I'm a stumbler, that means I have a StumbleUpon account and waste hours of my life looking at websites I would never otherwise have found. Fortunately I don't have children, so I have time to partake in this activity :-)
There have been some amazing sites and pieces of information that I have come across while stumbling that have opened up my world to things I might never have known about. One of the most inspiring serendipitous stumbles I had occurred a couple of years ago, when I discovered Randy Pausch's final lecture and with it the wonders of TED.
Before I start on TED, I would recommend that everyone watches Randy's final lecture. If you can get through the tears at the beginning and the end (I watched it on a train, not a good idea) this is an inspiring presentation that made me want to be a better person (don't think I've managed too much of that at this stage).
But moving on from Randy, since subscribing to TED through my iTunes I have encountered some equalling inspiring and really interesting presentations on knowledge, design, technology and the human body. So my all time favourite TED presentations, the ones that I have carried with me and thought about incorporating into my life are:
Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom - moral will and moral skill, something really important to be aware of.
Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff - the art of design and how we make things too complicated.
Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success - which is a fascinating insight into what might actually be making us all anxious and miserable.
Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity - which just makes sense and I think anyone with creative talent needs to watch.
Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy - love the enthusiasm
David Logan on tribal leadership - I found this one to be so interesting that I have since purchased his book, with Steve Zaffron called The three laws of performance. This is an amazing book that makes a lot of sense but helps you look at leadership and performance in a very different way - I highly recommend it.
David Cameron: The next age of government - for a government worker, and an information manager, this is very interesting
Tom Wujec: Build a tower, build a team - I would love to try this with our current organisation
Any presentation by Ze Frank - but I love his website as well http://www.zefrank.com/
Aimee Mullins Opportunity of adversity - another inspirational one
Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight - this one is great for the human body stuff
Being a person that works with data these are spectacular:
David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization
Jonathan Harris collects stories
Jonathan Harris: the Web's secret stories
The thing is that there are easily another 40 presentations that I could link to here. As a matter of fact I started writing this post months ago and the reason I haven't posted it was I didn't feel I had included all of the presentations I thought were brilliant, let alone the ones that are just intriguing or interesting. Then as I worked on it more and more presentations were added.
Today I just decided to post it and let you guys trawl through them all for yourselves. There is an amazing presentation from a journalist who became homeless for a year, brilliant presentations on all aspects of design, amazingly inspiring presentations from people who have overcome so much.
But enough of my raving, if you have not yet entered the world of TED.com go and have a look, there is bound to be something or someone that will inspire, challenge and teach you something.
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