, leaving only seven short poems to appear before it. Muldoon has not since published a poem of comparable length, but a new trend is emerging whereby more than one long poem appears in a volume.

Madoc: A Mystery, exploring themes of colonisation, is among Muldoon's most difficult works. It includes, as 'poetry', such non-literary constructions as maps and geometric diagrams. In the book Irish Poetry since 1950, John Goodby states it is "by common consent, the most complex poem in modern Irish literature [...] - a massively ambitious, a historiographical metafiction".^[10] The post-modern poem narrates, in 233 sections (the same number as the number of native American tribes), an alternative history in which Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey come to America in order to found a utopian community. The two poets had, in reality, discussed but never undertaken this journey. Muldoon's poem is inspired by Southey's work Madoc, about a legendary Welsh prince of that name. Critics are divided over the poem's success. Some are stunned by its scope^[6][11] and many others, such as John Banville, have professed themselves utterly baffled by it - feeling it to be wilfully obscure.^[12] Muldoon says of it: "I quite enjoy having fun. It's part of how it is, and who we are."^[6]

Muldoon has contributed the librettos for four operas by Daron Hagen: Shining Brow (1992), Vera of Las Vegas (1996), Bandanna (1998), and The Antient Concert (2005). His interests have not only included libretto, but the rock lyric as well, penning lines for the band The Handsome Family as well as the late Warren Zevon whose titular track "My Ride's Here" belongs to a Muldoon collaboration. Muldoon also writes lyrics for (and plays "rudimentary rhythm" guitar in) his own Princeton-based rock band, Rackett.^[13]

Muldoon has also edited a number of anthologies, written two children's books, translated the work of other authors, and published critical prose.

He will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six where he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible^[14]

Awards[link]

Muldoon has won the following major poetry awards:^[15]

• 1990: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1992: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Madoc: A Mystery
• 1994: T. S. Eliot Prize for The Annals of Chile
• 1997: Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for New Selected Poems 1968–1994
• 2002: T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for Moy Sand and Gravel
• 2003: Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada) for Moy Sand and Gravel
• 2003: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel
• 2004: American Ireland Fund Literary Award
• 2004: Aspen Prize for Poetry
• 2004: Shakespeare Prize
• 2009: John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence

Selected Honors[link]

• Honorary Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews (Scotland)
• Professor of Poetry at Oxford University 1999–2004 (England)
• Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University (England)
• Fellowship with the Royal Society of Literature (England)
• Fellowship with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (U.S.)

Works[link]

Further Reading[link]

• Allen Randolph, Jody. "Paul Muldoon, December 2009." Close to the Next Moment. Manchester: Carcanet, 2010.
• Holdridge, Jeff. The Poetry of Paul Muldoon. Dublin: Liffey Press, 2009.
• Kendall, Tim. Paul Muldoon. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour Editions, 1996.
• Redmond, John. "Interview with Paul Muldoon." Thumbscrew 4 Spring 1996.
• Suzan Sherman. "Yusef Komunyakaa and Paul Muldoon [Interview]." Bomb 65 Fall 1998.
• Wills, Clair. Reading Paul Muldoon. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1997.

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• List of Northern Irish writers
• Oxford Professor of Poetry
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• Postmodernism

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Paul Muldoon

• Paul Muldoon's official website Accessed 2010-02-27
• James S. F. Wilson (Spring 2004). "Paul Muldoon, The Art of Poetry No. 87". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/30/the-art-of-poetry-no-87-paul-muldoon. 
• Paul Muldoon discusses poetry with Wunderkammer Magazine 17 Jan 2011 (Video, 20 mins)
• Paul Muldoon reads "Wulf and Eadwacer" from The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (audio)
• Paul Muldoon at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2010: "The Borderline" (Audio)
• Poetry Foundation profile and poems Accessed 2010-02-27
• Profile at Poets.org
• Poetry Archive biography (U.K.) Accessed 2010-02-27
• Guardian article - Extended interview with Muldoon and analysis The poet at play 12 May 2001 Accessed 2010-02-27
• Poetry Society essays on Muldoon Accessed 2010-02-27
• Transcript of interview with Ramona Koval, The Book Show, ABC Radio National, March 2008. Accessed 2010-02-27
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography Accessed 2010-08-27
• "Word Freak". Profile of Muldoon in the New York Times Magazine. Accessed 2010-02-27

Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt at the 37th G8 summit in 2011.
Born	(1955-04-27) April 27, 1955 (age 57) Washington, D.C., United States
Residence	Atherton, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Princeton University University of California, Berkeley
Occupation	Software engineer, businessman
Salary	$1.25 million in 2012[1]
Net worth	US$ 6.9 billion (2012)[2]
Title	Executive Chairman of Google
Website
Google.com - Eric Schmidt

Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American software engineer, businessman and the current executive chairman of Google.^[3] From 2001 to 2011, he served as the chief executive of Google.

Additionally, Schmidt was a former member on the board of directors for Apple Inc. and sat on the boards of trustees for both Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University.^[4][5][6]

Along with Mike Lesk, Schmidt co-authored the lex analysis software program for the Unix computer operating system.

Biography[link]

Schmidt was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. After graduating from Yorktown High School,^[7] Schmidt attended Princeton University where he earned a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1976.^[8] At the University of California, Berkeley, he earned an MS in 1979 for designing and implementing a network linking the campus computer center, the CS and the EECS departments,^[9] and a PhD in 1982 in EECS with a dissertation about the problems of managing distributed software development and tools for solving these problems.^[10] He was joint author of lex (a lexical analyzer and an important tool for compiler construction). He taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business as a part time professor.^[11]

Schmidt and his wife Wendy lived in Atherton, California in 1999.^[12] In 2011, he was reported to be dating Lisa Shields, a communications executive for the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based foreign policy think tank.^[13].

He was on the list of ARTnews 200 top art collectors in 2008.^[14]

He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.^[15][16]

The Eric Schmidt Family Foundation[link]

The Eric Schmidt Family Foundation addresses issues of sustainability and the responsible use of natural resources. Wendy and Eric Schmidt, working with Heart Howerton, a San Francisco architectural firm that specializes in large-scale land use, have inaugurated several projects on the island of Nantucket that seek to sustain the unique character of the island, and to minimize the impact of seasonal visitation on the island's core community. Wendy Schmidt offered the prize purse of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE, a challenge award for efficient capturing of crude oil from seawater motivated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.^[17]

Career[link]

Early career[link]

Early in his career, Schmidt held a series of technical positions with IT companies, Byzromotti Design, including Bell Labs, Zilog and Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Cente (PARC).

From Sun to Google[link]

Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems in 1983 as its first software manager. He rose to become director of software engineering, vice president and general manager of the software products division, vice president of the general systems group, and president of Sun Technology Enterprises.^[18]

During his time at Sun he was the butt of two notable April Fool's Day pranks. In the first his office was taken apart and rebuilt on a platform in the middle of a pond complete with working phone. The next year a working Volkswagen Bug was taken apart and re-assembled in his office.

In April 1997, he became CEO and chairman of the board of Novell. Schmidt left Novell after the acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him,^[19] they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.

Google[link]

Schmidt joined Google's board of directors as chairman in March 2001 and became the company's CEO in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shared responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. As indicated by page 29 of Google's 2004 S-1 Filing^[20] Schmidt, Page, and Brin ran Google as a triumvirate. Schmidt had legal responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focused on management of the vice presidents and the sales organization.

According to Google's website, Schmidt also focuses on "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum."^[21]

In 2007, PC World ranked Schmidt as the first on the list of the 50 most important people on the web, along with Google co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.^[22]

In 2009, Schmidt was considered one of the "TopGun CEOs" by Brendan Wood International, an advisory agency.^[23][24]

On January 20, 2011, Google announced that Schmidt would step down as CEO of Google, but continue as the executive chairman of the company, and act as an adviser to co-founders Page and Brin. Page replaced Schmidt as CEO on April 4, 2011. ^[25]

The 2011 book In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy claims that in 2001, Schmidt requested that a political donation he made be removed from Google search results. The request was not fulfilled. Schmidt has denied this ever occurred.^[26]

Apple[link]

Schmidt was elected to Apple's board of directors on August 28, 2006.^[27] On August 3, 2009, it was announced that Schmidt would resign from the board of directors at Apple due to conflicts of interest amid the growing competition between Google and Apple.^[4]

President Barack Obama[link]

Schmidt was a campaign advisor and major donor to Barack Obama, and when he announced he was leaving that perch, he planned to remain at the forefront of Google’s government relations team. Obama has even considered him for Commerce Secretary.^[28] Schmidt was an informal advisor to the Obama presidential campaign and began campaigning the week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate.^[29] He had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the chief technology officer position which Obama created in his administration.^[30] After Obama won, Schmidt was a member of President Obama's transition advisory board. He proposed that the easiest way to solve all of the problems of the United States at once, at least in the domestic policy, is by a stimulus program that rewards renewable energy and, over time, attempts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.^[31] He has since become a new member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology PCAST.^[32]

New America Foundation[link]

The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank, founded in 1999. Schmidt is the current chairman of the board of directors. He succeeded founding chairman James Fallows in 2008.^[33]

Innovation Endeavors[link]

Founded in 2010 by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Dror Berman, Innovation Endeavors is an early stage venture fund focused on advancing the world by providing high-impact entrepreneurs with the capital, coaching and network to build game-changing ventures. Innovation Endeavors has invested in more than 30 companies around the world in various industries. The firm is based in Palo Alto, USA. ^[34]

Compensation[link]

Upon being hired at Google, Eric Schmidt was paid a salary of $250,000, and an annual performance bonus. He was granted 14,331,703 shares of class B common stock at 30 cents per share, and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $2.34.^[35]

Schmidt and the Google founders agreed to a base salary of $1 in 2004 (which continued through 2010), with other compensation of $557,465 in 2006,^[36] $508,763 in 2008 and $243,661 in 2009. He did not receive any additional stock, or options in 2009 or 2010.^[37][38] Most of his compensation was for "personal security" and charters of private aircraft.^[38] Schmidt is one of the few people who became billionaires (in United States dollars) based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which he was neither the founder nor a relative of the founder.^[39] In its 2011 'World's Billionaires' list, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 136th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $7 billion.^[2] Google gave him $100 million in 2011 as a parting gift.^[40]

Views[link]

During an interview which aired on December 3, 2009, on the CNBC documentary "Inside the Mind of Google", Schmidt was asked, "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?" His reply was: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that, that information could be made available to the authorities." ^[41][42] At the Techonomy conference on August 4, 2010, Schmidt expressed that technology is good, but he said that the only way to manage the challenges is "much greater transparency and no anonymity." Schmidt also stated that in an era of asymmetric threats, "true anonymity is too dangerous." ^[43]

In August 2010, Schmidt clarified his company's views on network neutrality: "I want to be clear what we mean by Net neutrality: What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don't discriminate against one person's video in favor of another. But it's okay to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue."^[44]

According to PCWorld Schmidt also expressed the following sentiment: "if you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear" ^[45]

See also[link]

• List of billionaires
• 70/20/10 Model — business model advocated by Schmidt^[46]
• RechargeIT

References[link]

• "Google Boss Dates P.R. Beauty". New York Post. July 28, 2011. http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/google_boss_dates_beauty_nb2QK0SyBVOuJ4ZNlV5gCP. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eric E. Schmidt

• Eric Schmidt on Google+
• Eric Schmidt on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Eric Schmidt on Charlie Rose
• Eric Schmidt at the Internet Movie Database
• Eric Schmidt collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Eric Schmidt collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Eric Schmidt collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal

Speeches

• Eric Schmidt and Larry Page speaking at Stanford (May 1, 2002)
• Eric Schmidt talks about innovation on Executive Talks, November 2006
• Schmidt-ceo-of-google.html Eric Schmidt interview by iinnovate, March 2007^{[dead link]}
• YouTube: Eric Schmidt at the Seoul Digital Forum. (2007.06.05)
• Eric Schmidt speaks as part of NASA 50 years Lecture Series, January 17, 2008
• Mobile World Congress 2010 Keynote: Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google(Feb 2010)
• iTunes: Google making of a modern company.^[when?]

Articles

• CNET: Google balances privacy, reach (July 14, 2005), which uses Eric Schmidt as an example of the personal information held by Google.
• Princeton University Board of Trustees^{[dead link]}

Steve Ballmer
Ballmer in 2010.
Born	(1956-03-24) March 24, 1956 (age 56) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Residence	Hunts Point, Washington. U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University (A.B.) Stanford University (Dropout)
Occupation	CEO of Microsoft
Home town	Farmington Hills, Michigan, U.S.
Salary	$1,351,121 (2010)[1]
Net worth	US$ 15.7 billion (2012)[2]
Awards	Legion of Honour[3]
Website
Steve Ballmer - Microsoft.com

Steven Anthony "Steve" Ballmer (born March 24, 1956)^[4] is the chief executive officer of Microsoft, having held that post since January 2000.^[4] As of 2012^[update], his personal wealth is estimated at $15.7 billion, ranking number 19 on the Forbes 400.^[2]

Early life[link]

Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan to a Swiss American father and a Jewish American mother.^[5] He grew up in the community of Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1973, he attended college prep and engineering classes at Lawrence Technological University and graduated from Detroit Country Day School, a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan, with a perfect score of 800 on the mathematical section of the SAT. ^{[6] [7]} He now sits on the school's board of directors. In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a A.B. in mathematics and economics.

At college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who later became CEO of General Electric.^[8] In 1980, he dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft.^[9]

Microsoft[link]

Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, and became Microsoft's 30th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates.^[10]

Ballmer was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8 percent of the company. During the subsequent 20 years, Ballmer headed several Microsoft divisions, including operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. In January 2000, he was officially named Chief Executive Officer.^[4] As CEO, Ballmer handled company finances, however Gates still retained control of the "technological vision". He served as President of Microsoft from July 1998 to February 2001, having previously served as Executive Vice President, Sales and Support since February 1992. Ballmer led Microsoft's development of the .NET Framework.^[11]

In 2003, Ballmer sold 8.3% of his shareholdings, leaving him with a 4% stake in the company.^[12] The same year, Ballmer replaced Microsoft's employee stock options program.

In 2009, and for the first time ever since Bill Gates left Microsoft as full-time chairman, Ballmer made the opening keynote at CES.

Ballmer has also served as Director of Accenture Ltd. as well as a General Partner of Accenture SCA since October 2001.

Persona[link]

Ballmer is known for his energetic and exuberant persona, which is meant to motivate employees and partners.^[13] His flamboyant stage appearances at Microsoft events are widely circulated on the Internet as viral videos.^[14][15][16] One widely circulated video, captured at a developers' conference, features a perspiring Ballmer chanting the word "developers".^[17][18]

Bill Gates steps down[link]

The Wall Street Journal has reported that there was tension surrounding the 2000 transition of authority from Bill Gates to Ballmer. Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match in which Ballmer jumped to the defense of several colleagues, according to an individual present at the time. After the exchange, Ballmer seemed "remorseful", the person said. Once Gates leaves, "I'm not going to need him for anything. That's the principle," Ballmer said. "Use him, yes, need him, no."^[19]

On competing companies and software[link]

Apple[link]

Speaking at a conference in NYC in 2009, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer criticized Apple's pricing, saying; 'Now I think the tide has turned back the other direction (against Apple),' Ballmer said. 'The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.'^[20]

Free and open source software[link]

He has referred to the free software Linux kernel as a "cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."^[21] Ballmer used the notion of "viral" licensing terms to express his concern over the fact that the GNU General Public License (GPL) employed by such software requires that all derivative software be under the GPL or a compatible license.

Google[link]

In 2005, Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became enraged upon hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for Google, picked up his chair, and threw it across his office. Referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt (who previously worked for competitors Sun and Novell), Ballmer vowed to "kill Google" in an expletive-laden tirade^[22] then resumed trying to persuade Lucovsky to stay at Microsoft. Ballmer has described characterizations of the incident as a "gross exaggeration of what actually took place".

During a Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco(2011) he said: "You don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone and you do to use an Android phone…It is hard for me to be excited about the Android phones." ^[23][24]

Sports[link]

Steve Ballmer taking a seat at the KeyArena to watch the Seattle SuperSonics

On March 6, 2008, Seattle's Mayor announced that a local ownership group involving Ballmer made a "game changing" commitment to invest $150 million in cash toward a $300 million renovation of Key Arena and were ready to purchase the Seattle SuperSonics in order to keep them in the City of Seattle. However, this initiative failed, and the Sonics have since relocated to Oklahoma City, now performing as Oklahoma City Thunder.^[25]

Media portrayals[link]

• Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft (2002), Fredric Alan Maxwell, ISBN 0-06-621014-3 (unauthorized biography)
• The 1999 docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley features Ballmer as a major character; he is played by actor John DiMaggio.

Wealth[link]

Ballmer was the second person after Roberto Goizueta to become a billionaire in U.S. dollars based on stock options received as an employee of a corporation in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a founder. Ballmer is the 44th richest person in the world according to Forbes, with an estimated wealth of $15.7 billion.^[26] While CEO of Microsoft in 2009, Ballmer earned a total compensation of $1,276,627 which included a base salary of $665,833 a cash bonus of $600,000, no stock or options, and other compensation of $10,794.^[27]

Personal life[link]

In 1990, he married Connie Snyder. They have three sons.^[28]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Steve Ballmer

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Steve Ballmer

• Corporate biography
• Forbes World's Richest People listing
• South China Morning Post audio interview
• Steve Ballmer Playlist Appearance on WMBR's Dinnertime Sampler radio show February 23, 2005
• Forbes.com's Billionaire List

Sallie Bingham (born 22 January 1937) is an American author, playwright, poet, teacher, feminist activist, and philanthropist.

Sallie Bingham’s first novel was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1961. It was followed by four collections of short stories; her latest, published by Sarabande Books in October 2011, is titled Mending: New and Selected Stories. She has also published six additional novels, three collections of poetry, numerous plays (produced off-Broadway and regionally), and the well-known family memoir, Passion and Prejudice (Knopf, 1989).

Her short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, New Letters, Plainswoman, Plainsong, Greensboro Review, Negative Capability, The Connecticut Review, and Southwest Review, among others, and have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Forty Best Stories from Mademoiselle, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and The Harvard Advocate Centennial Anthology. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Bingham has worked as a book editor for The Courier-Journal in Louisville and has been a director of the National Book Critics Circle. She is founder of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which published The American Voice, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University.

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Bingham has been married three times: to publisher A. Whitney Ellsworth, attorney Michael Iovenko, and contractor Tim Peters. She has three sons—film producer Barry Ellsworth, William Iovenko, and writer Christopher Iovenko—and five grandchildren. She currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Bibliography[link]

Memoir

• Passion and Prejudice (Knopf, 1989)

Short Stories

• The Touching Hand (Houghton Mifflin, 1967)
• The Way It Is Now (Viking Press, 1972)
• Transgressions (Sarabande Books, 2002)
• Red Car (Sarabande Books, 2008)
• Mending: New and Selected Stories (Sarabande Books, 2011)

Novels

• After Such Knowledge (Houghton Mifflin, 1960)
• Small Victories (Zoland Books, 1992)
• Upstate (Permanent Press, 1993)
• Matron of Honor (Zoland Books, 1994)
• Straight Man (Zoland Books, 1996)
• Cory’s Feast (Sunstone Press, 2005)
• Nick of Time (Sunstone Press, 2007)

Poetry

• The High Cost of Denying Rivers Their Floodplain (privately published, 1995)
• The Hub of the Miracle (Sunstone Press, 2006)
• If in Darkness (Tebot Bach, 2010)

Plays

• Milk of Paradise, two children adrift in a confusing world of distracted adults and too much poetry (The Women’s Project and Productions, NY, 1980)
• Couvade, a one-man show in which the actor gives birth on stage (Actors Theatre, Louisville, KY, 1981)
• Paducah, a comedy about a love triangle in a small Kentucky town, in which the two women become best friends (The Women’s Project and Productions, NY, 1983)
• In the Presence, based on The Wall Between by renowned civil rights worker Anne McCarty Braden (Goucher College, Baltimore, MD, 1984; Mill Mountain Theatre, Roanoke, VA, 1986)
• Hopscotch, the history of four well-known Kentucky women, including the truths that are often left out (Horse Cave Theater, KY, 1986)
• The Awakening, an adaptation of the novel by Kate Chopin (Horse Cave Theater, KY, 1988)
• Treason, about how Ezra Pound betrayed the three women who loved him while on trial for betraying his country (Perry Street Theatre, NY, 2006)
• A Dangerous Personality, about the renowned mystic and founder of Theosophy, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (The Women’s Project, NY, 2008)

Anthologies

• Best American Short Stories: 1959, eds. Martha Foley and David Burnett (Houghton Mifflin, 1959)
• 40 Best Stories from Mademoiselle, 1935-1960, eds. Cyrilly Abels and Margarita G. Smith (Gollancz, 1960)
• The Harvard Advocate Centennial Anthology, ed. Jonathan D. Culler (Shenkman Books, 1966)
• Identity: Stories for this Generation, ed. Katherine Hondius (Scott, Foresman and Co., 1966)
• Prize Stories 1966: The O. Henry Awards, eds. Richard Poirier and William Miller Abrahams (Doubleday, 1966)
• Solo: Women on Woman Alone, eds. Linda Hamalian and Leo Hamalian (Delacorte Press, 1977)
• Here's the Story: Fiction with Heart, ed. Morty Sklar (The Spirit That Moves Us Press, 1985)
• American Wives: 30 Short Stories by Women, ed. Barbara Solomon (Signet, 1987)
• New Stories by Southern Women, ed. Mary Ellis Gibson (University of South Carolina Press, 1989)
• Playwriting Women: 7 Plays from the Women's Project and Productions, ed. Julia Miles (Heinemann Drama, 1993)
• Home and Beyond: An Anthology of Kentucky Short Stories, ed. Morris A. Grubbs (The University Press of Kentucky, 2001)
• I to I, Life Writing by Kentucky Feminists, eds. Elizabeth Oakes and Jane Olmsted (Western Kentucky University, 2004)
• The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State, ed. Wade Hall (University Press of Kentucky, 2005)
• Imagine What It's Like, A Literature and Medicine Anthology, ed. Ruth L. Nadelhaft (University of Hawaii Press, 2008)
• World Premieres from Horse Cave: Plays by Kentucky Writers, eds. Liz Bussey Fentress and Warren Hammack (MotesBooks, 2009)