Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement

Was reading a couple stories on the web this morning and I ran into two somewhat interesting lists over at Time Magazine. I kinda mocked the first one upon reading the title "Top 10 College Dropouts." I laughed and said to my Coworker and friend Orion, "Must be a slow news day!" Followed by spending the next 10 or 15 minutes dissecting the article. How many were either from or lived in California? how many dropped out of Harvard? Who the heck is Buckminster Fuller? "About 10 minutes in Orion rightly pointed out, "Article can't be too bad since you've spent the last 10 minutes talking about it." Of course he was right.

Followed that up by clicking a link taking me to the next list called "Top 10 Commencement Speeches." I know what your thinking now, "How much free time does this guy have?" I was enjoying a little candy after a hard working morning ;-). Anyway, I digress. I noticed that one of the names was on both lists. You guessed it, Steve Jobs, someone that anyone who has ever built anything of any kind should at least respect.

I set about to watch the commencement speech he gave in 2005. He basically tells 3 stories from his life experience. Much like Randy Pausch's last lecture their is a lot to be learned here. The first two stories are awesome and inspirational and many of us can relate to and learn from them. The third is also good/inspirational but a bit dark and kind of scary and depressing.

Anyway, since in this speech Steve talks so much about time, I will lead in with the opinion that listening to this commencement is time well spent. Check it out!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this. I had seen it before but was well worth watching again. It was odd hearing Jobs refer to his cancer and hoping that was the last time he would face death for several more decades knowing now of course that he would get sick again several years later.

Fantastic speech.