For this oral history interview, I chose to sit down with my father, Greg Snow, who works for HomeStreet Bank in Seattle as the Vice President of Production Administration. I felt that my father would be a good interviewee because he works on projects including: selecting loan origination systems, analyzing data volume and profitability, and developing employee referral systems which highly revolves around the need to have his iPhone on his person.

This interview process went smoothly because my father was comfortable during this conversation and had a lot of good things to say in relation to the topic we focused on. I was surprised with not only everything he had to say about iPhones and how communication devices have changed so rapidly leading up to this current generation, but also how relaxed and easy it was to talk about this subject. Many different topics came up which made this oral history interview so hard to edit because my father would go into story mode. He went in detail about his work and all the many forms of technology that he uses including email, pagers, voicemail, and letters.

Originally, my interview with him was 26 minutes long before editing so I was nervous that I would take out all of the good information that he was sharing with me about iPhones. Mr. Snow shared his history with communication devices including landlines, his first cellphone that he bought, and what life was like for him before the advancements made in technology. My father, being the social and talkative man that he is, made numerous funny jokes that he wanted my classmates to hear, but unfortunately, I had to edit them out due to the length of this interview. Mr. Snow commented on one of the most used iPhone applications for his company, Webex, that he and his colleagues use to collaborate and have meetings. Many of the people he talks to includes those who seek out loan information and are not physically in the office, so the ability to communicate with his iPhone is mandatory.

The most prominent themes that surfaced in relation to the technology that were focused on included instant messaging and the iPhone applications, which he and his coworkers use to get information to each other when employees were out of the office and during meetings. I decided to edit this interview into the audio story that I turned in because I wanted to make sure that the main focus was on iPhones and how he uses them to communicate in his work field. I learned more than I thought I would during this interview. I have heard many ‘back in my day’ stories from my father in relation to cellphones, but it was really interesting to learn how he felt about the changes, including the pros and cons to the iPhone. I decided to lean my focus mainly on the iPhone because my father has been using his iPhone 5 since it came out in 2012. My curiosity about this topic arose from the fact that my father does not update his cellphones often; he keeps them for a longer period of time than the average 21st century individual. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about technology from the 80s along with his opinion of the iPhone and the usefulness of it in his work environment.