Larry Lessig will be giving his last talk on the topic of "Free Culture" in about an hour. I had the pleasure of seeing Professor Lessig give this talk in September of 2006 as part of the Penn Reading Project and I think the ideas he presents are fascinating and have had a great impact on me. We've come a long way in some areas, such as in the slow death of over-restrictive DRM, but we're still a ways to go in other areas, such as the predatory litigation undertaken by the music and movie industries. As the blog post announcing the talk mentions, Professor Lessig will begin focusing on corruption in Washington, a topic I'm admittedly less interested in.
Larry Lessig spoke at Penn yesterday as part of the Penn Reading Project. His book, Free Culture, was given to all freshmen who were split up into discussion groups after Lessig's presentation. Penn Law professor Polk Wagner presented an opposing side. I was excited to see the famed Lessig presentation method in person and I hope Professor Lessig makes the presentation (or at least the links to the videos he showed) available.
Henry Winkler, made famous by his role as Fonzie on Happy Days, gave a speech last Friday night to Penn students as a part of the Fox Leadership Speakers' Forum.
You have a negative thought. Don't finish it. Don't put a period on the end of a negative thought. When a negative thought comes into your mind that is going to stop you from moving towards your dream. You say out loud, 'I'm sorry, I got no time for you now.' People will look at you very strangely, but it doesn't matter because eventually, what I've learned is, your habit becomes stopping the negative; you replace it with a positive, your shoulders pop back, your head flies back, you keep walking to your dream … It works. There is no nutritional value in negative thinking.
If you will it, it is not a dream … If you know what you want, there is such a great possibility that you will get it. That you will have it. That it is so possible.
There are plenty more gems like these in there. I strongly urge everyone to listen to it.
I recorded most of Venture Capitalist Ted Schlein's talk last Thursday here at Wharton. Mr. Schlein has been with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers since 1996, when he joined to manage their Java Fund. He spoke about his experiences in working for Symantec and his earlier experiences at various startups. He also talked about VC in Asia and the challenges VCs face in going over there.
The audio quality is markedly better than the Kevin Smith talk, partly because of better acoustics and because I was sitting a lot closer to him.
Here is a video of part of Kevin Smith's talk two nights ago at Irvine Auditorium here at Penn. There's a lot of bad words in it, so keep it away from sensitive ears.
The file is around 30mb, so download it if you can. It should work on iPods with video, but I haven't tried it yet on mine.
Just got back from watching Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) give a 4 hour Q&A session here at Penn. I captured some audio that is hopefully decent quality (on my phone) and some video of a story he told.
He also showed a cool clip from Clerks II (which he was pretty adamant about no one recording), which I imagine has never before been seen. The clip features a small clash between Lord of the Rings fans and a Star Wars fan in the restaurant and another scene where Jay starts dancing in the drive-thru.
I'll try and get the stuff up tomorrow. I wish I could have captured more as he had some great stories to tell (all very Not Safe For Work, however).
