The fascination of computers

Press, 25 March 1980, Page 12

The fascination of computers

By

NEILL BIRSS

A vear ago Christine Burke'had an administrative job in Hobart. She was so frustrated with the traditional manual accounting system of her employer, the Tasmanian Department of Education, that she began investigating computer "systems. .

Mrs Burke’s frustration led not to modernisation for the education depart-

ment but to a new career for herself, and this month she has become virtually the South Island’s first “lady of computers.” The Digital .Equipment Corporation, one of the world’s leading computer makers, and the firm that took her away from the world of old-time accounting, has brought her to Christchurch as South Island sales representative. This means selling computers that range in price to well over a $lOO,OOO,

and calling on the firm’s 100 or so clients in the -south, making sure their installations are working as planned. Selling computers is a big task: the salesman can spend two to three months on one sale, and it may take two years to “wrap up” the deal. As well a»3 traditional sales skills, the computer

seller needs technical knowledge to bridge the distance between the buyer and the seller’s technicians and engineers. Christine Burke has thi-s. Now 30, she trained as a research technician at a Victorian polytechnic and has worked in medical research in Australia and Britain. This background made it an easy transition from her later job in education accounting to computers. “When you have had to work with spectrometers computers are just another machine,” she says. Digital, which is the king of the mini-computer range (it really should be midi-computers, because the range falls between the big computers of firm's like IBM and Burroughs and desk-top and personal computers), put her through its own. training, and then she sold computers in Tasmania . The sales field is highly competitive. At the top of its price range, .Digital competes with the smaller systems of the big-com-puter makers; at the bottom it rivals the bigger desk-top systems.

The selling is complicated by what the trade calls “O.E.M.s” (original engineering manufacturers). These firms buy equipment and add hardware of software (programmes) of their own to

create systems that they themselves sell. This means that Digital’s customers can also be competitors. Now a solo parent, Mrs Burke is clearly a career woman. She kept working through her marriage, finds recreation in the traditional executives’ sports of golf and squash, and she has a housekeeper who helps look after her sons, aged three and five, while Mum is out and about in her-territory explaining' to businessmen how consigning thousands of dollars to her can save them money. And much of her snare

time is taken up with reading computer literature brought home. The rate of change in the field is so rapid that it is work to keep up to date.' Christine Burke has no doubts about the worth of society of computers. She believes that, though they eliminate some jobs, they create just as many and that the new ones are generally more satisfying than the old. Firms usually create new jobs for those whose work is taken over by a new computer, she has found. “I can’t see that I’ve sold a svstem that would

put people out of a job,” she said. Computers often uncover hidden talents in people, she has found. Perhaps an accountant who has long had a bent for electronics or a clerk with a hitherto unrecognised strength in logic, the main requirement for a good programmer. People seem generally to be fascinated by computers. When Digital provided facilities for . the recent Jaycee Top Town contest in Christchurch, the terminals were thronged by people wanting to play some of the games such as Lunar

Landing, Star Trek' and chess. Digital offers these to its clients as part of its software library. But for all her awareness of the human implications of the new technology, Christine Burke is clearly a dedicated businesswomen, keen to travel the avenues that branch out ahead of her in a multinational company in the world’s top growth industry. It comes through in the way she asks: “Do you know of a five=bedroom house I can find in Christchurch?” You know that if one is available she will certainly find it.