What Chuck Does

What to do when the Chairman/CEO of ASUS sits next to you on an 11 hour flight…

Chat him up for over 3 hours of course! :)

He’s vegetarian, very polite, very well read particularly in management. Doesn’t come across as an engineer due to his excellent people skills. Has good understanding of the industry and great vision of where Asus is headed in spite of the competition and random variables. He’s cautious about his transition as Chairman/CEO to just Chairman. He’s very engaging (he struck the conversation with me and I gave him plenty of opportunities to end the conversation). Does not divulge much about his personal life unless asked.

Basically what happened was I got bumped to Business Class on my flight from TPE>LAX. When he saw that he was sitting next to me, I got the feeling he was slightly put off either because he was expecting to sit next to an empty seat or he would rather sit next to someone more of his calibur - either of which is understandable. As luck would have it there were no other seats available.

He sat down and asked me if I was going home and I said yes. I asked him where he was headed and he said he was going to CES. We talked about our line of work where upon he revealed he worked for a semiconductor company in Taiwan. I then asked him if he was from either ASUS or MSI and he told me he was from ASUS. It wasn’t however until a flight attendant called him “Chairman Shih” that I realized he was the head honcho. She gave him an exit/out to sit elsewhere (likely in first class) but he declined. Personally I think it was because of our conversation but who knows.

We talked about everything from his company to his kids. We talked a lot of the future and which companies would come to dominate the Internet, computers, technology. The Google vs. Microsoft vs. Apple world. The open-source vs. proprietary standards. I told him of my experiences with the Internet and how I felt if there were a Web 3.0 it would be entirely dominated by integration of cyber identity with physical life. I explained to him the lure of cyber identities such as Facebook/Myspace and Second Life/WoW. I think he was at least interested if not impressed at those ideas. There were definitely times when I felt like I didn’t know the answer and had obviously over-extended myself - those would be the times when I started to sweat hard… Then there were times when I felt very much in my element talking about the stuff that I knew and had experience with and those were the times when I felt his attention peaked.

Perhaps not the most optimized use of 3 hours with a CEO of a famous company but I think he’d remember me later on in life… What a treat for me though!