This is a little gem I came across on youtube – you may have already heard of it if you’re one of the 6 million people who have already watched it. Randy Pausch was a professor of engineering in the field of HCI and Virtual Reality, who sadly passed away from pancreatic cancer in july this year.
He gave this ‘last lecture’, which is semi autobiographical, but is also fascinating and inspiring for anyone interested in virtual environments, and general creative human computer interaction. It also has some familiar insight into the workings of academia and team based projects which some of you will find amusing.
I was skeptical upon discovering this video as it was titled ‘Achieving your childhood dreams’ – lots of awful self help books sprang to mind from my days as a Waterstones bookboy, but this is nothing of the cheesy sort – he discusses his childhood briefly before moving onto discussing his time in teaching. Pausch delivers the lecture with remarkable humor given his situation at the time (around 6 months prior to his death as predicted by his doctors) and I recommend you give it a watch, whilst being a good hour long its very interesting stuff indeed.
Read more about Professor Pausch here
Randy Pausch (1960 - 2008)
