A Tongan in tech

SALT LAKE CITY — As marvelous as computers and all things high tech are in our day and age, during the more than 20 years he spent in operations — helping companies run as efficiently as possible — an old-school problem became increasingly aware to Afu Taumoepeau:

A lot of important information gets lost in high tech.

Not unlike the papers that used to get stuffed into metal file cabinets, never again to see the light of day, electronic documents and pdf files routinely get saved and stored in computers … and forgotten.

Lost in the process is valuable information that identifies and preserves a company's best practices — the unique way of doing things that are the keys to its efficiency and progress. Because finding the information is just too unwieldy, or sometimes because it was never preserved in the first place, new generations are too often left with little tangible knowledge as to how previous generations performed. Valuable institutional memory gets neglected and overlooked.

What the world needed, Taumoepeau decided, was a way for employees to access "how we do it" information as easily as, say, ordering a pizza online.

Through years of trial and error and refinement, Taumoepeau and his lead software engineer, Sean Woodwood, created a system that captures best practices in an OP (not an App) connected to URLs deployable in many ways, including QR codes — creating concise, cutting-edge information that is available in real time at the touch of a finger.

The company Taumoepeau developed is called OP Media. The product is OP System.

The OP stands for Optimal Process.

"We're selling efficiency, essentially," says Taumoepeau.

Standing next to Taumoepeau in his office in the VirnetX building in Farmington (VirnetX is an investor in OP Media) is the reason he has the confidence that his pursuit of the American dream will be successful.

Eddie Taumoepeau might not be the 6-foot-2, 215-pound lethal weapon he was a half-century ago when he was known as the Tonga Kid. But at 79, he's not far off.

Eddie Taumoepeau is Afu Taumoepeau's father. He was born in 1945 in Tonga, halfway around the world from Salt Lake City. Sponsored by missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he made his way to America as a teenager, arriving in San Francisco in the early 1960s.

His goal was to be a boxer. He'd been inspired by an American boxer, Chuck Woodworth, who first came to Tonga as an LDS missionary and later returned to the islands to teach school and tutor the youth in the finer points of pugilism.

In San Francisco, Eddie Taumoepeau caught the attention of top trainers and was soon dubbed the Tonga Kid by Bay Area sports writers. Fighting as a heavyweight, he won the California junior Golden Gloves championship in 1965 (in an era when boxing was a very big deal), followed by the senior Golden Gloves title in 1966. Six wins, five by knockout, and zero defeats as an amateur set the stage for a professional career. When Taumoepeau turned pro in 1968, the San Francisco Examiner named him "best preliminary fighter of the year." There were rumblings of a matchup with another promising heavyweight newcomer, Olympic gold medalist George Foreman, but then the Tongan Kid's eyesight mysteriously weakened, prompting an early retirement from the ring.

As Eddie Taumoepeau repeats to this day, "You can't hit what you can't see."

Eventually, Taumoepeau and his wife Talahiva Taumoepeau made their way to Utah, where all seven of their children were born (Afu Taumoepeau arrived in 1971). Settling in Rose Park on the west side of Salt Lake City, Eddie Taumoepeau worked two and sometimes three jobs to give his children their own shot at the American dream. (Local boxing fans with a long memory might remember when the nation of Tonga tapped Eddie Taumoepeau to be its boxing coach at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Included on that team were several Tongan fighters who had immigrated to the Rose Park and Glendale areas).

It's Eddie Taumoepeau's quiet example that has served as Afu Taumoepeau's inspiration all his life.

"My father's a pioneer in my mind," he says, "He was always trying to find what are the ways we can do better. My dad's big at saying go after it."

In Tongan, the name Taumoepeau means "fight the waves or fighting waves," Afu Taumoepeau explains. "Our ancestors were explorers, they were navigators, they would go out into the sea for long trips and then wonder if they'd ever come back. I feel that same spirit, the idea that we're going to go out and find new frontiers. That's what our tech is, it's cutting edge, it's a new more efficient way to do things."

Afu Taumoepeau's office is a far cry from a boxing gym, but to Eddie Taumoepeau it's the same thing. He says he never tried to tell his kids what to pursue; he only encouraged them to get their education and choose something that excited them as much as boxing excited him.

"I'm proud of Afu," he says. And even if he'd be hard-pressed to describe exactly what it is his son is doing in the world of technology, "I know he will succeed," he says.

Afu Taumoepeau nods in agreement, as he smiles wryly.

"I know, a Tongan in tech," he says, laughing. "That's not something you hear everyday. I know there are a few of us; I think what we're doing will bring in a few more."

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