I’m happy to have found Academic Earth which streams video lectures from Ivy League universities at high resolution. But Academic Earth is only part of a wider movement aimed towards sharing education. Another movement is opencourseware which not only brings you the lectures but also the syllabi, course materials, required reading, and assignments from whole courses.
The following sample is an extremely short clip of venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki lecturing at M.I.T. on why experience is overrated. Academic Earth is a new project with only two months of active service so I’ll be expecting many more interesting lectures to become availible.
There may be some truth to Kawasaki’s talk. But putting it this way may make people prematurely give up on trying new things for themselves. He is basically saying: “You should work hard, because soon you’ll find that working hard isn’t worth it, then you won’t want to work hard anymore.” It’s a little too backhanded to seem like real encouragement. I wonder how many people would take away something valuable from it.
I threw that in there because it goes against conventional wisdom but Kawasaki’s surely telling a funny story. I think as an investor he’s conditioned to talk tough. On the flipside I believe Kawasaki truly does invest in ideas rather than experience. While he doesn’t invest in experience it’s worth noting that he clearly invests in people and his own version of capability.
But I agree that he should get serious about it -