this school has prepared all of you for that same journey. as you work to take what you have learned here and apply it to the world around you, i hope that you will also strive to use your capabilities to create communities that are not just richer, but better; to judge success not just by the number of networks you connect, but by the number of people you connect; that you won’t just help make better companies, but better communities, and a better world.
it’s that same kind of thinking that brought us to china in the first place. it was 22 years ago that hp opened our first office here in china, in an old municipal factory located in beijing. a day before the opening, there was still sawdust on the floor, and two of our engineers worked so hard to get our systems ready that they slept overnight in the building on folding cots. when we opened that building , it was the first partnership of its kind to be sponsored by the government of the people’s republic of china in conjunction with a foreign company.
in 1985 our first joint venture agreement was signed between our then chairman, dave packard, and the then minister of information technologies, jiang ze min.
one newspaper recalled that the day there was“much hand-shaking and drinking of green tea.”at the ceremonial dedication, our representative at the time (bill doolittle) said that“it was our hope that by exchanging expe