I recently picked up a copy of “The Last Lecture” by virtual reality pioneer Randy Pausch at Minerva Books. Randy, diagnosed with terminal cancer, famously presented a “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University as a way to provide his young children insights he hoped would guide them in their lives. Noodling on the ‘net, I’ve learned that Randy has been named among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2008 — watch his “Last Lecture“, and related video, to see why.

More noodling on the ‘net led me to another great speech, this one by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos to recent business school grads at Carnegie Mellon: “Boldly fail where none have failed before” (when you get to the page, select the ‘launch video’ button). Head’s up: it takes Bezos about 5 mins. to catch his stride, but be patient as the segment is quite worthwhile.