鲜花( 152) 鸡蛋( 1)
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Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams6 P# u {" l- e7 L3 @, a. ^
Given at Carnegie Mellon University+ A7 m. U2 Q+ W3 J
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
4 Q' O+ a Q6 V+ j" T0 s; |+ m" n! XMcConomy Auditorium
2 I5 Q% V* F6 L8 n G) [For more information, see www.randypausch.com+ W4 q& o6 G" v7 o
© Copyright Randy Pausch, 20071
( b! n" s# K3 L/ g! G1 N5 o- P4 ?! b6 U- y, a
Introduction by Indira Nair, Carnegie Mellon’s Vice Provost for Education:5 h- n0 o' R6 O' v X
Hi. Welcome. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to the first of our new university’s lectures titled
! R3 v# k% n4 [# T. l1 q3 K& jJourneys – lectures in which members of our community will share with us reflections and insights
5 ^1 ^* e: R. r) h6 _on their personal and professional journeys. Today’s Journey’s lecture as you all know is by8 P' \, A" r. f5 ?% d
Professor Randy Pausch. The next one is on Monday, September 24th by Professor Roberta Klatzky.: q8 E/ q$ U# G. n, p6 A/ U
To introduce Professor Randy Pausch, our first Journeys speaker, I would like to introduce Randy’s) @. S% ?# W( v- S
friend and colleague, Steve Seabolt. Steve has been at Electronic Arts for six years and is the Vice
# u7 s5 ^/ }8 l' DPresident of Global Brand Development for The Sims label at Electronic Arts. As you all know, The* _5 l: L( z3 i/ M$ n( t. m
Sims is one of the most, if not the most successful PC games in the world, with sales approaching% o% E8 [% q* I
over $100,000,000. Prior to that, Steve was the Vice President for Strategic Marketing and4 j* {6 H E( O" B1 z
Education at EA, bridging academia and Electronic Arts. His goal was to work with academics so
. `1 q7 i0 P5 I% b0 y! b) Cthere was an effective educational pathway for kids with building games as their dreams. It was in
! O( z+ g' F" H) |. Q- F( Ethat role that Randy and Steve became colleagues and friends. Before Electronic Arts, Steve was the9 p$ ]1 ^) s) Y5 S
worldwide Ad Director for Time Magazine and CEO of Sunset Publishing, which is a very favorite
2 R& _- {8 P3 Q7 m% t' s$ b- Tmagazine in the Southwest, and as CEO there, one of the things he started was school tours,
7 }2 L& [7 Y, Z: l6 B7 Gbecause like Randy he shares a passion for inspiring kids of all ages to share their excitement for
5 F3 t. {; b0 ~science and technology.
0 w8 M9 p, q" K1 x9 ~So to introduce Randy, his friend Steve Seabolt. Steve?
9 V" r6 _, E. Z# x6 Q. |, `[applause]
0 |" b# _5 q. o" c! ?7 i+ KSteve Seabolt, Vice President of Worldwide Publishing and Marketing for Electonic Arts (EA):
# g4 E* C# r; g# B9 n7 d HThank you very much. I don’t mean to sound ungracious by correcting you, but given that our PR
( L$ G) k9 [; h1 C' epeople are probably watching this on webcast, I’d catch heck if I went home and didn’t say that it* ^7 @* d& \0 G N
was 100 million units for The Sims. [laughter] Not that big numbers matter to Electronic Arts.) J, F& p8 |) B4 b7 ~* S% w
[laughter]
" o; i, p. F. O5 G4 r6 [I don’t see any empty seats anywhere, which is a good thing, which means I just won a bet from
0 S- X* `) T$ ARandy as a matter of fact. Depending upon who’s version of the story you hear, he either owes me) p8 K$ w4 e8 k+ B- y
20 dollars or his new Volkswagen. [laughter] So, I’ll take the car.( b# N& F6 _# i' R- b O0 |
It’s a pleasure to be here, thank you very much. I’m going to start by covering Randy’s academic
* _5 C+ d% |( I; l4 u0 o" a9 ^credentials. It’s a little bizarre for me to be standing here at Carnegie Mellon, which is a school I
) c$ e7 K1 ]( i! {" jcouldn’t get into no matter how much I contributed to this institution. [laughter] But, no really, I’m
7 {7 A/ X$ K" w) N1 mnot kidding! You all think, oh gosh he’s humble. Really, no, I’m not humble at all. Very average SAT
; ~3 N) \. U. [2 r y1 d$ |scores, you know, right in the middle of my high school class of 900. Anyway, Randy. Randy earned9 v+ S2 I) M8 S
– it really pisses me off that Randy’s so smart—actually I called him, we decided about, what, four
9 g, V5 v5 v* T* [4 }0 Sweeks, ago and we heard the news went from bad to horrific. It was on a Wednesday night and I
& t9 r2 u7 V, K9 G" {7 p8 qsaid look – we have two choices. We can play this really straight and very emotional , or we can go
& k% q" P& X5 n m% ?! \to dark humor. And for those of you who know Randy well, he was like oh, dark humor! So I called( ]$ f9 w# M7 a& R; J/ x
him the next day and I was like, dude you can’t die. And he’s like, what do you mean? And I said,: x. e! a% b7 O& M
well, when you die, the average of IQ of Seabolt’s friends is going to like drop 50 points. [laughter] To( S/ t( T5 q8 S9 [' X# C( ?
which he responded, we need to find you some smarter friends. [laughter] So you’re all smart
: N- T! w7 o. \2 j ~. [0 ubecause you’re here, so if you want to be my friend, I’ll be over in a corner of the reception room.: E c P$ n4 s
Randy earned his undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Brown in 1982. His Ph.D. in CS from7 v: i' Z m: d) u7 `2 p
Carnegie Mellon in 1988 and taught at the University of Virginia where he was granted tenure a year
" i2 F. ^# g& q; d; i: p6 D' Fearly. He joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1997 with appointments in the CS, HCI and Design4 @: b% N& ]2 C2 L+ |( M( i' ?6 O
departments. He has authored or co-authored five books and over 60 reviewed journal and" C2 b" Q/ c, f- n6 c! D
conference proceeding articles, none of which I would understand. With Don Marinelli, he founded
5 O9 \+ `# T5 y: Fthe Entertainment Technology Center, which quickly became the gold standard organization for% O* K+ R6 c( s. `+ o4 T- n
training artists and engineers to work together. It is my view and the view of our company,
5 F; I; F \& ~$ Z( CElectronic Arts, that the ETC is the interactive program by which all others in the world are judged.7 \& ~* ?3 X6 N
I met Randy in the Spring of 2004, and when I look back it’s sort of hard to imagine it’s only been/ Z8 v" C' _/ X7 O( }1 m; C' T& X6 k
three years given the depth of our friendship. The ETC already had a very strong relationship with; H, X u r/ |
EA and with Randy. And Randy as he always does, for those of you who know him well, wanted to
* ~# L. ?1 u6 L7 s+ Qlearn more, with his own eyes, about how the games business works, and how games really got( d T5 V `" ~* E0 c
made. So he spent a summer in residence at EA, and I was his primary contact point. We were in
$ J, |/ D4 B% w/ Z$ L. Tmy view the odd couple. Randy the brilliant, charming, Carnegie educated CS professor. And me
; r& Q" D- c, M& d0 X9 wwho went to the University of Iowa on a wing and a prayer. We spent a lot of time together that
- y% k1 `! c- b% U6 P" M- csemester and for those of you who know Randy well, that’s a lot of turkey sandwiches on white4 y. f6 u& u( \2 Z
bread with mayo. [laughter, clapping] My kids tease me about being “white.” There’s nobody more/ j- _( w/ V9 L- R+ `
“white” than Randy. [laughter] We spent an enormous amount of time together. We taught each
4 \8 j3 ]1 `7 N: Cother about each other’s very interesting, strange cultures to the other. Academic versus the5 o) Y& X$ t9 v4 A& O6 ]
corporate world. And we developed a deep friendship woven together with stories about our kids,
. {( y) H# d% ^, h& e. Nour wives, our parents, as well as deep discussions about the paramount nature of integrity in
3 Y/ [; R9 m) j/ H# a7 Peverything you do, family first, religion, our shared joy in connecting people and ideas, and
$ E1 |/ l5 f- s0 }6 W \; Ndeploying money and influence to do good. And the importance of having a lot of laughs along the! |$ [% [' j0 r6 ]& q# f
way.5 s0 j+ `. l# d
Randy’s dedication to making the world a better place is self evident to anyone who has crossed
+ n, H# |3 G4 j4 ]& h9 ypaths with him. Whether it’s directly influencing students, creating organizations like the ETC,
' q5 B4 M" k( Abuilding tools like Alice or doing what he probably does best, which is bridging cultures. As Ben! l' t; @6 K/ _; C
Gordon, EA’s Chief Creative Officer, says of Randy, even more important than Randy’s academic,2 Q' j, r: A0 O7 q. ]9 }
philanthropic, and entrepreneurial accomplishments has been his humanity and the enthusiasm he
( D1 E) } k5 y V, g$ rbrings to students and coworkers on a daily basis.$ O- u! H1 a) g" ? z. s
For those of you who know Randy, Randy brings a particular zest for life and humor, even while$ g. q, U0 Y' _' I
facing death. To Randy, this is simply another adventure. It is my great honor to introduce Dylan,
5 E( Y+ O5 M9 uLogan and Chloe’s dad, Jai’s husband, and my very dear friend, Dr. Randy Pausch. [applause]
~! e$ v1 Q& V+ l( ?3 sRandy Pausch:8 G5 q) Y# U! W$ Y) r2 Y
[responding to a standing ovation] Make me earn it. [laughter]' Q% \+ f# h/ b/ W# P, m
It’s wonderful to be here. What Indira didn’t tell you is that this lecture series used to be called the8 A3 B# ^1 [- u
Last Lecture. If you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be? I thought, damn,! \, \7 h9 ?* @$ f
I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it. [laughter]+ V B% [! k/ S7 N9 U% s
So, you know, in case there’s anybody who wandered in and doesn’t know the back story, my dad
. L3 A& F8 U; Q8 M# |always taught me that when there’s an elephant in the room, introduce them. If you look at my CAT' @1 X/ `8 C7 r( R: J8 k5 s( [
scans, there are approximately 10 tumors in my liver, and the doctors told me 3-6 months of good
, Q" Z" b( A* \( @9 _) ?3 ihealth left. That was a month ago, so you can do the math. I have some of the best doctors in the: c5 c! m$ X, M, B
world. Microphone’s not working? Then I’ll just have to talk louder. [Adjusts mic] Is that good? All* f& q. Q6 ~% i# ~, _
right. So that is what it is. We can’t change it, and we just have to decide how we’re going to& @! F4 f7 r8 U- `: A! u
respond to that. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don’t; W' E& X) @& L3 F( ^9 G8 h1 i
seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you. [laughter] And I assure you I6 t, F4 z! L/ m3 w% Z; V
am not in denial. It’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on. My family, my three kids, my wife,
) h+ r& F o! h" swe just decamped. We bought a lovely house in Virginia, and we’re doing that because that’s a% J$ \+ |$ @ e, |- V( E8 E6 h
better place for the family to be, down the road. And the other thing is I am in phenomenally good
5 e- w; D( H# \2 vhealth right now. I mean it’s the greatest thing of cognitive dissonance you will ever see is the fact; ?% e0 s: r: |0 X6 e
that I am in really good shape. In fact, I am in better shape than most of you. [Randy gets on the
7 n+ w; [' Q/ e! a' cground and starts doing pushups] [Applause] So anybody who wants to cry or pity me can down and
+ q9 R% B* C0 a) cdo a few of those, and then you may pity me. [laughter]+ |6 ~7 p6 }/ u; c6 r7 Y0 @7 R
All right, so what we’re not talking about today, we are not talking about cancer, because I spent a
$ g$ }* S X$ {+ L0 N3 M: Rlot of time talking about that and I’m really not interested. If you have any herbal supplements or
* _/ T, Q+ b) U* z; M3 bremedies, please stay away from me. [laughter] And we’re not going to talk about things that are! n2 X4 e4 q; `$ E* Z
even more important than achieving your childhood dreams. We’re not going to talk about my wife,
7 u. G4 e: L7 r1 ]2 ?3 J7 hwe’re not talking about my kids. Because I’m good, but I’m not good enough to talk about that
$ h9 F$ W& ^7 l# B gwithout tearing up. So, we’re just going to take that off the table. That’s much more important.3 J" V# ^! H- u* g. A+ k
And we’re not going to talk about spirituality and religion, although I will tell you that I have
2 `, X- Z, i& \achieved a deathbed conversion. [dramatic pause] … I just bought a Macintosh. [laughter and
3 x8 |) w! d N: ?9 m; Qclapping] Now I knew I’d get 9% of the audience with that … All right, so what is today’s talk about, V- f7 f; V3 u3 `& C: R- F
then? It’s about my childhood dreams and how I have achieved them. I’ve been very fortunate that* `- H& g* T, i/ b9 {1 G
way. How I believe I’ve been able to enable the dreams of others, and to some degree, lessons
( Y, Q4 V' \ M R* Jlearned. I’m a professor, there should be some lessons learned and how you can use the stuff you4 \6 P9 N/ e8 s. }: s+ N/ V
hear today to achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others. And as you get older, you may: F( ^( V' O, g3 C1 o2 ?
find that “enabling the dreams of others” thing is even more fun.7 @+ P1 l5 @0 g. x' `
So what were my childhood dreams? Well, you know, I had a really good childhood. I mean, no$ w( c& _: s, z$ G
kidding around. I was going back through the family archives, and what was really amazing was, I
& [- |! B' y. w% Gcouldn’t find any pictures of me as a kid where I wasn’t smiling. And that was just a very gratifying
& d) v, L1 p( c' S* R; dthing. There was our dog, right? Aww, thank you. And there I actually have a picture of me) p' i9 `: ~2 r. s$ L% P+ E! B; h
dreaming. I did a lot of that. You know, there’s a lot of wake up’s! I was born in 1960. When you3 x- v& z7 A) p5 ], C
are 8 or 9 years old and you look at the TV set, men are landing on the moon, anything’s possible.4 ]1 h4 H* @$ i* O4 X( F
And that’s something we should not lose sight of, is that the inspiration and the permission to' i/ ?( j& C: Z2 @5 r9 q
dream is huge.
- v, Q6 Q& d$ N S0 s( J3 }So what were my childhood dreams? You may not agree with this list, but I was there. [laughter]
t% \$ s' \6 F" y0 UBeing in zero gravity, playing in the National Football League, authoring an article in the World Book0 A$ E& }- k# p/ z
Encyclopedia – I guess you can tell the nerds early. [laughter] Being Captain Kirk, anybody here have: @ f* @" D0 M+ T6 J8 l5 r
that childhood dream? Not at CMU, nooooo. I wanted to become one of the guys who won the big
! Y8 b: G+ {: Z" Y U( Rstuffed animals in the amusement park, and I wanted to be an Imagineer with Disney. These are not
5 V& C6 S& r4 k9 z% u% H) F' dsorted in any particular order, although I think they do get harder, except for maybe the first one.
( J- u [% p9 I/ J/ QOK, so being in zero gravity. Now it’s important to have specific dreams. I did not dream of being an5 {; y. C, v! }: @4 i) R: `% E% c
astronaut, because when I was a little kid, I wore glasses and they told me oh, astronauts can’t have
, D$ L+ k, c1 y rglasses. And I was like, mmm, I didn’t really want the whole astronaut gig, I just wanted the floating.
8 u( G) A- C( A1 MSo, and as a child [laughter], prototype 0.0. [slide shown of Randy as a child lying in floatingformation
9 F/ Z) Z1 N/ j0 i. Q- V5 kon a table top] But that didn’t work so well, and it turns out that NASA has something4 I% s6 A9 F; |1 ~. y5 T
called the Vomit Comet that they used to train the astronauts. And this thing does parabolic arcs,
) s+ F- H# D+ r! `and at the top of each arc you get about 25 seconds where you’re ballistic and you get about, a4 q/ W4 b/ I$ A+ d
rough equivalent of weightlessness for about 25 seconds. And there is a program where college
( j$ c f( X9 ?* j6 @' R; H0 p0 C3 Istudents can submit proposals and if they win the competition, they get to fly. And I thought that6 S* y% X% H& x' t* Q5 Q; B3 M
was really cool, and we had a team and we put a team together and they won and they got to fly./ m; O- w& g6 ^8 o) F% F
And I was all excited because I was going to go with them. And then I hit the first brick wall, because
0 [0 x) F0 y0 p# Nthey made it very clear that under no circumstances were faculty members allowed to fly with the% L+ D5 c8 [+ t
teams. I know, I was heartbroken. I was like, I worked so hard! And so I read the literature very
2 k& M% ^$ ^+ v9 @carefully and it turns out that NASA, it’s part of their outreach and publicity program, and it turns
( x+ n6 f% D0 [1 y* F% lout that the students were allowed to bring a local media journalist from their home town.3 f5 ^: D: I4 n& N! {
[laughter] And, [deep voice] Randy Pausch, web journalist. [regular voice] It’s really easy to get a3 `$ o- I! Z8 P1 w1 h
press pass! [laughter] So I called up the guys at NASA and I said, I need to know where to fax some
. a2 ^" w' q. b3 y; o4 G; l* i. |documents. And they said, what documents are you going to fax us? And I said my resignation as$ t* D* T9 T# @2 S8 V
the faculty advisor and my application as the journalist. And he said, that’s a little transparent, don’t
/ y2 ~! {+ q0 d) g, U% f3 syou think? And I said, yeah, but our project is virtual reality, and we’re going to bring down a whole
+ a f, c* o. x% i- }bunch of VR headsets and all the students from all the teams are going to experience it and all those
7 A! w1 v2 i# `. ?; h- dother real journalists are going to get to film it. Jim Foley’s [who is nodding in the audience] going
1 `8 r( q% _) d1 X0 A$ Noh you bastard, yes. And the guy said, here’s the fax number. So, indeed, we kept our end of the
& x% k" W9 m( O( d3 K' N( y0 obargain, and that’s one of the themes that you’ll hear later on in the talk, is have something to bring
' }! F" S) }: c3 j& u( y# n/ fto the table, right, because that will make you more welcome. And if you’re curious about what# t7 R( {: I& \
zero gravity looks like, hopefully the sound will be working here. [slide shows videotape from/ ~1 `9 N: X8 o
Randy’s zero gravity experience] There I am. [laughter] You do pay the piper at the bottom. [laugher,2 g0 c" u1 O: w3 X0 u% @2 n
as the people in the video crash to the floor of the plane on the video] So, childhood dream number
/ ?& W6 N7 W, C/ k! k, pone, check.
. v* P) ~2 l3 {- \6 AOK, let’s talk about football. My dream was to play in the National Football League. And most of
, {) n# S H6 C2 x+ h7 b: [" U# Vyou don’t know that I actually – no. [laughter] No, I did not make it to the National Football League,
1 j* M; d+ W4 Mbut I probably got more from that dream and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones5 B4 J J5 g: X: m" U) J! L8 O
that I did accomplish. I had a coach, I signed up when I was nine years old. I was the smallest kid in/ ]& ^1 t' _7 f8 a/ F* {# k B
the league, by far. And I had a coach, Jim Graham, who was six-foot-four, he had played linebacker
6 L# M% C, `: H4 P$ z9 r/ w2 [; vat Penn State. He was just this hulk of a guy and he was old school. And I mean really old school.$ H. n0 W5 Z% x# T* G
Like he thought the forward pass was a trick play. [laughter] And he showed up for practice the first
{9 F0 y3 s( j! ?9 C. {7 w2 dday, and you know, there’s big hulking guy, we were all scared to death of him. And he hadn’t0 l w9 D; R4 E" S0 _% R5 S+ q
brought any footballs. How are we going to have practice without any footballs? And one of the8 e- n1 O3 I( f' i, r
other kids said, excuse me coach, but there’s no football. And Coach Graham said, right, how many
& n C% D- N7 b. W. kmen are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right,: T, r! P6 v+ w! r
and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right,
0 R% X2 I% W" U- ?4 nso we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing. And that’s a really good
- d" v- F s! w) J4 {' _story because it’s all about fundamentals. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got
) L1 |9 g3 _1 B9 b6 uto get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work. And the other/ `$ i' [6 t6 Y* Z
Jim Graham story I have is there was one practice where he just rode me all practice. You’re doing
# g. r" ^" I1 s% m: D5 \9 @this wrong, you’re doing this wrong, go back and do it again, you owe me, you’re doing push-ups
/ W1 _6 X" _% `+ t9 s# ^6 lafter practice. And when it was all over, one of the other assistant coaches came over and said,
) \" f3 P3 e- l7 }* Byeah, Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he? I said, yeah. He said, that’s a good thing. He6 N. }. s) u+ C% f* N$ [2 M
said, when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave
. [2 ^$ Z/ ?+ ^, f9 m: H5 uup. And that’s a lesson that stuck with me my whole life. Is that when you see yourself doing
1 U k) g a! i( jsomething badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your4 q3 |9 A- t1 ^* @1 a' W
critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.+ O+ s/ E0 {0 L r3 c
After Coach Graham, I had another coach, Coach Setliff, and he taught me a lot about the power of* X4 v$ P* P0 `& o
enthusiasm. He did this one thing where only for one play at a time he would put people in at like0 N1 a% u! `% w. V+ }: Y. d
the most horrifically wrong position for them. Like all the short guys would become receivers, right?
5 M1 x$ K2 q2 F6 H5 sIt was just laughable. But we only went in for one play, right? And boy, the other team just never$ V, I% V0 w9 R6 M: G
knew what hit ‘em them. Because when you’re only doing it for one play and you’re just not where
+ _! r4 M) _/ E8 `! x! ]" a( pyou’re supposed to be, and freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, boy are you going0 l5 \8 Y4 H5 H
to clean somebody’s clock for that one play. And that kind of enthusiasm was great. And to this
+ x, J# O% V( c0 F Lday, I am most comfortable on a football field. I mean, it’s just one of those things where, you
/ _' _% `8 d% |; P) ^- Rknow, [pulls out a football] if I’m working a hard problem, people will see me wandering the halls
( E# {) z/ @/ U, C! Iwith one of these things, and that’s just because, you know, when you do something young enough
% @9 Y% M/ P$ ]and you train for it, it just becomes a part of you. And I’m very glad that football was a part of my
( R$ _1 Z) _" {! Ulife. And if I didn’t get the dream of playing in the NFL, that’s OK. I’ve probably got stuff more1 g! G4 m: ^) ]6 e* V
valuable. Because looking at what’s going on in the NFL, I’m not sure those guys are doing so great
' I: |, _' I$ \/ rright now.
7 p1 _! B5 X. {! [; QOK, and so one of the expressions I learned at Electronic Arts, which I love, which pertains to this, is1 a) _( z H s8 w# u
experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And I think that’s absolutely
# U2 j8 C+ `6 b$ hlovely. And the other thing about football is we send our kids out to play football or soccer or
3 U3 M5 V2 [" aswimming or whatever it is, and it’s the first example of what I’m going to call a head fake, or
: L8 N) w/ E5 L0 A. g4 pindirect learning. We actually don’t want our kids to learn football. I mean, yeah, it’s really nice that
* D3 c8 U) B* H B3 II have a wonderful three-point stance and that I know how to do a chop block and all this kind of8 e _6 k1 P: @# e5 B
stuff. But we send our kids out to learn much more important things. Teamwork, sportsmanship,5 {5 \; T$ S3 x7 O, p/ w
perseverance, etcetera, etcetera. And these kinds of head fake learning are absolutely important.% Y* L; q" g5 S2 H& g. J8 f* K- N
And you should keep your eye out for them because they’re everywhere.
/ f! E; `6 Y( j% A8 kAll right. A simple one, being an author in the World Book Encyclopedia. When I was a kid, we had
: `8 Q$ w! \3 z8 `7 X' @6 t) `the World Book Encyclopedia on the shelf. For the freshman, this is paper. … We used to have these- n$ }- M/ N* A
things called books. [laughter] And after I had become somewhat of an authority on virtual reality,9 C, O8 w7 A8 ^7 p7 M
but not like a really important one, so I was at the level of people the World Book would badger.9 b' J$ W8 f9 _' [
They called me up and I wrote an article, and this is Caitlin Kelleher [shows slide of Caitlin wearing
/ Z( y9 _1 O+ ?9 F: ?0 ^' ~- ^2 ^virtual reality headset manipulating a 3D world], and there’s an article if you go to your local library
, o8 L: M$ U6 | ], {where they still have copies of the World Book. Look under V for Virtual Reality, and there it is. And
! N( a- h+ }3 E4 e2 [+ b2 ~all I have to say is that having been selected to be an author in the World Book Encyclopedia, I now: N J( V, j* B) S
believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information because I know what the: x+ n( n t- r* ^ f) {
quality control is for real encyclopedias. They let me in.
9 H. E; u" p+ g7 a, Y) M, t9 G0 Y& \All right, next one. [laughter] [shows slide “Being like Meeting Captain Kirk”] At a certain point you. R+ z1 ?! j. F3 I. r0 [
just realize there are some things you are not going to do, so maybe you just want to stand close to
- O' K5 I, W2 ^- f4 h4 u% h, Athe people. And I mean, my god, what a role model for young people. [laughter] [shows slide of, s' V* V, K6 Q
Captain Kirk sitting at his control station on the Starship Enterprise] I mean, this is everything you+ M5 U/ ]2 L o/ U9 |) F7 g# M9 _
want to be, and what I learned that carried me forward in leadership later is that, you know, he
' y4 v6 s3 z6 g9 ~8 \& r9 _7 G# j2 mwasn’t the smartest guy on the ship. I mean, Spock was pretty smart and McCoy was the doctor and
- f# p4 l2 {1 }9 F/ O" nScotty was the engineer. And you sort of go, and what skill set did he have to get on this damn thing
# x: w1 {+ g. W( A* l7 B# K0 x7 uand run it? And, you know, clearly there is this skill set called leadership, and, you know, whether or
C+ i8 w! R" j: |1 X# rnot you like the series, there’s no doubt that there was a lot to be learned about how to lead people5 n' i$ Q7 Q, Q
by watching this guy in action. And he just had the coolest damn toys! [laughter] [shows slide of
5 T% t" g" a0 J2 Y4 Y! Z; ^Star Trek gadgets] I mean, my god, I just thought it was fascinating as a kid that he had this thing$ j+ B4 d, Z; d' E& l) x
[Takes out Star Trek Communicator] and he could talk to the ship with it. I just thought that was just( N! N+ r0 m5 g1 J; @$ e; a: p
spectacular, and of course now I own one and it’s smaller. [takes out cell phone] So that’s kind of$ M/ K+ o9 F% @
cool.
. [& J4 e$ R: E/ ?3 u1 mSo I got to achieve this dream. James T. Kirk, and his alter ego William Shatner, wrote a book, which
, a% j6 @" R1 gI think was actually a pretty cool book. It was with Chip Walter who is a Pittsburgh- based author. [5 F+ c% J. t+ T0 ?8 o
who is quite good, and they wrote a book on basically the science of Star Trek, you know, what has& y! J0 \# b- \# }$ N2 x5 M
come true. And they went around to the top places around the country and looked at various things
a* m5 l5 g- G/ a" @# b/ Iand they came here to study our virtual reality setup. And so we build a virtual reality for him, it
8 a* `$ G- @6 C8 k: R3 p, i: Qlooks something like that. [shows slide of virtual Star Trek bridge from the 1960’s TV show] We put it
& z* \- j" u# \. f. t7 oin, put it to red alert. He was a very good sport. [sarcastically] It’s not like he saw that one coming.
4 P" M2 q v. j! Q8 O/ J( y[laughter] And it’s really cool to meet your boyhood idol, but it’s even cooler when he comes to you
4 S% H! C' u1 e) t) b/ Wto see what cool stuff you’re doing in your lab. And that was just a great moment.
M8 s' {/ a2 J. JAll right, winning stuffed animals. This may seem mundane to you, but when you’re a little kid and9 y* G: `- @! C
you see the big buff guys walking around the amusement park and they’ve got all these big stuffed
' X' Y, i$ }2 i' D3 Canimals, right? And this is my lovely wife, and I have a lot of pictures of stuffed animals I’ve won.
5 V7 g$ F* h \/ a) [4 h0 G[laughter] [shows slides of several large stuffed animals] That’s my dad posing with one that I won./ a& o. y! N5 m) V" j
I’ve won a lot of these animals. There’s my dad, he did win that one, to his credit. And this was just
; J0 G- i1 C# n' s: p T9 k, ka big part of my life and my family’s life. But you know, I can hear the cynics. In this age of digitally$ i1 l2 l m+ H
manipulated images, maybe those bears really aren’t in the pictures with me, or maybe I paid
3 n( t# j5 o7 y7 D; Zsomebody five bucks to take a picture in the theme park next to the bear. And I said, how, in this; l5 F6 _+ ~; f; F3 F* h
age of cynicism can I convince people? And I said, I know, I can show them the bears! Bring them
, ^( m7 W$ h, J' M# R# a2 {3 u7 tout. [several large stuffed animals are brought onto the stage] [laughter and clapping] Just put them
1 X$ _, M! p9 F, X+ U$ M+ ]back against the wall.8 ]! v) S; C- t
Jai Pausch (Randy’s wife):
5 q% j$ e- w2 @9 o0 c% v( L" R, zIt’s hard to hear you. [adjusts Randy’s microphone]
/ @" N3 H+ |( Z3 SRandy Pausch:* ]+ h7 L; {( x; ^: s
Thanks honey. [laughter] So here are some bears. We didn’t have quite enough room in the moving
4 I; F3 Y% K0 Ltruck, and anybody who would like a little piece of me at the end of this, feel free to come up and
& X: B/ N; M+ f3 \5 x# r1 q5 Mtake a bear, first come, first served.3 ?# b; }. R, |( g! h
All right, my next one. Being an Imagineer. This was the hard one. Believe me, getting to zero9 T% A* \) X+ C" s. [1 f
gravity is easier than becoming an Imagineer. When I was a kid, I was eight years old and our family
4 C+ l8 C5 o( l/ G2 H- ~4 Q4 atook a trip cross-country to see Disneyland. And if you’ve ever seen the movie National Lampoon’s: }5 w# Y( Q' j! `1 F! j: l
Vacation, it was a lot like that! [laughter] It was a quest. [shows slides of family at Disneyland] And
( R( t2 z" _& Mthese are real vintage photographs, and there I am in front of the castle. And there I am, and for4 E. y: T3 Y3 r' t
those of you who are into foreshadowing, this is the Alice ride. [laughter] And I just thought this was- G# n, R S* O |& Q9 k
just the coolest environment I had ever been in, and instead of saying, gee, I want to experience this,/ \* L5 T q* |0 m! v
I said, I want to make stuff like this. And so I bided my time and then I graduated with my Ph.D.9 V6 E9 c. ~ o) `/ j
from Carnegie Mellon, thinking that meant me infinitely qualified to do anything. And I dashed off3 w( d4 g& }7 t3 P# ~: t2 W
my letters of applications to Walt Disney Imagineering, and they sent me some of the damned nicest
7 e+ J% c3 C* V# W5 i" ~$ g3 S5 b$ `% ^, qgo-to-hell letters I have ever gotten. [laughter] I mean it was just, we have carefully reviewed your- x3 F3 ]. Z m3 B
application and presently we do not have any positions available which require your particular
- E$ m9 D: s7 { Bqualifications. Now think about the fact that you’re getting this from a place that’s famous for guys
; f9 d0 a; {2 ?who sweep the street. [laughter] So that was a bit of a setback. But remember, the brick walls are
o8 P+ V. w6 e- cthere for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us" n' _0 C* V( H* x' t& X
a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the
" j% S( j, m. ~& ~8 U6 {% M, apeople who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.
6 B! J! r) N$ ]4 a ]/ r2 ~# E3 q, CAll right, fast forward to 1991. We did a system back at the University of Virginia called Virtual
( [) ]3 |6 e3 V" v% NReality on Five Dollars a Day. Just one of those unbelievable spectacular things. I was so scared
& ]. B7 M2 \+ \: Z7 k, E; O# qback in those days as a junior academic. Jim Foley’s here, and I just love to tell this story. He knew
0 c7 q5 O$ T2 h$ Q7 p2 Cmy undergraduate advisor, Andy Van Dam, and I’m at my first conference and I’m just scared to
1 X8 O$ D m) sdeath. And this icon in the user interface community walks up to me and just out of nowhere just" R# |2 K6 P j- H
gives me this huge bear hug and he says, that was from Andy. And that was when I thought, ok,
# j: w" Q+ J# b; j# C' O, o$ ^maybe I can make it. Maybe I do belong. And a similar story is that this was just this unbelievable p3 Z5 s7 e/ W# x) _1 N( m# y( q5 N
hit because at the time, everybody needed a half a million [dollars] to do virtual reality. And1 b& B: U3 s8 j! Z1 C4 E
everybody felt frustrated. And we literally hacked together a system for about five thousand dollars. H2 D) w$ F& }! u* B
in parts and made a working VR system. And people were just like, oh my god, you know, the
3 n5 [2 E! f1 g$ Z) F, fHewlett Packard garage thing. This is so awesome. And so I’m giving this talk and the room has just |; b9 Y* \2 T$ O* X. n
gone wild, and during the Q and A, a guy named Tom Furness, who was one of the big names in
+ A7 \0 q; ~" U+ C0 T5 N3 Kvirtual reality at the time, he goes up to the microphone and he introduces himself. I didn’t know
0 c9 i* i9 g: R# W8 z/ f9 _what he looked like but I sure as hell knew the name. And he asked a question. And I was like, I’m
# v+ Q/ F1 T8 B0 Z; d9 N' ^sorry did you say you were Tom Furness? And he said yes. I said, then I would love to answer your
: | B- e6 n" e. a4 aquestion, but first, will you have lunch with me tomorrow? [laughter] And there’s a lot in that little9 `3 Y# ^. _! P. j$ S- |
moment, there’s a lot of humility but also asking a person where he can’t possibly say no. [laughter]
% u; z5 M, [ V" eAnd so Imagineering a couple of years later was working on a virtual reality project. This was top
6 Q6 U4 f) {. F' D& [5 _# Z4 Fsecret. They were denying the existence of a virtual reality attraction after the time that the: }7 m: m5 c- [. e ?5 [8 q
publicity department was running the TV commercials. So Imagineering really had nailed this one
, P7 t6 E* w! jtight. And it was the Aladdin attraction where you would fly a magic carpet, and the head mounted4 x3 ?) y8 B5 ?" s5 Q
display, sometimes known as gator vision. And so I had an in. As soon as the project had just, you/ b2 _1 |; t, J
know they start running the TV commercials, and I had been asked to brief the Secretary of Defense
5 X& D1 W( M7 j5 ~on the state of virtual reality. OK, Fred Brooks and I had been asked to brief the Secretary of9 l9 `, @+ s4 n) ^% e# b# q" h
Defense, and that gave me an excuse. So I called them. I called Imagineering and I said, look, I’m3 k0 X+ F, [+ ?2 Y6 @
briefing the Secretary of Defense. I’d like some materials on what you have because it’s one of the/ v. @; z# K! N0 |8 f1 h% m; c
best VR systems in the world. And they kind of pushed back. And I said, look, is all this patriotism
% E* L2 t& c, P1 Kstuff in the parks a farce? And they’re like, hmm, ok. [laughter] But they said this is so new the PR
& K2 f2 L/ w, M7 j0 X( bdepartment doesn’t have any footage for you, so I’m going to have to connect you straight through
' A2 Q9 l0 `; ^" v/ ~3 gto the team who did the work. Jackpot! So I find myself on the phone with a guy named Jon Snoddy$ `: b b1 [ G& h
who is one of the most impressive guys I have ever met, and he was the guy running this team, and
& S7 |* ]1 E, [( n Ait’s not surprising they had done impressive things. And so he sent me some stuff, we talked briefly
" b0 E9 u2 P2 F/ z0 s- {. Cand he sent me some stuff, and I said, hey, I’m going to be out in the area for a conference shortly,7 w3 m) e, n+ @) j
would you like to get together and have lunch? Translation: I’m going to lie to you and say that I
$ S* x* a7 X# L8 P+ `4 Dhave an excuse to be in the area so I don’t look too anxious, but I would go to Neptune to have
; e& d2 s! M# U8 ^4 J# D) Alunch with you! [laughter] And so Jon said sure, and I spent something like 80 hours talking with all
7 g7 H4 I ^& Q* @: g7 d7 ]the VR experts in the world, saying if you had access to this one unbelievable project, what would* u) W1 ], [# g7 {
you ask? And then I compiled all of that and I had to memorize it, which anybody that knows me# q1 H1 ^& i$ N4 |2 b9 y# [
knows that I have no memory at all, because I couldn’t go in looking like a dweeb with, you know, [in9 d: L+ `2 c' d! c2 h+ _2 ^
dweeby voice] Hi, Question 72. So, I went in, and this was like a two hour lunch, and Jon must have, T4 M$ p2 S# [' r; Z
thought he was talking to some phenomenal person, because all I was doing was channeling Fred
3 p4 `5 W% D$ i- Q7 v. | LBrooks and Ivan Sutherland and Andy Van Dam and people like that. And Henry Fuchs. So it’s pretty& s2 _, ]% S% Q" C1 s/ X# I/ z
easy to be smart when you’re parroting smart people. And at the end of the lunch with Jon, I sort
: W2 x& D/ s$ {) `1 x0 b0 rof, as we say in the business, made “the ask.” And I said, you know, I have a sabbatical coming up.$ `7 |1 y( A8 D* ~. T! }
And he said, what’s that? [laughter] The beginnings of the culture clash. And so I talked with him
* x2 P! p$ ]- D" G2 Fabout the possibility of coming there and working with him. And he said, well that’s really good
/ y( H7 ]9 ` O' {except, you know, you’re in the business of telling people stuff and we’re in the business of keeping
- X$ U8 Q# d6 z: U! lsecrets. And then what made Jon Snoddy Jon Snoddy was he said, but we’ll work it out, which I4 g' a' E7 }9 P4 W, M- h$ D- s! R
really loved. The other thing that I learned from Jon Snoddy – I could do easily an hour long talk just/ }$ F/ {! l ?- I- d
on what have I learned from Jon Snoddy. One of the things he told me was that wait long enough3 _ w [, ], L3 n4 |! }% Q" B
and people will surprise and impress you. He said, when you’re pissed off at somebody and you’re: X. u/ X% D: g3 g
angry at them, you just haven’t given them enough time. Just give them a little more time and% f! B$ Q& j. ^( {$ T* e# i1 g
they’ll almost always impress you. And that really stuck with me. I think he’s absolutely right on7 i% N! h) Q9 ]7 ~+ _6 E* t
that one. So to make a long story short, we negotiated a legal contract. It was going to be the first –
; U9 l! a% G4 I! w, r$ Psome people referred to it as the first and last paper ever published by Imagineering. That the deal4 R. R8 B. U X# p
was I go, I provide my own funding, I go for six months, I work with a project, we publish a paper.1 s/ E; B8 }0 y# R
And then we meet our villain. [shows slide of a picture of a former dean of Randy’s] I can’t be all
a2 s- \; u W% T4 qsweetness and light, because I have no credibility. Somebody’s head’s going to go on a stick. Turns
S9 z. R* d; \5 e1 J# _out that the person who gets his head on a stick is a dean back at the University of Virginia. His% y0 ^' p4 Z0 s8 j7 @9 ~
name is not important. Let’s call him Dean Wormer. [laughter] And Dean Wormer has a meeting
# R$ z: t7 b& y/ A: k7 K- Xwith me where I say I want to do this sabbatical thing and I’ve actually got the Imagineering guys to( ]! s) o& m& C* X1 h4 W5 s5 S
let an academic in, which is insane. I mean if Jon hadn’t gone nuts, this would never have been a) \+ z$ A' Q7 x% n5 F( u! f5 J
possibility. This is a very secretive organization. And Dean Wormer looks at the paperwork and he* B+ s$ j N& u% U6 O" I) Z
says, well it says they’re going to own your intellectual property. And I said, yeah, we got the, ^3 B) w- m& I( B8 V2 G
agreement to publish the paper. There is no other IP. I don’t do patentable stuff. And says, yeah,1 x: K1 f+ b" Y9 N! D
but you might. And so deal’s off. Just go and get them to change that little clause there and then
: t/ h8 V( I) N) s, S4 R \7 Zcome back to me. I’m like, excuse me? And then I said to him, I want you to understand how
: s( x! F1 U4 m1 m9 Q" _* O0 x7 bimportant this is. If we can’t work this out, I’m going to take an unpaid leave of absence and I’m just
' S7 t% L/ C7 J% ^going to go there and I’m going to do this thing. And he said, hey, I might not even let you do that. I& g/ L6 ]* B5 J8 \5 W
mean you’ve got the IP in your head already and maybe they’re going to suck it out of you, so that’s
3 K9 L: d$ T' Znot going to fly either. [laughter] It’s very important to know when you’re in a pissing match. And% A$ F4 j1 A- o0 j+ f* N
it’s very important to get out of it as quickly as possible. So I said to him, well, let’s back off on this.
* k) H8 f- z d$ d$ Q2 ODo we think this is a good idea at all? He said, I have no idea if this is a good idea. I was like,& _0 A( F0 @9 m8 w) E3 w2 F
[sarcastically] OK, well we’ve got common ground there. Then I said, well is this really your call?
1 ~6 I, l6 i& ]. S1 eIsn’t this the call of the Dean of Sponsored Research if it’s an IP issue? And he said, yeah, that’s true.& {+ j7 X1 }; l
I said, but so if he’s happy you’re happy? [So he says] Yeah, then I’d be fine. Whoosh! Like Wile E.2 ~3 p' n% m1 [! w6 J% X& Y9 v3 j Q2 o
Coyote, I’m gone in a big ball of dust. And I find myself in Gene Block’s office, who is the most
, M+ X: {) p7 Q) @1 efantastic man in the world. And I start talking to Gene Block and I say let’s start at the high level,
) U6 j7 f/ A3 Z1 w% tsince I don’t want to have to back out again. So let’s start at the high level. Do you think this is a# k3 d/ t/ J7 P+ g
good idea? He said, well if you’re asking me if it’s a good idea, I don’t have very much information.
k& c, m& F9 o( T2 _/ ~All I know is that one of my star faculty members is in my office and he’s really excited, so tell me
. V$ @0 o. ?$ i/ H" x$ k4 }' Emore. Here’s a lesson for everybody in administration. They both said the same thing. But think' Z. A+ \ }# R
about how they said it, right? [In a loud, barking voice] I don’t know! [In a pleasant voice] Well, I2 N, J0 s5 f: N% Z3 c. f
don’t have much information, but one of my start faculty members is here and he’s all excited so I. y9 g1 C: V8 a7 h# n0 \& ~& ^
want to learn more. They’re both ways of saying I don’t know, but boy there’s a good way and a bad) p) g) h3 \4 D+ R4 [ L
way. So anyway, we got it all worked out. I went to Imagineering. Sweetness and light. And all’s$ U \2 `9 f! z4 H2 J; V( h* v
well that ends well.
) l3 C3 f! `) W! n+ ?, R+ [Some brick walls are made of flesh. So I worked on the Aladdin Project. It was absolutely
' f0 i# h! U" ~$ yspectacular, I mean just unbelievable. Here’s my nephew Christopher. [Shows slide of Christopher! U+ f. w7 d9 `: N2 O- U7 z! x
on Aladdin apparatus] This was the apparatus. You would sit on this sort of motorcycle-type thing.7 } A, J3 R) H; c; Y
And you would steer your magic carpet and you would put on the head-mounted display. The headmounted! R/ E S* x6 {! V6 s
display is very interesting because it had two parts, and it was a very clever design. To get
9 y) g5 U9 w" @9 U& p Kthroughput up, the only part that touched the guest’s head was this little cap and everything else, { o! |: u! }5 G& s" @/ r( y
clicked onto it – all the expensive hardware. So you could replicate the caps because they were
. y$ w! [. v Y+ _basically free to manufacture. [Showing slide of Randy cleaning a cap] And this is what I really did is3 b# @1 `2 |# p0 `
I was a cap cleaner during the sabbatical. [laughter] I loved Imagineering. It was just a spectacular
7 o" s j ^5 \8 A& U! aplace. Just spectacular. Everything that I had dreamed. I loved the model shop. People crawling
# I' k0 Z9 z Caround on things the size of this room that are just big physical models. It was just an incredible/ c; Y/ K* M3 k2 Q% X" A
place to walk around and be inspired. I’m always reminded of when I went there and people said,
8 u/ L6 n% J5 a/ X! v( y! O" | jdo you think your expectations are too high? And I said, you ever see the movie Charlie and the
/ b1 M- V: |( T! p' a- w; R7 dChocolate Factory? Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory? Where Gene Wilder says to the little
2 j/ |4 b8 P; S7 c8 M' ?4 `boy Charlie, he’s about to give him the chocolate factory. He says “Well Charlie, did anybody ever* I, r" m% R# q7 L2 D
tell you the story of the little boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?” Charlie’s eyes get9 G7 T" [5 V5 |: s% t
like saucers and he says, “No, what happened to him?” Gene Wilder says, “He lived happily ever
3 ^( n, t$ _6 v, H" s+ M2 j; Jafter.” [laughter]
; f7 _/ f1 b8 K. z4 _, l oOK, so working on the Aladdin VR, I described it as a once in every five careers opportunity, and I% h# Q( l9 a8 L5 M6 m( {4 b' d
stand by that assessment. And it forever changed me. It wasn’t just that it was good work and I got
! ~. y5 O7 H* a& M7 F. sto be a part of it. But it got me into the place of working with real people and real HCI user interface* b0 E, L% |9 L5 p: @# z
issues. Most HCI people live in this fantasy world of white collar laborers with Ph.D.s and masters
( H. M/ a' e7 H) ^0 z8 L* ~degrees. And you know, until you got ice cream spilled on you, you’re not doing field work. And
$ {" W5 K' J: i1 \9 b' v- ]( Wmore than anything else, from Jon Snoddy I learned how to put artists and engineers together, and* h* F U" k* O; n$ t- a
that’s been the real legacy.
' _/ j m% L1 T. [$ g# V+ bWe published a paper. Just a nice academic cultural scandal. When we wrote the paper, the guys at3 g7 ]+ E3 V5 w( b5 |% ~
Imagineering said, well let’s do a nice big picture. Like you would in a magazine. [Showing slide of) g* [, W; B7 _9 v$ J# X
first page of the paper, with a photo at the top that spans two columns]. And the SIGGRAPH8 S. z7 C8 i/ Q8 y
committee, which accepted the paper, it was like this big scandal. Are they allowed to do that?! {; }! u% O, T# m% c% [9 g' V
[laughter] There was no rule! So we published the paper and amazingly since then there’s a2 |) m) `5 W/ f5 i$ E/ S' _$ R
tradition of SIGGRAPH papers having color figures on the first page. So I’ve changed the world in a5 L# j0 S2 k1 u0 K( D3 U, t
small way. [laughter] And then at the end of my six months, they came to me and they said, you
, ?. ^. u6 S; e2 Y0 c1 wwant to do it for real? You can stay. And I said no. One of the only times in my life I have surprised
2 f5 L4 u5 B( @$ C* mmy father. He was like, you’re what? He said, since you were, you know [gesturing to height of a
' n' Y: p8 R# U' z3 c( E2 _child’s head],this is all you wanted, and now that you got it, and you’re… huh? There was a bottle of' j! U1 i* D8 i7 c! `4 ?0 ? ^
Maalox in my desk drawer. Be careful what you wish for. It was a particularly stressful place.
& R d1 d3 z0 r& P/ R' `/ vImagineering in general is actually not so Maalox-laden, but the lab I was in – oh, Jon left in the6 V+ l5 a* |0 h% {$ I- {. j
middle. And it was a lot like the Soviet Union. It was a little dicey for awhile. But it worked out OK.% S' L, d; Q% t* S( Y
And if they had said, stay here or never walk in the building again, I would have done it. I would
9 F+ t5 K* g/ V: l( @% Ghave walked away from tenure, I would have just done it. But they made it easy on me. They said* P9 O+ c6 |& u9 K
you can have your cake and eat it too. And I basically became a day-a-week consultant for
% j! ?: V% b/ T1 Y% ]- T0 a; iImagineering, and I did that for about ten years. And that’s one of the reasons you should all
9 m$ B6 X( d0 p G; ybecome professors. Because you can have your cake and eat it too.) f+ J+ W7 S+ J4 J5 c! s, u8 B
I went and consulted on things like DisneyQuest. So there was the Virtual Jungle Cruise. And the; }8 z$ _0 f( p
best interactive experience I think ever done, and Jesse Schell gets the credit for this, Pirates of the
! t/ u( I, I2 o6 g c6 m: cCaribbean. Wonderful at DisneyQuest.$ U! S/ ^& T- Y& [% d# M1 r; q
And so those are my childhood dreams. And that’s pretty good. I felt good about that. So then the
& p9 o: Q1 O# {$ v4 g. l" cquestion becomes, how can I enable the childhood dreams of others. And again, boy am I glad I( X9 K2 L j0 b0 [
became a professor. What better place to enable childhood dreams? Eh, maybe working at EA, I0 O4 P. A( N2 u* g' J, \1 {9 O
don’t know. That’d probably be a good close second. And this started in a very concrete realization* A+ Q- Y: P' V0 G4 U s6 Q: B0 f+ o) P/ _
that I could do this, because a young man named Tommy Burnett, when I was at the University of
) O0 y. y& E7 e/ CVirginia, came to me, was interested in joining my research group. And we talked about it, and he. a9 V" U4 B4 Q+ U7 W- G" I
said, oh, and I have a childhood dream. It gets pretty easy to recognize them when they tell you.
w# o* i8 ~# S, H) F% A$ ~And I said, yes, Tommy, what is your childhood dream? He said, I want to work on the next Star) {: c, u7 r3 C
Wars film. Now you got to remember the timing on this. Where is Tommy, Tommy is here today.3 L$ A$ C% f& O6 [) e5 q
What year would this have been? Your sophomore year./ E5 @/ o- r! J8 b& E
Tommy:
9 w2 ^) u; q; h3 b. z. mIt was around ’93.
8 q& C& `3 G; @4 C5 C/ IRandy Pausch:
. d8 y5 d8 t( v# o" dAre you breaking anything back there young man? OK, all right, so in 1993. And I said to Tommy,
& X2 A' t" p; b! _: iyou know they’re probably not going to make those next movies. [laughter] And he said, no, THEY
3 P- q* g2 i K, OARE. And Tommy worked with me for a number of years as an undergraduate and then as a staff
6 [) Y, G3 ?# I) E' wmember, and then I moved to Carnegie Mellon, every single member of my team came from Virginia
8 i3 T/ n) _; {2 Y" Bto Carnegie Mellon except for Tommy because he got a better offer. And he did indeed work on all
2 }+ C, Z1 Z* }) ]0 Athree of those films. And then I said, well that’s nice, but you know, one at a time is kind of
6 C; J" R4 A7 s8 ]inefficient. And people who know me know that I’m an efficiency freak. So I said, can I do this in
% M) p- v1 h9 q5 g' [# dmass? Can I get people turned in such a way that they can be turned onto their childhood dreams?
1 O9 b1 p- ^1 u* q2 |4 h' R. V* n/ rAnd I created a course, I came to Carnegie Mellon and I created a course called Building Virtual: B: _5 b" F& |
Worlds. It’s a very simple course. How many people here have ever been to any of the shows?9 k" A0 b; g1 p. `9 M) K5 ^
[Some people from audience raise hands] OK, so some of you have an idea. For those of you who4 l: ~- o8 l/ n5 A
don’t, the course is very simple. There are 50 students drawn from all the different departments of6 B) I, s) [6 m4 A" x
the university. There are randomly chosen teams, four people per team, and they change every
# y, J9 }% ?7 l0 a+ M5 k* Nproject. A project only lasts two weeks, so you do something, you make something, you show
% J' F' u) h$ x7 h# Asomething, then I shuffle the teams, you get three new playmates and you do it again. And it’s
0 Q$ p; w- X! `9 a/ S* X2 f1 ievery two weeks, and so you get five projects during the semester. The first year we taught this
, j7 @* K, q: f8 y2 V" U% ]course, it is impossible to describe how much of a tiger by the tail we had. I was just running the$ Z' t3 F! n k0 r" K9 ]6 N
course because I wanted to see if we could do it. We had just learned how to do texture mapping' X9 n! v5 }% ?) m2 v
on 3D graphics, and we could make stuff that looked half decent. But you know, we were running9 X# ?& a) _4 H
on really weak computers, by current standards. But I said I’ll give it a try. And at my new university
0 y/ w3 C/ o, P[Carnegie Mellon] I made a couple of phone calls, and I said I want to cross-list this course to get all* g- u8 k% ]+ ?
these other people. And within 24 hours it was cross-listed in five departments. I love this
% e$ e- e/ @" B N7 \university. I mean it’s the most amazing place. And the kids said, well what content do we make? I
, f2 i a" b' s9 m. X: l: `- jsaid, hell, I don’t know. You make whatever you want. Two rules: no shooting violence and no& m& p) \. F% x. a- }. B) y
pornography. Not because I’m opposed to those in particular, but you know, that’s been done with: M I8 |# A7 E' X1 O+ m( Z
VR, right? [laughter] And you’d be amazed how many 19-year-old boys are completely out of ideas
4 W9 F e- m, w7 k& j/ l5 ^when you take those off the table. [laughter and clapping]
1 P6 \- V0 r1 f2 y. WAnyway, so I taught the course. The first assignment, I gave it to them, they came back in two
0 Z2 _! C+ g. I& t8 U3 dweeks and they just blew me away. I mean the work was so beyond, literally, my imagination,
5 U! {+ Q4 y- ]- L; x: e. gbecause I had copied the process from Imagineering’s VR lab, but I had no idea what they could or4 [) C5 u* G7 x
couldn’t do with it as undergraduates, and their tools were weaker, and they came back on the first: l. d% p* b1 w" P$ A
assignment, and they did something that was so spectacular that I literally didn’t, ten years as a
9 U, u6 z& @& Q- s. ]2 Wprofessor and I had no idea what to do next. So I called up my mentor, and I called up Andy Van% l( M% w7 K" r) z
Dam. And I said, Andy, I just gave a two-week assignment, and they came back and did stuff that if I
, A0 {/ T: U9 Mhad given them a whole semester I would have given them all As. Sensei, what do I do? [laughter]2 J- L" F1 T1 K0 g
And Andy thought for a minute and he said, you go back into class tomorrow and you look them in
; _$ b& R8 f! `5 `4 Q4 ethe eye and you say, “Guys, that was pretty good, but I know you can do better.” [laughter] And that% U* s9 T0 d8 l$ o
was exactly the right advice. Because what he said was, you obviously don’t know where the bar! [7 G% S; o4 ^8 w7 R0 b* B N
should be, and you’re only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere. And boy was that
9 L8 A* J! t; ?! Ogood advice because they just kept going. And during that semester it became this underground: j$ ]$ o, {, f: d/ S
thing. I’d walk into a class with 50 students in it and there were 95 people in the room. Because it
7 ~: | [& H G6 N# j# Y$ Swas the day we were showing work. And people’s roommates and friends and parents – I’d never0 k5 [7 O6 l6 M% `" j( P) s. \
had parents come to class before! It was flattering and somewhat scary. And so it snowballed and
* b% j/ P% c- o8 m* vwe had this bizarre thing of, well we’ve got to share this. If there’s anything I’ve been raised to do,. p; Z# O F. v% f0 Z. u, n' F
it’s to share, and I said, we’ve got to show this at the end of the semester. We’ve got to have a big
# C' g0 p7 \. Cshow. And we booked this room, McConomy. I have a lot of good memories in this room. And we. Y" b0 C+ w$ T
booked it not because we thought we could fill it, but because it had the only AV setup that would
+ v+ [2 A2 c8 C9 L( L3 `work, because this was a zoo. Computers and everything. And then we filled it. And we more than
! {5 X% z# ]8 O! o0 n$ K$ F! Wfilled it. We had people standing in the aisle. I will never forget the dean at the time, Jim Morris0 ~) L: q2 P% \/ q: ^" ?/ r
was sitting on the stage right about there. We had to kind of scoot him out of the way. And the% m# F1 ~) ]" S% Q/ z) M6 W
energy in the room was like nothing I had ever experienced before. And President Cohen, Jerry: P0 R0 T m) `$ ?2 H5 i8 m/ L
Cohen was there, and he sensed the same thing. He later described it as like an Ohio State football) ^7 J4 C/ u, C8 ^
pep rally. Except for academics. And he came over and he asked exactly the right question. He
* P( ~* @% ^5 l0 K) Qsaid, before you start, he said, where are these people from? He said, the audience, what* j) `0 g7 L, {5 u
departments are they from? And we polled them and it was all the departments. And I felt very
2 r6 Q) K4 \, B+ q- C. e/ Igood because I had just come to campus, he had just come to campus, and my new boss had seen in2 @8 h$ T7 z+ m
a very corporal way that this is the university that puts everybody together. And that made me feel3 ^: j& c* |7 J
just tremendous.
( n7 P1 d1 T/ Y" P* t# H) l- aSo we did this campus-wide exhibition. People performed down here. They’re in costume, and we7 E0 i! w. ?$ A* b# ]
project just like this and you can see what’s going on. You can see what they’re seeing in the head; H9 `3 b, ` i# s/ U" `6 x J( g) J
mount. There’s a lot of big props, so there’s a guy white water rafting. [shows slides of a BVW show]2 a$ n+ L6 O2 [8 A! F4 [
This is Ben in E.T. And yes, I did tell them if they didn’t do the shot of the kids biking across the: l% O0 _0 C; @. V$ r
moon I would fail him. That is a true story. And I thought I’d show you just one world, and if we can
6 }1 c% R6 [; E' w& r3 j$ jget the lights down if that’s at all possible. No, ok, that means no. All right. All right we’ll just do1 l1 e& U+ s0 ]+ T3 _% q
our best then. [Shows “Hello.world” world done in the BVW class, audience applauds at the end.] It
; S, n8 W- I/ L" J: swas an unusual course. With some of the most brilliant, creative students from all across the) y! e$ N: g1 _+ Z
campus. It just was a joy to be involved. And they took the whole stage performance aspect of this
! W& {2 _: L# Y! ?0 ^way too seriously [shows pictures of very strange costumes students wore]. And it became this$ \- n& ^5 g7 I4 S
campus phenomenon every year. People would line up for it. It was very flattering. And it gave kids
) }( v) W/ i6 Q8 v, }% Da sense of excitement of putting on a show for people who were excited about it. And I think that# i" A' ?4 U8 U, \
that’s one of the best things you can give somebody – the chance to show them what it feels like to
+ C s2 ?7 a4 h1 m0 ]make other people get excited and happy. I mean that’s a tremendous gift. We always try to
4 V5 R1 I( i# T2 Uinvolve the audience. Whether it was people with glow sticks or batting a beach ball around… or
: R1 }. u2 R. e7 Y: [) Z; ?driving [shows photo of audience members leaning in their seats to steer a car]. This is really cool.
$ S3 ^0 v; O P6 r* o3 }5 RThis technology actually got used at the Spiderman 3 premiere in L.A., so the audience was
! |' V: V& m% _9 Tcontrolling something on the screen, so that’s kind of nice. And I don’t have a class picture from
/ S% ?. v, a. M& g& j7 K {: I. [- Yevery year, but I dredged all the ones that I do have, and all I can say is that what a privilege and an; c+ K5 K& P1 [% ~/ [
honor it was to teach that course for something like ten years.- I8 H0 @ }, ^
And all good things come to an end. And I stopped teaching that course about a year ago. People
& u& Q& Q7 |- oalways ask me what was my favorite moment. I don’t know if you could have a favorite moment.7 w) G' L9 z" F' s5 H
But boy there is one I’ll never forget. This was a world with, I believe a roller skating ninja. And one7 j, u% `# k! o. c- B2 S1 \
of the rules was that we perform these things live and they all had to really work. And the moment$ C2 M! i; V" ]$ P3 q: |9 D2 T
it stopped working, we went to your backup videotape. And this was very embarrassing. [Shows
9 X7 M `, V1 n9 t; aimage of Roller Ninja world presentation] So we have this ninja on stage and he’s doing this roller% M* C ]% b, a% J
skating thing and the world, it did not crash gently. Whoosh. And I come out, and I believe it was
. ~. n3 a* `0 R$ x# l$ U$ ~9 PSteve, Audia, wasn’t it? Where is he? OK, where is Steve? Ah, my man. Steve Audia. And talk
6 r7 f% H4 l! labout quick on your feet. I say, Steve, I’m sorry but your world has crashed and we’re going to go to& u" w1 E' v O5 W% x. H' D) L
videotape. And he pulls out his ninja sword and says, I am dishonored! Whaaa! And just drops!0 ]! [ ]9 Y% }: N# `
[applause and laughter] And so I think it’s very telling that my very favorite moment in ten years of
4 D x+ y# p' cthis high technology course was a brilliant ad lib. And then when the videotape is done and the
' O6 M( s' T& p8 \ Q+ `5 \+ Olights come up, he’s lying there lifeless and his teammates drag him off! [laughter] It really was a& Q( ~( U/ y9 s$ | E) ]
fantastic moment.
: o! n; y/ w' u8 XAnd the course was all about bonding. People used to say, you know, what’s going to make for a
; p" i, l$ L8 }/ Qgood world? I said, I can’t tell you beforehand, but right before they present it I can tell you if the
9 b; \/ [- ]$ t" Pworld’s good just by the body language. If they’re standing close to each other, the world is good.
4 H/ J! r! j3 q' J% E' w) g# Y( E) E* OAnd BVW was a pioneering course [Randy puts on vest with arrows poking out of the back], and I$ W- j- p$ K$ m# Z9 B% O
won’t bore you with all the details, but it wasn’t easy to do, and I was given this when I stepped
4 I7 j/ }0 B# {/ Wdown from the ETC and I think it’s emblematic. If you’re going to do anything that pioneering you
. B1 a: T9 N K& o* Iwill get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it. I mean everything that could
) l$ t0 H) b! ggo wrong did go wrong. But at the end of the day, a whole lot of people had a whole lot of fun.: e9 j- m6 ]8 d2 J# N) J. H
When you’ve had something for ten years that you hold so precious, it’s the toughest thing in the. m4 @! i g& u1 h/ n$ K0 y2 }# c
world to hand it over. And the only advice I can give you is, find somebody better than you to hand$ ? a: ^" l5 n1 _
it to. And that’s what I did. There was this kid at the VR studios way back when, and you didn’t have
. d3 o" M$ O# z! g* F! @to spend very long in Jesse Schell’s orbit to go, the force is strong in this one. And one of my
: Y" a0 I% t o- V$ g6 Ygreatest – my two greatest accomplishments I think for Carnegie Mellon was that I got Jessica! w. z6 `+ {$ g$ b
Hodgins and Jesse Schell to come here and join our faculty. And I was thrilled when I could hand this
' S* B+ { Z: U. s, }* [: Nover to Jesse, and to no one’s surprise, he has really taken it up to the next notch. And the course is) E5 o4 J2 z' ?* ?' c8 w- s" C/ J
in more than good hands – it’s in better hands. But it was just one course. And then we really took g. W: \& V7 U! @' T
it up a notch. And we created what I would call the dream fulfillment factory. Don Marinelli and I: M6 @/ J8 N) M' r- y
got together and with the university’s blessing and encouragement, we made this thing out of whole% \/ O+ D) \9 ^ O) a; [
cloth that was absolutely insane. Should never have been tried. All the sane universities didn’t go; A: O N& Z* j+ O% F1 ]- u5 f
near this kind of stuff. Creating a tremendous opportunistic void. So the Entertainment Technology' b/ m6 e3 N- r1 K
Center was all about artists and technologists working in small teams to make things. It was a twoyear
' N8 v0 `: V5 |/ ~3 Aprofessional master’s degree. And Don and I were two kindred spirits. We’re very different –
5 R6 D7 {( ^5 }! H: p) \anybody who knows us knows that we are very different people. And we liked to do things in a new
$ |% C, k$ ?/ C) a$ Yway, and the truth of the matter is that we are both a little uncomfortable in academia. I used to; i7 G7 G0 R) ?. H2 Z
say that I am uncomfortable as an academic because I come from a long line of people who actually
3 c7 P- o7 T0 O, |" h/ A% f3 Dworked for a living, so. [Nervous laughter] I detect nervous laughter! And I want to stress, Carnegie
& I" S/ ]' [ \2 ]2 j# ~$ a( `3 |6 |5 kMellon is the only place in the world that the ETC could have happened. By far the only place., Y7 e" f0 g0 f5 }- x3 {: s9 a' I
[Shows slide of Don Marinelli in tye-dyed shirt, shades and an electric guitar, sitting on a desk next
( z4 m0 }2 b0 r. X. ~( F& Q7 ]6 nto Randy, wearing nerd glasses, button-up shirt, staring at a laptop. Above their heads were the
: j' F! N1 p4 _2 P5 B- dlabels “Right brain/Left brain”] [laughter] OK, this picture was Don’s idea, OK? And we like to refer$ X* z' [# z5 C
to this picture as Don Marinelli on guitar and Randy Pausch on keyboards. [laughter] But we really
$ n' r) L2 o" [# [( jdid play up the left brain, right brain and it worked out really well that way. [Shows slide of Don
8 F- T9 z" W# i: i Glooking intense] Don is an intense guy. And Don and I shared an office, and at first it was a small" c4 L' ]! M# V0 A
office. We shared an office for six years. You know, those of you who know Don know he’s an7 a8 p" M* }6 s
intense guy. And you know, given my current condition, somebody was asking me … this is a
4 n4 D: }' {; w8 @terrible joke, but I’m going to use it anyway. Because I know Don will forgive me. Somebody said,
5 u8 N, h& F3 R- kgiven your current condition, have you thought about whether you’re going to go to heaven or hell?
; G! \1 R% Q# Q- v. QAnd I said, I don’t know, but if I’m going to hell, I’m due six years for time served! [laughter] I kid.
0 o/ q+ P3 {$ k8 fSharing an office with Don was really like sharing an office with a tornado. There was just so much
4 o! z# Y. a5 }' y' k: k, menergy and you never knew which trailer was next, right? But you know something exciting was/ K; P* C) L5 w4 Y. [
going to happen. And there was so much energy, and I do believe in giving credit where credit is" m! A2 N: I' u4 B
due. So in my typically visual way, if Don and I were to split the success for the ETC, he clearly gets6 w0 M4 t7 _2 m" Y) V1 e
the lion’s share of it. [Shows image of a pie chart divided 70/30 (Don/Randy) ] He did the lion’s share2 H# X9 X7 n N4 S' w6 e! J
of the work, ok, he had the lion’s share of the ideas. It was a great teamwork. I think it was a great2 D; V) z' x( C6 e4 v3 F9 R( S
yin and a yang, but it was more like YIN and yang. And he deserves that credit and I give it to him+ z- D+ L% T! A5 I# z/ V) W- o ?* B
because the ETC is a wonderful place. And he’s now running it and he’s taking it global. We’ll talk8 Q6 E3 L6 v. r/ y. c, _1 ^4 e+ {& j
about that in a second.
{" j- d. Z% V$ y$ t, gDescribing the ETC is really hard, and I finally found a metaphor. Telling people about the ETC is like4 k$ n c) @& Q+ D
describing Cirque du Soleil if they’ve never seen it. Sooner or later you’re going to make the
* V3 v5 Z' k4 j7 w& r0 [% Smistake. You’re going to say, well it’s like a circus. And then you’re dragged into this conversation! u* w( K5 q6 H" Y! S# z$ T$ y
about oh, how many tigers, how many lions, how many trapeze acts? And that misses the whole
1 b6 e A7 e8 l& Zpoint. So when we say we’re a master’s degree, we’re really not like any master’s degree you’ve/ } e2 d+ W( r( V; ]
ever seen. Here’s the curriculum [Shows slide of ETC curriculum, listing “Project Course” as the only6 w4 b1 U, r) P. ^6 R" J
course each semester; audience laughs] The curriculum ended up looking like this. [shows slightly
1 G6 v; s/ E/ }/ f- Jmore detailed slide]. All I want to do is visually communicate to you that you do five projects in: A* C1 J" j, g. D
Building Virtual Worlds, then you do three more. All of your time is spent in small teams making
+ ~4 b( q, B1 H, k# w" Mstuff. None of that book learning thing. Don and I had no patience for the book learning thing. It’s ~! j! V% @' n2 m ?4 |( V
a master’s degree. They already spent four years doing book learning. By now they should have# v& G. Z6 A1 Y& Q
read all the books.
; i9 H$ Z$ O' O1 d9 BThe keys to success were that Carnegie Mellon gave us the reins. Completely gave us the reins. We
; O" T6 L0 b* l8 x5 m0 Ehad no deans to report to. We reported directly to the provost, which is great because the provost
/ a0 h" S U) yis way too busy to watch you carefully. [laughter] We were given explicit license to break the mold.% r0 U; y" ]5 ]1 v0 b, f. S
It was all project based. It was intense, it was fun, and we took field trips! Every spring semester in, I9 d/ Y5 u' z
January, we took all 50 students in the first year class and we’d take them out to Pixar, Industrial8 e% N9 O2 b7 `( v; s
Light and Magic, and of course when you’ve got guys like Tommy there acting as host, right, it’s. N. g2 O- E6 }4 C, t7 ~
pretty easy to get entrée to these places. So we did things very, very differently. The kind of4 _( C3 M2 Q2 c
projects students would do, we did a lot of what we’d call edutainment.
! _5 F2 f5 c j9 B7 I) mWe developed a bunch of things with the Fire Department of New York, a network simulator for
2 y" z! N# ]2 [* ^$ R9 |training firefighters, using video game-ish type technology to teach people useful things. That’s not6 n" S$ p) P/ M; ?' R+ ? X
bad. Companies did this strange thing. They put in writing, we promise to hire your students. I’ve$ V6 T, y: g7 ^7 H
got the EA and Activision ones here. I think there are now, how many, five? Drew knows I bet.
: J6 T$ ~0 m" l- z9 \1 p. P$ M: j5 j' G[Drew Davison, head of ETC-Pittsburgh, gestures with five fingers]. So there are five written1 o" z4 m: ~+ U; ]: A) q% i$ k$ J$ ^
agreements. I don’t know of any other school that has this kind of written agreement with any& t3 S" S& k! R, `# m
company. And so that’s a real statement. And these are multiple year things, so they’re agreeing to
% C8 f2 ^) @. bhire people for summer internships that we have not admitted yet. That’s a pretty strong statement f" N. g i$ N$ }% e
about the quality of the program. And Don, as I said, he’s now, he’s crazy. In a wonderful/ p# L2 t% H# ~: b1 K
complimentary way. He’s doing these things where I’m like, oh my god. He’s not here tonight& t( [: t) u$ U4 A4 ?
because he’s in Singapore because there’s going to be an ETC campus in Singapore. There’s already+ C" h1 y4 ^* q$ f! i5 Q
on in Australia and there’s going to be on in Korea. So this is becoming a global phenomenon. So I
8 L$ J0 h4 H/ _& { nthink this really speaks volumes about all the other universities. It’s really true that Carnegie Mellon
9 a( G6 ^0 p+ E# ]* G$ S0 b* Yis the only university that can do this. We just have to do it all over the world now.
7 k% T. H) p2 X5 }& V5 Y2 TOne other big success about the ETC is teaching people about feedback [puts up bar chart where6 e) m: |% x$ _6 w4 S
students are (anonymous) listed on a scale labeled “how easy to work with” ] -- oh I hear the3 Z2 p0 K8 R8 Z; D3 m# ~# E
nervous laughter from the students. I had forgotten the delayed shock therapy effect of these bar
x+ z* F( `' y8 a$ zcharts. When you’re taking Building Virtual Worlds, every two weeks we get peer feedback. We put2 o; Q$ {/ l" ~3 y, [7 w
that all into a big spreadsheet and at the end of the semester, you had three teammates per project,
# A8 l/ Z& j$ T' [9 jfive projects, that’s 15 data points, that’s statistically valid. And you get a bar chart telling you on a5 F, J; ]6 E9 k( u0 k' k
ranking of how easy you are to work with, where you stacked up against your peers. Boy that’s hard% u( f, h2 ?/ a. X$ l
feedback to ignore. Some still managed. [laughter] But for the most part, people looked at that and
; Z" Z9 } a* o C6 n2 Q; rwent, wow, I’ve got to take it up a notch. I better start thinking about what I’m saying to people in' J4 ?0 R. M: S. l* u; \
these meetings. And that is the best gift an educator can give is to get somebody to become self% p' v% P/ u J$ q
reflective.
/ M K4 @! [6 |0 CSo the ETC was wonderful, but even the ETC and even as Don scales it around the globe, it’s still very7 m- d$ c8 P2 M# Z5 F
labor intensive, you know. It’s not Tommy one-at-a-time. It’s not a research group ten at a time. J, R* x2 n, X# j
It’s 50 or 100 at a time per campus times four campuses. But I wanted something infinitely scalable.! T" k9 G; C7 f5 M
Scalable to the point where millions or tens of millions of people could chase their dreams with/ i- Q' ~. S( z
something. And you know, I guess that kind of a goal really does make me the Mad Hatter. [Puts on
* I, _& _2 K3 L) L' ^2 G3 la Mad Hatter’s green top hat]. So Alice is a project that we worked on for a long, long time. It’s a0 y/ G! g1 c6 ^5 |2 k; l- B
novel way to teach computer programming. Kids make movies and games. The head fake – again,# E6 f( _" H: h; d( a+ s; q
we’re back to the head fakes. The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think
, w8 T! g' I1 hthey’re learning something else. I’ve done it my whole career. And the head fake here is that- P7 p0 C5 V& p
they’re learning to program but they just think they’re making movies and video games. This thing* E) i7 e) {( c/ L
has already been downloaded well over a million times. There are eight textbooks that have been7 i/ M. ^5 x; q' C- d4 c' M7 S" ^4 N! a
written about it. Ten percent of U.S. colleges are using it now. And it’s not the good stuff yet. The
/ I" z+ e% j5 N0 ggood stuff is coming in the next version. I, like Moses, get to see the promised land, but I won’t get6 C, |7 j# r+ R; H1 ~3 ^& ~+ R
to set foot in it. And that’s OK, because I can see it. And the vision is clear. Millions of kids having9 b2 A: w& H( F V) w
fun while learning something hard. That’s pretty cool. I can deal with that as a legacy. The next
5 P4 Q# y0 ^% K$ q7 rversion’s going to come out in 2008. It’s going to be teaching the Java language if you want them to' n3 u+ e& W% i v/ I- f
know they’re learning Java. Otherwise they’ll just think that they’re writing movie scripts. And
) }& s& D2 ]& q% o% H0 {we’re getting the characters from the bestselling PC video game in history, The Sims. And this is
; \: D$ H0 h2 O! t9 e% p. i3 ]already working in the lab, so there’s no real technological risk. I don’t have time to thank and
$ ^6 P; X5 U2 `6 p- }* w* vmention everybody in the Alice team, but I just want to say that Dennis Cosgrove is going to be
5 [- A0 n: _& e; S, ?- Bbuilding this, has been building this. He is the designer. This is his baby. And for those of you who5 M% l# x# C, Z9 [ S: K
are wondering, well, in some number of months who should I be emailing about the Alice project,
4 ~. U: @7 w G4 o5 Z+ t+ n! ywhere’s Wanda Dann? Oh, there you are. Stand up, let them all see you. Everybody say, Hi Wanda.+ J3 z5 c7 g8 B7 S0 R
Audience:
' M9 I7 S8 F, U* X: qHi, Wanda.! T; Q2 P+ I: K) w
Randy Pausch:
# x% v3 V. z \2 G. @Send her the email. And I’ll talk a little bit more about Caitlin Kelleher, but she’s graduated with her
! V( b: H7 P1 Z2 rPh.D., and she’s at Washington University, and she’s going to be taking this up a notch and going to, R% t: T3 Q5 @0 C5 \
middle schools with it. So, grand vision and to the extent that you can live on in something, I will, F6 x* u. j" J, j/ { Q) M# V
live on in Alice.& ^, Y! E. k9 z9 C- J ?" j
All right, so now the third part of the talk. Lessons learned. We’ve talked about my dreams. We’ve9 w+ v, F" [5 d
talked about helping other people enable their dreams. Somewhere along the way there’s got to be- k, S! f5 A! U0 k& J6 W
some aspect of what lets you get to achieve your dreams. First one is the rule of parents, mentors
# M. c6 @$ l, T; q# M# B. u& Land students. I was blessed to have been born to two incredible people. This is my mother on her
( i! v, d( _8 R, K70th birthday. [Shows slide of Randy’s mom driving a race car on an amusement park race course]
" v; G2 Z* b6 v[laughter] I am back here. I have just been lapped. [laughter] This is my dad riding a roller coaster
+ Y; E t4 y. A3 u! qon his 80th birthday. [Shows slide of dad] And he points out that he’s not only brave, he’s talented
/ U+ `# F/ Z# l; r5 v! K7 b& S- F* rbecause he did win that big bear the same day. My dad was so full of life, anything with him was an
1 g$ F6 ^- j& zadventure. [Shows picture of his Dad holding a brown paper bag.] I don’t know what’s in that bag,
$ I% _# S' a: t+ y4 O- Wbut I know it’s cool. My dad dressed up as Santa Claus, but he also did very, very significant things4 b0 v( Q# e' Y5 {
to help lots of people. This is a dormitory in Thailand that my mom and dad underwrote. And every
1 P* n0 O- j7 e% gyear about 30 students get to go to school who wouldn’t have otherwise. This is something my wife
# ?1 g! H% ]$ Kand I have also been involved in heavily. And these are the kind of things that I think everybody
: \1 [8 {" q) x& ^' Y* r! r1 _ought to be doing. Helping others.8 @" |6 b/ h: D( C; }9 L
But the best story I have about my dad – unfortunately my dad passed away a little over a year ago
9 F+ J( Y) V1 i/ L" S7 W1 Q) W& R( |– and when we were going through his things, he had fought in World War II in the Battle of the) S) k+ u* w' r1 K2 p3 [$ W! i
Bulge, and when we were going through his things, we found out he had been awarded the Bronze
9 R1 a+ t U! |' H* U5 uStar for Valor. My mom didn’t know it. In 50 years of marriage it had just never come up.. b4 y8 i- y ~# D0 r6 Y; M8 o5 Z# i
My mom. [Shows picture of Randy as a young child, pulling his Mom’s hair]. Mothers are people* d9 a; h8 x1 Z2 @
who love even when you pull their hair. And I have two great mom stories. When I was here
3 s4 u3 a8 n9 n) e/ t& k3 |" Kstudying to get my Ph.D. and I was taking something called the theory qualifier, which I can2 P4 B2 Y \5 g/ U0 }9 ?. _
definitively say is the second worst thing in my life after chemotherapy. [laughter] And I was* u+ y4 C( S1 S% Y& B) }
complaining to my mother about how hard this test was and how awful it was, and she just leaned4 O9 }$ {, A: [0 O
over and she patted me on the arm and she said, we know how you feel honey, and remember when
3 g3 v& U7 Z& |) e* y1 ayour father was your age he was fighting the Germans. [laugher] After I got my Ph.D., my mother, f8 a% ?+ _: ~/ P, D* q7 D' r
took great relish in introducing me as, this is my son, he’s a doctor but not the kind that helps people.
! b- n9 r/ n- A) O3 \2 W[laughter] These slides are a little bit dark [meaning “hard to see”], but when I was in high school I2 t0 J4 \' `6 _8 W& C2 I
decided to paint my bedroom. [shows slides of bedroom] I always wanted a submarine and an
- Q: g, p; N- g) jelevator. And the great thing about this [shows slide of quadratic formula painted on wall]
& Y; ~- T5 ?" P* f# \7 k[interrupted by laughter] – what can I say? And the great thing about this is they let me do it. And; n C5 n% t. I- |- u
they didn’t get upset about it. And it’s still there. If you go to my parent’s house it’s still there. And
8 E. Y8 q% l% I7 e: O& ianybody who is out there who is a parent, if your kids want to paint their bedroom, as a favor to me
" s: F$ |! E' W0 Q7 C2 i5 Dlet them do it. It’ll be OK. Don’t worry about resale value on the house.
7 L# d6 ?5 \0 U1 t% ~9 ^2 WOther people who help us besides our parents: our teachers, our mentors, our friends, our
' x$ {7 I+ [- @8 L" F7 }6 j$ L$ zcolleagues. God, what is there to say about Andy Van Dam? When I was a freshman at Brown, he9 Z! |1 U2 Y1 o- k; _+ O1 Y
was on leave. And all I heard about was this Andy Van Dam. He was like a mythical creature. Like a
. F& v7 t: D1 Dcentaur, but like a really pissed off centaur. And everybody was like really sad that he was gone, but
( X( F8 L2 b( a4 c7 G5 qkind of more relaxed? And I found out why. Because I started working for Andy. I was a teaching( w; _6 F; K" G! }" _( `8 x3 s
assistant for him as a sophomore. And I was quite an arrogant young man. And I came in to some
" g" b$ p' h; }! ^0 C: W/ Aoffice hours and of course it was nine o’clock at night and Andy was there at office hours, which is7 n2 h7 @7 ]9 |, l" z: n
your first clue as to what kind of professor he was. And I come bounding in and you know, I’m just0 t2 Y: a$ c. M7 V: L p- m$ e2 |6 h
I’m going to save the world. There’re all these kids waiting for help, da da, da da, da da, da da, da
# u3 i' I1 }3 U; r4 W, [da. And afterwards, Andy literally Dutch-uncled – he’s Dutch, right? He Dutch-uncled me. And he
6 x, x5 _4 f' ~. w6 X3 R% Lput his arm around my shoulders and we went for a little walk and he said, Randy, it’s such a shame
% L7 I% F# N% b+ p+ K& Jthat people perceive you as so arrogant. Because it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to1 x" {: Y" G9 @
accomplish in life. What a hell of a way to word “you’re being a jerk.” [laughter] Right? He doesn’t
4 S- d$ f$ g- u3 y! rsay you’re a jerk. He says people are perceiving you this way and he says the downside is it’s going, ?9 _/ B- I6 q) p; l
to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish.' M( `; k2 \+ @. w) J
When I got to know Andy better, the beatings became more direct, but. [laughter] I could tell you
- M( b$ @7 Y( ~# {5 X1 aAndy stories for a month, but the one I will tell you is that when it came time to start thinking about
" B( q% ?6 P$ W" [# [# Q9 w8 Hwhat to do about graduating from Brown, it had never occurred to me in a million years to go to
t/ [* ~! M- F- } |; ~' Igraduate school. Just out of my imagination. It wasn’t the kind of thing people from my family did.+ J3 ^6 U0 p4 I+ k+ i
We got, say, what do you call them? …. jobs. And Andy said, no, don’t go do that. Go get a Ph.D., M2 ^& k; b) O
Become a professor. And I said, why? And he said, because you’re such a good salesman that any$ g/ S# l) R( M2 V1 Z7 c+ `
company that gets you is going to use you as a salesman. And you might as well be selling
# S: y; K/ b, T) s8 x% b/ ?& J- Dsomething worthwhile like education. [long pause, looks directly at Andy van Dam] Thanks.
: z: _& L4 r8 x6 KAndy was my first boss, so to speak. I was lucky enough to have a lot of bosses. [shows slide of
. Y* u; O; e3 N7 i( Z3 f& b* Fvarious bosses] That red circle is way off. Al is over here. [laughter] I don’t know what the hell2 p7 k/ V5 s6 P, }# N
happened there. He’s probably watching this on the webcast going, my god he’s targeting and he+ {2 F. c6 Q) K! h6 X& P. i6 j' d
still can’t aim! [laughter] I don’t want to say much about the great bosses I’ve had except that they# {3 V7 t' B# T+ B: |' e
were great. And I know a lot of people in the world that have had bad bosses, and I haven’t had to
: C' @( ~; i5 w4 k# Eendure that experience and I’m very grateful to all the people that I ever had to have worked for.
$ U, h" ^$ I H& QThey have just been incredible.! {2 U' w! Q" B0 G5 q
But it’s not just our bosses, we learn from our students. I think the best head fake of all time comes
" N. p. }$ \: @0 W2 |from Caitlin Kelleher. Excuse me, Doctor Caitlin Kelleher, who just finished up here and is starting at
9 n4 D' S+ ~& G9 yWashington University, and she looked at Alice when it was an easier way to learn to program, and, B2 b- V$ D. Y% z/ A2 M/ r# n
she said, yeah, but why is that fun? I was like, ‘cause uh, I’m a compulsive male…I like to make the( f5 }7 W3 J4 ?' {+ @3 R
little toy soldiers move around by my command, and that’s fun. She’s like, hmm. And she was the
, i: K$ k4 d, H: [one who said, no, we’ll just approach it all as a storytelling activity. And she’s done wonderful work/ [" n F+ A5 v5 t- B6 P8 w
showing that, particularly with middle school girls, if you present it as a storytelling activity, they’re
* p# a) W' Z3 fP a u s c h P a g e | 19
" U0 P3 O1 I4 V( t: j) Uperfectly willing to learn how to write computer software. So all-time best head fake award goes to2 ?5 u' ^! ]9 n5 w* T) ~
Caitlin Kelleher’s dissertation.+ k, z% ?; c- ~9 n
President Cohen, when I told him I was going to do this talk, he said, please tell them about having
' g. V8 ^3 I# U9 G" E: pfun, because that’s what I remember you for. And I said, I can do that, but it’s kind of like a fish# ?; }8 N( y* s0 ?
talking about the importance of water. I mean I don’t know how to not have fun. I’m dying and I’m' C% x9 m7 Z) @9 ~, I9 T7 y
having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there’s no other way to0 P) c/ u- s% z A. @
play it.
- u1 I+ P- |+ d3 C" YSo my next piece of advice is, you just have to decide if you’re a Tigger or and Eeyore. [shows slide
3 H( C. @" X2 twith an image of Tigger and Eeyore with the phrase “Decide if you’re Tigger or Eeyore”] I think I’m
5 f7 w: h: I( L+ U! nclear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate. [laughter] Never lose the childlike wonder.! T' Q, M7 T0 [$ \6 J! ]0 B
It’s just too important. It’s what drives us. Help others. Denny Proffitt knows more about helping6 }! Z) i0 r& y- X: v
other people. He’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know. He’s taught me by example how to run a
: b5 u# s- T, Dgroup, how to care about people. M.K. Haley – I have a theory that people who come from large
; _7 O& L3 ?* rfamilies are better people because they’ve just had to learn to get along. M.K. Haley comes from a
& Z# _/ q( |* k. afamily with 20 kids. [audience collectively “aaahs”] Yeah. Unbelievable. And she always says it’s
8 d0 G$ i5 M2 e6 lkind of fun to do the impossible. When I first got to Imagineering, she was one of the people who
2 L* [+ B9 P/ w; v2 xdressed me down, and she said, I understand you’ve joined the Aladdin Project. What can you do?1 q2 m# e+ g( s
And I said, well I’m a tenured professor of computer science. And she said, well that’s very nice
5 m4 f1 z. {' D; pProfessor Boy, but that’s not what I asked. I said what can you do? [laughter]+ M; Q3 p: D0 N4 [' u4 T: p# u
And you know I mentioned sort of my working class roots. We keep what is valuable to us, what we8 h2 G# ]* K3 ?6 r5 F" g
cherish. And I’ve kept my [high school] letterman’s jacket all these years. [Puts on letterman’s7 V3 ?: j# `! G: ]5 M0 k
jacket] I used to like wearing it in grad school, and one of my friends, Jessica Hodgins would say, why
/ @/ |8 M- ?3 n+ C# Ldo you wear this letterman’s jacket? And I looked around at all the non-athletic guys around me Z" h" ?# h: Y
who were much smarter than me. And I said, because I can. [laughter] And so she thought that was: s1 |1 p* \$ }7 V
a real hoot so one year she made for me this little Raggedy Randy doll. [takes out Raggedy Randy]! H) B0 `# S/ o# B$ j/ N' ^, c6 o
[laughter] He’s got a little letterman’s jacket too. That’s my all-time favorite. It’s the perfect gift for
( x6 f) m# a9 Y# Uthe egomaniac in your life. So, I’ve met so many wonderful people along the way.+ _* R4 ]6 b1 V" y& h6 [
Loyalty is a two way street. There was a young man named Dennis Cosgrove at the University of7 I$ @# j, s+ g$ P1 {
Virginia, and when he was a young man, let’s just say things happened. And I found myself talking
# S. k. z' G0 }5 A/ T4 Vto a dean. No, not that dean. And anyway, this dean really had it in for Dennis, and I could never% H8 q5 z8 Y* \) {' t. R& K
figure out why because Dennis was a fine fellow. But for some reason this Dean really had it in for
* k0 t# x) Y1 x7 ]) ahim. And I ended up basically saying, no, I vouch for Dennis. And the guy says, you’re not even
& Y8 y |. u2 \ v" qtenured yet and you’re telling me you’re going to vouch for this sophomore or junior or whatever? I& T. [# v( l# s
think he was a junior at the time. I said, yeah, I’m going to vouch for him because I believe in him.2 ^% s( V2 t$ I7 f9 C* j. Z7 C3 l
And the dean said, and I’m going to remember this when your tenure case comes up. And I said,
" u! |4 i6 M& H! D2 G, Zdeal. I went back to talk to Dennis and I said, I would really appreciate you… that would be good.4 q6 A& h& \! ?& R. A2 O
But loyalty is a two-way street. That was god knows how many years ago, but that’s the same9 e+ s5 R% |, s
Dennis Cosgrove who’s carrying Alice forward. He’s been with me all these years. And if we only9 J$ X# n. k/ P2 }% Q' T& k
had one person to send in a space probe to meet an alien species, I’m picking Dennis. [laughter] You
# ]& C) o( A- I; L9 {can’t give a talk at Carnegie Mellon without acknowledging one very special person. And that would" C8 T( L I& Z+ I0 I/ b; f
be Sharon Burks. I joked with her, I said, well look, if you’re retiring, it’s just not worth living' @% b) a+ x, A3 [2 R
anymore. Sharon is so wonderful it’s beyond description, and for all of us who have been helped by
3 d, }( W! v* O6 Z L \0 \her, it’s just indescribable. I love this picture because it puts here together with Syl, and Syl is great! @9 x% [ u- s }: m
because Syl gave the best piece of advice pound-for-pound that I have ever heard. And I think all: }$ G/ H4 v. P: ]8 L" C2 {% b
young ladies should hear this. Syl said, it took me a long time but I’ve finally figured it out. When it
. q5 ^4 n8 B. g" b1 j! Q1 A( zcomes to men that are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they
( [ k- ^+ f4 Y- osay and only pay attention to what they do. It’s that simple. It’s that easy. And I thought back to
& y- O8 ]: o I- T$ S& bmy bachelor days and I said, damn. [laughter]
9 {/ o# E! T2 {# l4 k" TNever give up. I didn’t get into Brown University. I was on the wait list. I called them up and they2 C5 U4 u! d1 r& t! ?& g
eventually decided that it was getting really annoying to have me call everyday so they let me in. At8 e' b, |: P( ^" a
Carnegie Mellon I didn’t get into graduate school. Andy had mentored me. He said, go to graduate
+ ]7 B) U9 x) p Pschool, you’re going to Carnegie Mellon. All my good students go to Carnegie Mellon. Yeah, you
$ f8 ~2 ]( R; |, c' W& @know what’s coming. And so he said, you’re going to go to Carnegie Mellon no problem. What he
/ s" w) j) M, ghad kind of forgotten was that the difficulty of getting to the top Ph.D. program in the country had) d7 p2 m5 T: ?. h/ b" ]
really gone up. And he also didn’t know I was going to tank my GRE’s because he believed in me.
* n. N0 y0 l, t& J iWhich, based on my board scores was a really stupid idea. And so I didn’t get into Carnegie Mellon.
( T% i& Z8 ?8 }. u3 ^& y/ o8 n& YNo one knows this. ‘Til today I’m telling the story. I was declined admission to Carnegie Mellon.( ^0 h! {) C. D+ p2 h
And I was a bit of an obnoxious little kid. I went into Andy’s office and I dropped the rejection letter* y* ~: h/ Z# `* p
on his desk. And I said, I just want you to know what your letter of recommendation goes for at a) W+ }5 J9 ?+ C3 B
Carnegie Mellon. [laughter] And before the letter had hit his desk, his hand was on the phone and" g+ N+ n% N0 m/ Y
he said, I will fix this. [laughter] And I said, no no no, I don’t want to do it that way. That’s not the5 K) _: Y P( d* _2 v; D
way I was raised. [In a sad voice] Maybe some other graduate schools will see fit to admit me.
1 y; y9 [' G0 \% I[laughter] And he said, look, Carnegie Mellon’s where you’re going to be. He said, I’ll tell you what,
" y9 v I7 N' V+ ~I’ll make you a deal. Go visit the other schools. Because I did get into all the other schools. He said,
1 O8 x* ]; Z# w1 W. q- h# d8 ngo visit the other schools and if you really don’t feel comfortable at any of them, then will you let me2 o- |7 M6 k. {, {1 {; d; u$ K
call Nico? Nico being Nico Habermann [the head of Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Dept.] and
6 L* x' S) Y9 w+ A& ^" v" l" iI said, OK deal. I went to the other schools. Without naming them by name -- [in a coughing voice]
% ?3 F* Y* b ^; B, r* HBerkeley, Cornell. They managed to be so unwelcoming that I found myself saying to Andy, you
4 V- f R9 C( c1 d- yknow, I’m going to get a job. And he said, no, you’re not. And he picked up the phone and he talked$ k* p# W* N/ W; w4 F
in Dutch. [laughter] And he hung up the phone and he said, Nico says if you’re serious, be in his
C& Q, P$ I% a8 H! ]office tomorrow morning at eight a.m. And for those of you who know Nico, this is really scary. So
1 H' }: q, |2 L6 H0 TI’m in Nico Habermann’s office the next morning at eight a.m. and he’s talking with me, and frankly I
4 T! r1 v/ A3 c0 H% Vdon’t think he’s that keen on this meeting. I don’t think he’s that keen at all. And he says, Randy,6 |! A. l; A6 A4 |4 k i
why are we here? And I said, because Andy phoned you? Heh-heh. [laughter] And I said, well, since
q( p: {: q' G# M; Z- e) |you admitted me, I have won a fellowship. The Office of Naval Research is a very prestigious# O6 h7 j8 [; L
fellowship. I’ve won this fellowship and that wasn’t in my file when I applied. And Nico said, a7 c2 J/ K2 D0 l* U9 l
fellowship, money, we have plenty of money. That was back then. He said, we have plenty of6 a# \/ \$ e6 u3 c2 `$ u; S8 W8 p
money. Why do you think having a fellowship makes any difference to us? And he looked at me.
1 M& T7 @# l/ ], o8 s' N5 @6 O# hThere are moments that change your life. And ten years later if you know in retrospect it was one of9 J! E, d+ r, I- u/ m
those moments, you’re blessed. But to know it at the moment …. with Nico staring through your
% m7 B+ X& f" o8 w3 hP a u s c h P a g e | 21, L. p4 m6 {5 O% V
soul. [laughter] And I said, I didn’t mean to imply anything about the money. It’s just that it was an
, i0 v) t4 S7 p/ l; Zhonor. There were only 15 given nationwide. And I did think it was an honor that would be( P) _# h8 k* A S
something that would be meritorious. And I apologize if that was presumptuous. And he smiled.- O8 H4 W( I% ]* i* o
And that was good.
; s3 N( y) _# D* ?1 k+ f9 }So. How do you get people to help you? You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I+ C' a3 H8 V) X
do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth. Being
: p1 L, Z1 l5 j& x! Q. @earnest. I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short term. Earnest
: o2 ^8 {/ w" h" ^8 N( t' {( Cis long term.
3 t4 }6 o7 |% z IApologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself. And I thought, how do I
5 f/ g7 A7 }& u+ |1 Z' @possibly make a concrete example of that? [Speaking to stage hand] Do we have a concrete
! I( T/ y0 ]7 T4 Oexample of focusing on somebody else over there? Could we bring it out? [Speaking to audience]+ ?' T7 V+ Q# q5 G+ P
See, yesterday was my wife’s birthday. If there was ever a time I might be entitled to have the focus( B+ e/ F# R; ^ [6 @
on me, it might be the last lecture. But no, I feel very badly that my wife didn’t really get a proper+ g% I! n1 Z* A/ F1 @# Z0 f8 I
birthday, and I thought it would be very nice if 500 people— [an oversized birthday cake is wheeled
9 ~0 C5 I* g9 m! \8 x9 ?& Honto the stage] [applause] Happy—
+ [2 {: O) O8 bEveryone:
4 j$ \9 V( I& g T! T% _2 _: d4 y…birthday to you [Randy: her name is Jai], happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Jai, happy6 y/ X# [) `1 W: [" i
birthday to you! [applause]9 f0 v# w. v# p4 C! w; j/ U+ }
[Jai walks on stage, teary-eyed. She walks with Randy to the cake. Randy: You gotta blow it out. The/ o5 K9 F2 c( o- F& w" F- J
audience goes quiet. Jai blows out the candle on the cake. Randy: All right. Massive applause.]
/ q- e) O6 R: _. @6 `Randy Pausch:
/ u& T- f7 m/ tAnd now you all have an extra reason to come to the reception. [laughter] Remember brick walls let
. M/ |/ m/ C9 a5 [7 X6 R( Y( ]+ M$ }2 ~9 kus show our dedication. They are there to separate us from the people who don’t really want to
7 e! o# Y9 T$ k! e; |( zachieve their childhood dreams. Don’t bail. The best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap.5 A' h/ r0 b. f6 T
[Shows slide of Steve Seabolt next to a picture of The Sims] [laughter] What Steve didn’t tell you was; m8 R2 n X; S3 P2 e: q
the big sabbatical at EA, I had been there for 48 hours and they loved the ETC, we were the best, we
3 t& y2 j# R8 H2 n6 P# s& l5 hwere the favorites, and then somebody pulled me aside and said, oh, by the way, we’re about to' m* r( w5 \5 a( F3 ~6 V
give eight million dollars to USC to build a program just like yours. We’re hoping you can help them
. c/ [, V5 }6 e% a/ \# X2 Jget it off the ground. [laughter] And then Steve came along and said, they said what? Oh god. And5 v5 k0 ?0 d) a, W
to quote a famous man, I will fix this. And he did. Steve has been an incredible partner. And we* x5 y; f+ U7 n; C" m- k5 j
have a great relationship, personal and professional. And he has certainly been point man on/ }8 X x d6 a6 e
getting a gaming asset to help teach millions of kids and that’s just incredible. But, you know, it
- ?0 M. P$ F, n9 W% }2 Y/ fcertainly would have been reasonable for me to leave 48 hours after that sabbatical, but it wouldn’t6 m( N1 A/ P9 W
have been the right thing to do, and when you do the right thing, good stuff has a way of happening.
" l( i+ e4 F% l% Q% C7 H4 yGet a feedback loop and listen to it. Your feedback loop can be this dorky spreadsheet thing I did, or+ H# L7 E5 N9 ~0 p+ F7 c( H: d
it can just be one great man who tells you what you need to hear. The hard part is the listening to it.+ U i; | Q7 J9 g/ S4 K2 B
P a u s c h P a g e | 222 t: u9 h7 C z0 G5 ^" {
Anybody can get chewed out. It’s the rare person who says, oh my god, you were right. As opposed) t8 v" J: r3 t* x7 V
to, no wait, the real reason is… We’ve all heard that. When people give you feedback, cherish it and
x% \* Q3 k4 `/ I3 [( o8 l4 juse it.. K. G! D+ }6 x
Show gratitude. When I got tenure I took all of my research team down to Disneyworld for a week.4 } J0 r& o% h1 M
And one of the other professors at Virginia said, how can you do that? I said these people just& _& ^ W# h* C7 x( F, ~% U/ q
busted their ass and got me the best job in the world for life. How could I not do that?
* p6 v* O/ V' h) F4 [& i }Don’t complain. Just work harder. [shows slide of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league
! k+ w+ P* L3 Sbaseball player] That’s a picture of Jackie Robinson. It was in his contract not to complain, even6 u. [ G! }: N/ Z
when the fans spit on him.
9 u) Q* Y3 P" c/ l; pBe good at something, it makes you valuable. r% `/ N- t8 v
Work hard. I got tenure a year early as Steve mentioned. Junior faculty members used to say to me,7 P' \ X) P w# Z( v2 h, f5 V
wow, you got tenure early. What’s your secret? I said, it’s pretty simple. Call my any Friday night in& z% V# c" }0 ] {0 r) }& k+ b' |8 y
my office at ten o’clock and I’ll tell you.
1 s5 q5 B6 C4 | g0 gFind the best in everybody. One of the things that Jon Snoddy as I said told me, is that you might: ], @, y$ ]1 d
have to wait a long time, sometimes years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep
! R; g. l! b" \. ^" X" q" }waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting,
. r/ ~( U8 a. L' e2 z& }it will come out.
5 A* i; ?+ J; u9 _7 s1 ]3 N) CAnd be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.- T& p0 R1 x/ o+ e4 w0 q
So today’s talk was about my childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and some lessons
2 P% |0 I1 V$ s: z8 k& N9 ~learned. But did you figure out the head fake? [dramatic pause] It’s not about how to achieve your- L4 r. w- w+ o7 p
dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care( h4 ~5 }4 n R! r9 x3 X+ G5 h/ K
of itself. The dreams will come to you.: P" W* J4 |% P4 Y. n
Have you figured out the second head fake? The talk’s not for you, it’s for my kids. Thank you all,6 E# n/ K0 v( w k2 j4 x% w
good night.
# A/ F3 I: J5 L8 T p[applause; standing ovation for 90 seconds; Randy brings Jai onto the stage and they take a bow; they sit( }1 ?. D4 ^- L3 Z1 D9 z
down in their seats; standing ovation continues for another minute]" c# h5 ^8 @( U! x+ U3 H+ ^
Randy Bryant:, B2 p6 X2 Z4 X: G3 Y
Thank you everyone. I’d like to thank all of you for coming. This really means a lot I know to Randy.
7 X5 ~$ g- ?/ X$ K! T4 V( IHe had this theory even up to yesterday that there wouldn’t be anyone in the room.( Q/ o9 K, H: w. S
Randy Pausch [from seat]:' B2 K$ u% e* ^
After CS50…
. i. o, V' T% K# ^Randy Bryant:, i7 x z% a" w+ P
I know. I’m the other Randy. That’s been my role here for the past 10 years ever since Randy4 t* C# A- A8 K, M& d
Pausch came here on the faculty. And what I mean by that is, I introduce myself. I’m Randy Bryant
: g! [! d5 X' A) ]from Computer Science. They go, oh, Randy from CS. You’re the one that does all that cool stuff of
, e8 W; a3 r: N5 L: Ubuilding virtual worlds and teaching children how to program. And I go, no, no, sorry. That’s the& f( D S; ~; ~; s$ R0 ?; v" G
other Randy. I’m the wrong one. Sorry, I’m just like a dull nerd. [laughter] So, but I’m very pleased0 b4 t+ z6 w5 g5 R* L! `
today to be able to sort of run a brief series of ways in which we want to recognize Randy for his
5 v3 {7 d1 P7 D5 U5 z( ?: Econtributions he’s made to Carnegie Mellon, to computer science and to the world at large. So we
' i h0 i4 q# T8 x3 Nhave a few – it will be a brief program. We have a few people I’ll be bringing up one after the other.5 h2 {; j+ W0 f2 L$ }8 p: Y7 f
I’m sort of the MC here. So first I’d like to introduce who you’ve already met, Steve Seabolt from9 ~: D8 F$ E3 Q
Electronic Arts. [applause]5 c& B( I, ~( [0 \6 A& z/ C0 ^
Steve Seabolt:
0 J1 Q, I4 V& [9 S. z" h+ IMy family wondered whether or not I would make it through the introduction. [voice starts to crack) ^3 n- o# I3 }$ ~& x
up] And I did that but I might not do so well now. So bear with me. As Randy mentioned, he and I,
, ^: q- F8 x0 f( v' |Carnegie Mellon and Electronic Arts share a particular passion about nurturing young girls and trying
# l* C8 o) z/ c# ]" Q [to encourage young girls to stay with math and stay with science. Every geek in the world shouldn’t2 `6 Z# E3 T1 u ~1 W
be a guy. You know, it’s such a twist of fate that there’s so many people that are worried about offshoring,
6 b& e; n% M% C9 N4 wand at the same time companies are forced to off-shore, there are fewer and fewer
V+ p1 F; f. g& q+ zstudents entering computer science. And the number of women entering computer science just+ D u+ ~$ d* h. B# z, f" T
keeps dropping like a rock. There are way too few Caitlins in this world. And Caitlin, we need so
1 {0 D8 _8 `1 Rmany more of you. And with that in mind, Electronic Arts has endowed a scholarship fund. It’s the
2 W) ~3 G3 a. o& w2 N; x5 b: ]Randy Pausch endowed scholarship fund, established in 2007 by EA. In honor of Randy’s leadership. ]3 d, l. e9 G8 q* S7 r$ R
and contribution to education, computer science, digital entertainment, and his commitment to
6 z+ w9 }# }8 f0 V# Jwomen in technology. This scholarship will be awarded annually to a female undergraduate CMU
" R# {+ V! i0 y# K$ \4 Y( hstudent who demonstrates excellence in computer science and a passion in the pursuit of a career in& l( t) Q3 V1 ^+ _5 o9 O# z) B. G
video games. Randy, we’re so honored to do this in your name. [applause]0 j" r: ~( d: h" w
Randy Bryant:
7 T! f4 d! {+ t, v# f5 {Next I’d like to introduce Jim Foley. He’s on the faculty at Georgia Tech and he’s here representing
! X9 m: J4 u1 L5 ethe ACM Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction. Jim. [applause]% C8 v1 U* u9 e/ A% r' y" A) {
Jim Foley:
- b6 }# v; ]6 F: \6 R/ }[motions to Randy Pausch to come on stage; gives him a hug] That was for Jim. [applause] ACM, the
( S, G o- m( [0 [; c4 e3 i' X vAssociation for Computing Machinery is a group of about 100,000 computing professionals. One of8 x( ` }8 @" [$ h
their special areas of interest is computer human interaction. A few weeks ago, someone who’s a: H2 |0 H- c3 a+ K, E
very good friend of Randy’s wrote a citation which was endorsed by a number of people and went to
6 _4 B, }( A) t: U% E5 sthe executive committee of SIGCHI, which on behalf of the SIGCHI membership, has authorized this% j& B! t9 C% P5 h+ w
special presentation. The citation was written by Ben Schneiderman and worked on then by Jenny: Y( z1 a7 c1 ]
Preese and Ben Peterson, and endorsed by a whole bunch of your friends and now from the
6 U. Y" o3 z- w6 A3 z4 w+ [$ U7 hexecutive committee. So let me read to you the citation. Special award for professional/ v( G% n4 ?7 Q/ {. h
contributions. Randy Pausch’s innovative work has spanned several disciplines and has inspired both& s, b0 {( O5 ?, y
mature researchers and a generation of students. His deep technical competence, choice of7 \1 [5 ]) ]( @$ U: K
imaginative projects and visionary thinking are always combined with energy and passion. We’ve
e9 }: j( o( sseen that. From his early work on the simple user interface toolkit to his current work on 3D Alice; i: C6 a0 B! g
programming language, he has shown that innovative tool design enables broad participation in* m$ Y' H" }) H4 U) y( ]
programming, especially by women and minorities. Randy Pausch has vigorous commitment to
* N) d; k: ~. E( Q1 J3 qengaging students at every level by compelling and intellectually rigorous projects, and his appealing
& P: i( ]7 L7 [9 C, {8 Qlecture style for a role-model for every teacher and lecture. Yes, yes yes. [voice starts to crack up]
Q; p+ y! D, [- D5 s1 AHis work has helped make team project experiences and educational computing research more5 P5 _* \9 t1 M: f1 H
common and respected. As a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator, a Lilly
: m& H0 L! h# h; iTeaching Foundation Teaching Fellow, co-founder of the CMU ET Center and consultant for Disney
) S/ _7 [9 l& K* n# ~3 yImagineering and EA, Randy’s done pioneering work in combining computing interface design and) z) v1 N. N; }0 r
emotionally rich experiences. For these and many other contributions, the ACM SIGCHI executive& q$ i, N: ~, B4 B/ D9 c4 z) N: g
council is proud to present to Randy Pausch a special award for professional contributions.$ R; }' r n; J* ?: B2 n
[applause] [Randy comes back on stage to receive award]
* G0 ^! U2 Q" D! w$ ^7 b& ZRandy Bryant:
1 U7 g/ g% G2 b9 f2 H! BThank you, Jim. Next I’d like to introduce Jerry Cohen, the President of Carnegie Mellon University.2 C" e6 C6 d( Y( U
[applause]
$ r8 b& Z( k9 a5 f5 @8 Y! a, VJerry Cohen:
! D3 Z! c3 C# y: dThank you other Randy. [Tries to move Randy Pausch’s bag of props to the side of the podium] You( W3 x" _. Z1 O- F
know you’re traveling heavy, buddy. Many of us have been thinking about and talking about how# B+ X; Y- K2 ]& y, M
we can recognize you on this campus in a way that is lasting and fitting in terms of what you meant% ~4 M3 d ~7 E F! u$ p9 ^8 y
to this university. A lot of people are involved in this. You thought the provost wasn’t paying6 p$ t! t/ C" k! _
attention all those years. [laughter] Actually, one of the ways we’re going to remember you is this$ O8 b# C1 F9 h! v) J) h
$50,000 bill for stuffed animals. $47,862.32 for pizza. You’ve made great contributions, Randy, we
6 C3 G2 _6 f! n u+ u) freally appreciate it. [laughter] One thing we could not do, regrettably, is figure out a way to capture- f% h* B$ x% x2 c/ O
the kind of person that you are. You’re humanity, what you’ve meant to us as a colleague, as a5 K. R- P) c3 B5 o
teacher. As a student. And as a friend. There’s just no way to capture that. There is our memories,* F A" g( _4 s, E2 Q# v% ]
however. And there is a way to remember you every day, as people walk this campus. So we’ve
) U, O( ?% @; \# [. L( n: Ocome up with an idea. You’ve done great things for this campus and for computer science and for
/ A- d8 f) h- O$ G3 B' W- athe world. Surely Alice will live on. But the one we’re going to focus on right now is what you’ve) ?- w$ Y% I" H5 t3 X
done to connect computer science with the arts. It was remarkable, it was stunning. It’s had
; Z* J0 `; p& u' ?6 k! V8 K1 xenormous impact, and it will last, I daresay forever. So to recognize that, we are going to do the6 Z D+ q5 D! X/ k! l1 T" ^7 ?
following. Good job, other Randy. [laughter, as Randy Bryant gets the projector to show the next- V, B& y) [# f! R
slide] In order to effect this, we had to build a building. [Shows slide of mockup of Gates building] A. N- f9 X. Q1 d/ I4 f% b1 J
hundred million dollar building which will allow us to do the following. You’ll note, by the way, to8 }% v8 z$ J9 |1 d2 q" O) E# }% |
orient people. So the Purnell Center for the Arts is the home of the School of Drama. That modern
6 o2 ]; v6 `. P( L5 c" |looking new thing, half of which has a green roof, is the new Gates Center for Computer Science.
9 g8 E# t) ]9 ~' K0 jAnd we had long planned to connect these two physically, both to allow people to get down from. |9 r- u1 E6 k
the cut to lower campus, and you have to admit it carries tremendous symbolic importance. Well- q' R* X* T* k9 ~ B4 h
on behalf of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Mellon and on behalf of the entire university, I’m
6 X& L' y: a) m1 F/ d& H* opleased to announce today that the bridge connecting these two will be known as the Randy Pausch
; T: b+ O3 @2 B8 [3 s* ^0 rMemorial Footbridge. [shows slide of mockup of bridge] [applause] Now actually based on your talk+ l8 [+ U- p/ |; M6 X. Y8 K
today we’re thinking now about putting up a brick wall up at either end, and let students see what
$ L3 O- H; w# ]0 F8 nthey can do with it. [laughter] Randy, there’ll be a generation of students and faculty to come here7 i' a& Z+ a% ]3 m; q7 }) Y
who will not know you, but they will cross that bridge, they will see your name, and they’ll ask those7 h. S% J6 [! b2 Q
of us who did know you. And we will tell them that unfortunately they were not able to experience
' B' m! y9 v! Ythe man, but they are surely experiencing the impact of the man. Randy, thank you for all that
2 c( F5 _9 \7 p" byou’ve done for Carnegie Mellon. We’re going to miss you. [applause] [Randy walks on stage and& t: \$ J1 ?. S
gives Jerry a hug]' Z% k/ x! R7 n& r; p, @
Randy Bryant:
. W# ~9 j. U8 A6 g/ `; H5 TSo every good show needs a closing act, and so to do that I’ll invite Andy Van Dam. [applause]2 A+ x* \, p0 L% S: t
Andy Van Dam:
( ~: x- }6 T0 _) K. XOh how I love having the last word. [applause] But to have to go on after that fabulous show, I don’t
8 p* W) E( T9 y, C; b2 tknow whether that was good planning. Well I started in Brown in 1965 and it has been my pleasure9 h8 e% ?- U+ a) ~5 d2 O
and great joy not just to teach thousands of undergraduates and some graduates, but also to work5 t( W5 [1 Y3 q5 o5 M
one-on-one with a couple hundred of them. And over 35 have followed me into teaching I’m proud
: t' P; ~& y# ^/ Uto say. Out of those best and brightest it was very clear that Randy would stand out. He showed
0 z' Z2 [/ j9 _: s" Z& o0 O$ T) Xgreat promise early on and a passion about our field and about helping others that you’ve seen
; ] s! U& b. u% s% namply demonstrated today. It was matched by fierce determination and by persistence in the face
, S+ W& f" n% t9 S8 \% }of all brick wall odds. And you’ve heard a lot about that and seen that demonstrated as he fights
( H4 U J, a, m/ K( `5 {this terrible disease. Like the elephant’s child, however, he was filled with satiable curiosity, you: \& a/ {. K- I9 K6 [; U1 M q d) _
remember that. And what happened to the elephant’s child, he got spanked by all of his relations,
: J5 Z. X% `1 @/ a9 W9 dand you’ve heard some of that. He was brash, he had an irrepressible, raucous sense of humor,
; L3 @! t- ~1 Q% {/ Y! p( N \which led to the fantastic showmanship that you saw today. He was self-assured, occasionally to
) X" S I+ O3 t% L/ Qthe point of outright cockiness. And stubborn as a mule. And I’m a Dutchman and I know from
* v8 i2 {+ c" u+ A! rstubbornness. The kind way to say it is he had an exceedingly strong inner compass, and you’ve* G! [7 |6 M& q7 C
seen that demonstrated over and over again. Now, having been accused of many such traits myself,) s' m5 W _& F$ w5 Q6 z" u5 e
I rather thought of them as features, not bugs. [laughter] Having had to learn English the hard way, I
1 f* d& V0 v" k: {6 twas a fanatic about getting students to speak and write correct English from the get-go. And Randy
0 {# @7 L& g { P, T x X* fthe mouth had no problem with that. But he did have one problem. And I’m having a problem with: L) {, I: L+ Q: K9 |. k
my machine here, here we go. [gets slide to project on screen]. And that was another part of my
! ~7 F5 e- z0 q( Hfanaticism which dealt with having American students learn about foreign cultures. And specifically5 T; l* ?4 G. i% w9 T
about food cultures, and more specifically yet, about Chinese food culture. So I would take my; ~- l% J) ]& N+ q
students to this wonderful Chinese restaurant where they cooked off the menu using a Chinese
" [' {, G. V3 ]$ p( Smenu. And I tried to get Randy to sample this. But would Mr. White Bread touch that stuff?
; F7 P6 k% j- m! P! k8 G- R/ p[laughter] Absolutely not. And worse, he refused to learn to eat with chopsticks. I was chairman at) U' c5 ^) \$ n- [4 s$ Z
the time and I said, Randy, you know, I’m not going to let you graduate if you don’t learn to eat with
+ r8 x3 ?, [* c# l% q+ c# Pchopsticks! [laughter] It’s a requirement, didn’t you see that? He of course didn’t believe that. And; }( E1 @( S9 n; @: g( R$ L/ t9 Z5 H
so it came time for graduation and I handed him his diploma. And this was the picture one of my
6 \) m! R1 M1 m* u% Xfriends took. [Shows slide of Brown University commencement, 1982, Randy dressed in his cap and
) U- _4 K& ^* [* Ugown, opening his diploma, his mouth wide open in surprise] And what you see is Randy opening his3 Q( D. u' W K4 T) R3 m8 J
diploma to show it to his parents, and there was an autographed copy of the menu in Chinese and" Q. s' n2 L {( Q; L/ e- W# O
no diploma. [laughter, applause] It was one of the few times I got the better of him, I have to
; w# O* K; }% K5 Nconfess. Well here we are today, all of us, and hundreds and hundreds of people all over the Y9 M6 x ]1 Y& W6 v4 K( W% z' B5 M
country, I dare say all over the world, participating in this great event to celebrate you and your life.
, I9 H4 ~+ h% S. g ]7 b8 QRandy is the person, the Mensch, as we say in Yiddish. Your manifold accomplishments as a model' P9 q) b% L- `2 _
academic, especially as a mentor to your students. Your Disneyland expeditions not only were
( C. I3 d) V* I4 v0 ^5 |# ?/ b9 Cunique but they are legendary. You have more than fulfilled the terms of Brown University Charter,
$ Q, A ]) {0 ?' F( E% e6 ]* wwhich are: to discharge the offices of life with usefulness and reputation. Your utter devotion to" M8 H) h5 R6 e. L; f# i' O
your family and your career are exemplary, and continue unabated as you cope with the immensity
/ O7 X- |1 C* Pof your situation. You exemplify undaunted courage and grace under pressure. The most terrible% w& ?! }$ |9 d
pressure one can imagine. Randy, you have been and you will continue to be a role model for us.
: C1 B: ~; [4 Z6 f" O* H+ t7 o) t* p' M" K[Voice starts cracking up] Thank you so much for all you have done for us. And to allow us to tell) H( k! _. l5 a
you privately and in such a public way how much we admire, honor, and indeed love you. [applause]4 B5 P7 \! W2 m1 g
[standing ovation]! `" `- N0 o* D! _* Y5 v0 _
% x: V! I* y% d- U3 t[ 本帖最后由 billzhao 于 2008-11-16 18:02 编辑 ] |
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