Pausch's Last Lecture as a Learning Example

An opportunity like this only comes once in a long time, certainly once in a few years. An example of a really inspirational talk by a   R E A L     G E E K !  : NOT A MARKETER or a slick salesman. A real technologists and a college professor of virtual reality. If you are a technologists or an engineer turned marketer here is a great example of how to talk and get not just interest but respect and admiration. The topic is nothing too technical, actually for most technologists it may seem boring to hear a professor talk about his career half way through... but once you see the video and read the story, it will give you lots of ideas and inspiration about what you are doing and how to tell your story.

See on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Summary: Randy Pausch was a VR (virtual reality) professor at Carnegie Mellon. This puts him in the Uber-Geek category in my book. In 2007 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and as the tradition in academia goes he was asked to give "the last lecture". This is a tradition of retiring professors imparting their last bit of wisdom to their students. But this is the last bit of tradition and sentimentality in this story.

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Learning from Pausch Beyond the Grave

What can we learn from Randy Pausch's last lecture? I didn't take notes but watched the lecture a few times on YouTube. In my opinion lectures like these pack so much information that only by watching them a few times do you get every little bit you missed the first time. A few things come to mind right away:

• Do what you have passion for: Pausch had wanted to do VR a-la Disney from very young age and that passion never died.
• Take chances with the "big guys": Pausch was not afraid to ask top professionals for help, jobs, support, whatever.
• Don't live in self delusion, don't be afraid to start small: even in his own mind he wasn't that great of a technologist. This self assessment did not stop him from doing good work and teaching students his expertise on a small scale.
• No small specialty or niche domain is useless: while VR (Virtual Reality) is not a well known field, it still counts and can play an important role some day.

Randy Pausch although an accomplished technologist talked more about his life rather than his work. The subtitle to his talk is "Achieving your childhood dreams". That may sound trivial until you hear about his experience and think about it seriously. Pausch tells the story bit of his career mostly from a personal view point. As a technologist who gives talks, I found this one of the best examples of how to "sneak in" personal and emotional material to a technical subject. Enough about the talk, see for yourself. Most technologists do no have good lecture skills. Focusing on technical work sometimes takes away energy and time from presentation and preparation experience. One way of learning is through observation. There are many lectures available on YouTube and corporate web sites, I advise technologists to watch and learn. Randy Pausch's life is essentially a survey lecture. When we survey technology history, a product history or even developments in the market by competitors we can use the same approach. He used very few of his own images, but they help explain his work. He highlighted only a few events in his life so the story is not lost by the details. Let me know what you think... please post comments of good lectures and speakers. Thanks!