I first met Amy Wohl over Skype about six months ago when Buzz Bruggeman was doing one of his “hey look I know a podcaster from Australia!” things, Skyping me from one of the 1000 or so conferences he must attend each year, to show someone how incredibly cool Skype is.

I then met her in person at DEMO in Arizona last Feb, and had a lovely meal with Amy and her husband, Buzz and Andy Ruff (Microsoft’s Entourage Product Manager).

So, who is Amy Wohl? Well she has been around the PC industry for 3o years, working as a strategist and consultant to most of the big PC firms. She knows Gates, Jobs, McNealy et al on a first name basis. THEY TAKE HER CALLS.

From her website:

Amy D. Wohl is President of Wohl Associates and one of the best known consultants in the computer industry. Mrs. Wohl is an acknowledged expert in office automation, graphical user interfaces and client/server computing. She was a pioneer in the field of word processing, but she works in many areas of computing. Mrs. Wohl is editor and publisher of Amy D. Wohl’s Opinions, a monthly newsletter.

Wohl is an experienced commentator on the computer industry and is widely quoted in business publications. She has been advising vendors on product design and marketing issues and helping end-user organizations plan for and design real systems for 20 years. Prior to forming Wohl Associates, Mrs. Wohl was President of Advanced Office Concepts Corporation. She also worked at the Datapro Research Corporation division of McGraw-Hill as Executive Editor of their Office Systems Group and Director of Office Automation Consulting. A noted speaker, Mrs. Wohl has addressed computer industry topics at meetings and conferences around the world. In 1985, she was awarded the Ada Lovelace Keats award of the Association of Women in Computing for her service to the industry and in 1994 was voted one of the Top 100 Women in Computing.

So gather round ye children and listen to us chat with someone who knows a lot more than you do. Or even us (and that says a lot!). 🙂