Wide-ranging; covers why SaaS companies are brutally difficult to build and how ConstantContact very gradually achieved escape velocity while on the titular long slow SaaS ramp of death and eventually got to the fabled hockeystick growth land.
Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped [Software] Business (Jason Cohen): https://vimeo.com/74338272 Jason presents a framework for how to find a product which will get you to $10k in monthly recurring revenue.
(If you liked these two talks and just want More Like That Please go to the Microconf video page and queue up every talk by Rob Walling, preferably in order.)
"Don't Talk to the Police" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
This talk was an eye-opener for me and an indictment of the U.S. "justice" system. You can't presume you'll be treated fairly, considered not a suspect, etc.
And, as mentioned by keyanp, Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture". Vita brevis. Carpe diem.
Just rewatched this. I was thinking "I remember this having a major effect on me emotionally last time, why isn't it this time?", then I got to the end, and it reminded me. Oh boy. Still choked up.
I saw Simple Made Easy live, in person, in Saint Louis (where I live), back in Fall 2011. I remember the experience very well ~ forever changed the trajectory of my personal and professional efforts at software development.
I was so under-exposed to non C-family languages at the time that I asked the guy next to met whether the code used to demo the ideas "was Haskell or something else?" I felt embarrassed at the shocked look on his face; my grand exploration of Clojure (and other functional languages too!) began shortly thereafter. The previous evening, I'd accidentally had dinner with Dr. Gerald Sussman... what a conference, what an experience was Strange Loop 2011!
The Front End Architecture Revolution by David Nolen is one of my all-time favorites, and was probably the biggest single influence on the trajectory of my own development career: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/61483785
In a similar vein like the first one, maybe, but with the addition of some physicist's humor if you are in into that kind of thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4
I'm a particular fan of Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming". [1] It's a great look at the amazing number of ideas that the CS world has come up with and how we might be able to improve the act of building programs, even from "old" ideas.
Mark Fisher's talk about how capitalism makes it seem like the only game in town [0]
David Pearce on abolishing suffering [1]
Jurgen Schmidhuber "Universal AI and a formal theory of fun" [2]
Slavoj Žižek on "signs from the future" - also ties into [0] a bit because at one point he mentions how excess capital was found to actually reduce the efficiency of certain creative tasks [3]
Yes! I agree with him a lot that environmentalists today are too conservative - in the insistence that preternatural human effects on the environment can only be disturbing or jeopardize ecosystems. But, like Žižek likes to say: what if the opposite were true? What if we should instead aim for more radical reinterpretations of our relationship with nature, and to instead make ourselves more artificial, while also better stewards of nature - like Elon Musk's vision of humans as being a multiplanetary civilization, or getting people to realize that junk is not a disease, but a symptom of a system that enables mass rearranging of junk-substrate.
Is the Schmidhuber talk about his idea that benevolence and "fun" reduces to maximizing compression of sensory experience? I really wish he would stop peddling that.
I didn't like the conclusion that switching to a school was a solution that supports a specific kind of creative activities, because the example was not convinving. A Dance Carreer is famous for competition so much so it was featured as a storyline on the Simpsons. OTOH the school might just have been exceptional, but then it proofs nothing. Edit: Still, I like that the problem is interesting enough for the talk to become prominent.
While I agree with all of the above, I think the talk was masterfully crafted for success. I doubt it would've been nearly as successful without the mention of a mega celebrity or if it recommended unschooling.
Honestly I'd rather have 5+ million people or whatever the view count get exposed to thinking which puts school structure into question than have a talk providing better solutions.
John Cleese's talk on creativity is both funny and inspirational, and it's become a key part of how I approach creative projects and how I encourage people to explore their own creativity:
Probably the best, most eye opening talk on any topic, but especially on the roots of institutionalised racism, and perhaps the cause of a lot of issues today.
It is by "Akala", an English rapper, poet, and journalist at the Oxford Union and is is a shining example that you can gain a great amount of knowledge, if you are only willing to.
If you liked the Netflix documentary "13th" you will like this.
"7 minutes, 26 seconds, and the fundamental theorem of Agile Software Development", by JB Rainsberger. It's short and straight to the point.
https://vimeo.com/79106557
Not an earth shattering talk or anything (and the title isn't super accurate) but the idea and message that is being presented is something I think people in our world need to be reminded of.
Does anyone have a link to the talk something along the lines of ~'the power of stupid ideas' -- the beginning was about this shop that petitioned the London bus authority to move the bus stop closer to this shop to create a virtual wall. I only saw half of it and I'd like to see the other half.
Long Slow SaaS Ramp of Death (Gail Goodman): http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...
Wide-ranging; covers why SaaS companies are brutally difficult to build and how ConstantContact very gradually achieved escape velocity while on the titular long slow SaaS ramp of death and eventually got to the fabled hockeystick growth land.
Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped [Software] Business (Jason Cohen): https://vimeo.com/74338272 Jason presents a framework for how to find a product which will get you to $10k in monthly recurring revenue.
(If you liked these two talks and just want More Like That Please go to the Microconf video page and queue up every talk by Rob Walling, preferably in order.)
And, on an entirely different subject, Developers, Entrepreneurs, and Depression (Greg Baugues): http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/11/developers-entrepreneu...