Ed Smith

Ed Smith got the technology bug early on in life, repairing appliances for the folks in the neighborhood. Smith attended Westinghouse Technical High School for Electronics and studied Marketing and Computer Science and Pace University. After studying microprocessor technology at Fairchild while developing traffic control signals at traffic control company Marbelite, the computer bug hit Smith at the age of 21. He would read Popular Electronics, Popular Mechanics and Omni magazines to stay caught up in a whirlwind of technological change. Smith’s first home was Radio Row on Canal Street, NY and his second home was Radio Shack.

By 1976, Smith was hired by APF Electronics in New York to work on the next generation video game after the success of TV Fun - a variation of Pong. Smith’s role at APF included collaboration on hardware design, building the prototypes as well as Joystick and I/O port design for the MP1000 video game. The MP1000 competed directly with Atari, Magnavox and Coleco during the first generation of cartridge-based games. By 1978, Smith and the APF design team leveraged the processing power of the MP1000 and the I/O design by him to add a computer console unit to the MP1000, creating the Imagination Machine personal computer.

Since his time at APF, Smith has been involved in almost every area of emerging technology with stints at Apple, Novell, Infosys Technologies and Kronos, developing global technology partner relationships that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Smith worked with firms at the senior executive level in areas of Mainframe and Mini Computer Integration, Networking, Enterprise Application Development and Integration, Open Source Solutions, ERP, CRM, Workforce Management, Cloud Computing and Big Data amongst others.

Smith has worked with some of the top firms in the industry to deliver solutions that are seamlessly integrated. Some of the firms he has partnered with to deliver pervasive solutions to global clients include IBM, HP, Digital Equipment, Oracle, Microsoft, Infosys, Wipro, Unisys, SAP, Workday, Informatica, Tibco, Intel, Adobe, Amazon, Google and others. Smith has been engaged with over 200 software and hardware firms during his career. ​ Smith has been recognized for his early pioneering work in the video game and personal computer industry by numerous publications including Fast Company and Vintage Computing. He is listed as one of seven Black tech pioneers by PC Magazine. His book “Imagine That!” is now available on Amazon eBooks. Smith is an active speaker at corporations, high schools and universities across the country, telling his story of being a dreamer and overcoming almost impossible odds to escape the ghetto stereotypes and eventually be hired as an African American engineer in the early 1970s.