Hola Todos.

A few months ago, I received a most unusual request: to come and speak at a technical conference in Monterrey, Mexico—a conference run entirely, and I mean entirely, by students.
I’d never heard ofanything like this, but they claimed that previous speakers had included speakers like Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick, and that this year’s speakers would include executives from Amazon, ElectronicArts and AMD. So I signed up.
It turned out to be an amazing experience. In all my years of speaking, I’ve never encountered a conference as organized and smooth as this one. Three students greeted meat the airport, speaking flawless English—two guys, wearing suits and ties, and a young lady, Erika, who introduced herself as my assistant for the three-day event. They grabbed my luggage and wedrove to the hotel. I had already been sent a day-by-day agenda, filled with all the details of the trip, the conference, the schedule, the restaurants where the speakers would join the organizers formeals, contact information and so on.
(I was so floored by all the personal attention that when we arrived at the hotel, it almost didn’t surprise me to see a dozen cute 15-year-old girls in a line atthe entrance, clutching flowers and holding cameras expectantly as our car pulled up. “No WAY!” I exclaimed, looking out the window.
“Oh, they’re not for you,” said Erika. “An Argentinian soap-operastar is also staying at this hotel.” Ah. Well. Still.)
The talk was the most fun I’ve had in years. The audience of 1,500 college kids from all over Mexico was electric and quick to laughter.
Theuniversity hosting this event (Tecnológico de Monterrey, or “the Tec,” as everyone calls it), is an absolutely gigantic operation, with 92,000 students at 33 campuses across Mexico. At the main campuswhere I was, there were 19,000 students. Its graduates wind up working at big-name tech firms all over the world; 200 work at Microsoft at this moment.
Monterrey is a wealthy city, and the kids...