Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
March 2008 Update : The lecture below is over an hour. If you're short on time, Randy gave an abbreviated reprise of the lecture on Oprah, which is only 11 minutes. Watch it . Recently I attended a talk given by Grady Booch , IBM's self-proclaimed chief mad scientist. In his talk (which was about the future of software), he mentioned a very interesting lecture series from Carnegie Mellon University, first titled the "Last Lecture" (and later changed to the " Journeys " series), which we should all check out. I was interested. The original structure of the series was to have speakers present as though it was the last presentation they'd ever give, and present the material they felt most important. In September 2007, Randy Pausch , a computer-science faculty member at the university--famous for his work in virtual worlds--spoke on "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." He had been diagnosed several months previous with a terminal pancre...