TED talks to watch...

Wow! Can't wait for the movies of these talks to show up on the TEDTalks pages.. They're always worth watching. Feels good to know there's people like these guys out there.. :-)

FOSDEM

There's been a lot of posts and slides available from FOSDEM (The Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting) these last few days. Besides blogposts, some videos from the talks have also started to show up. The presentation on OpenMoko(1h .avi) was very interesting, even if the sound was a bit bad. They go through the current status of the project and what plans they have in store. It was also hinted that they'll do some kind of update to the hardware between phase 1 (for developers) in March and the official launch in September (Phase 2). What the update will be is not known yet. An official video of the talk will be available soon.

The X-Org video(1h .ogg) was also really interesting and I can't wait for the X-Org 7.3 with RandR 1.2 where hotplugging of both input and output should "just work".

I'm convinced that events like FOSDEM are very beneficial to everyone who shows up. Meeting people in person is always different from talking via phone, email or chat and just feels more friendly. Humans definitely communicate best face to face.

Staying creative

Ken Robinson who wrote Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative is also an excellent speaker. I particularly like this quote from his TED talk last year:

"Picasso once said that all people are born artists, and the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it."

There's a great video of the talk over at TED Talks, please take a look.

I believe this quote is true and you can feel it if you're stuck doing uninspiring work or just watching pointless tv shows that don't make you think. There are some good tv shows that are worth watching, but I feel that the majority of them slowly kills creativity and sucks away all inspiration.

Same thing goes for the current school system. It suffocates the creativity of young people and something needs to be done about it. The status of being a teacher is not high enough and the schools never get enough resources to make studying fun. Some of us who likes to read had it easy in school, but some people just aren't made to sit still at a desk all day. I also believe there should be possible to study at different speeds. There's no point in stressing out the slower students and boring the quick ones when doing the work in your own pace is possible.

I think smaller classes would work a lot better but unfortunately there's no money for anything like that. Also, I think the parents play a huge part in their kids success. This article in New York Magazine is a great example of what can happen. I believe that hard work and being able to focus is the key. Sure, everyone starts from a slightly different position, but where you take it mainly depends on the effort you put in and really wanting to get there.

Don't let the fear of failure hinder you from reaching your goals.