For years, I’ve always wondered where news programs find their “experts” on various topics. Some of the things that these so called experts say sound like common sense to me. What makes these people experts? Dictionary.com defines expert as:
a person who has special skill or knowledge in someparticular field; specialist; authority: a language expert.
The key word, I guess, is “special”. Who defines special?
I’ve been to a number of conferences where people get on stage and talk about topics, usually technical topics and I’ve considered these people to be “experts” in their fields. However, I’ve come to realize that being on stage doesn’t make someone an expert. As part of my ongoing technical training, I’ve been watching all the videos from last year’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). One of the sessions had a presenter whose name I’ve heard for years and considered him more knowledgable than me. However, after listening to the session and reviewing the code from the session, I no longer take for granted that the people presenting are “experts”. (I disagree with a number of things said in the session and thought that the code could have been written better.)
Am I an expert? I don’t consider myself an expert (if I did, I think my head would swell!), but I’ve been writing handheld software for the last 15 years, so I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of code. Maybe I’m more confident now than when I started or maybe I no longer take things for face value.
According to Niels Bohr : An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.