Scott's path to advocacy

Scott Davis: Yes, absolutely. My parents met at IBM in the 1960s. My dad was a software engineer and my mother was an IBM Selectric (an early programmable typewriter) consultant.

I literally grew up surrounded by tech in the house—the first IBM PC came out while I was still in elementary school. My dad taught me how to put together spreadsheets, and my mother showed me how to crack open the computer case to add more RAM. I'm not sure that I could've ended up anywhere else than where I am right now, given the parents that I had.

Geertjan Wielenga: Initially, were you purely into programming?

Scott Davis: I actually started out studying architecture at the University of Nebraska. I was doing fine except for all of my architecture classes, so I dropped out for a year to figure out what I wanted to study next.

I got a job answering phones at a call center for a long-distance phone company. On my own, I put together a spreadsheet that had the names of...