Must-see tech talks/presentations?

Question

There are now several places that offer free audio or video tech talks/presentations online: I'm thinking of Google Tech Talks, IT Conversations, as well as some of the sites recommended in the answers to this question.

So: are there any specific presentation(s) that you consider as "must-see", either in your area of interest or for all programmers/tech folk?

Answer 1

Here's a bunch of videos from Google's I/O Session:

https://sites.google.com/site/io/

Answer 2

Though it's not a specific tech lecture on a computer science topic (though there are ample references to VR-related stuff), Randy Pausch's Incredible Last Lecture is just so inspiring it's unbelievable. And I'm saying that as a cynic. That really is the very definition of must-see.

Answer 3

Oh, and Steve Yegge's talk on Server-Side Javascript is really interesting, simply because Steve Yegge is such a great communicator :-). In reference to Daniel's post - that's a Google I/O talk.

Answer 4

TED.com is a great place to watch online presentations. I recommend watching most of the tech stream as well as any others you can find time for.

Specifically I'd watch these two by Clay Shirky:

• Institutions vs. Collaboration: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html
• Gin, Television and the Cognitive Surplus: http://blip.tv/play/AbTSFIa8DQ

Answer 5

I always found the TED Talks videos immensely interesting. Of note are:

• Will Wright's presentation on Spore
• Jeff Han's talk on Multitouch interfaces

Both of which are, while not strictly related to programming, immensely affects many ways by which we view user interaction and software development possibilities.

Answer 6

Twenty Three and a Half Rules of Thumb by Jim McCarthy is a must.

Also I recommend Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start.

Answer 7

http://parleys.com/ is a very good place to start, check out their app. Download or watch presentations online, very slick!

Answer 8

These talks from Sofware Engineering Radio are good:

• Interview Grady Booch
• Interview Guy Steele
• Richard Gabriel on Lisp

Answer 9

Paul Graham's Great Hackers presentation is definitely a classic and I'd expect especially appealing to Stack Overflow readers.

Answer 10

If you're interested in Microsoft technologies or software development in general than Channel 9 has got loads of realy in-depth discussions. Try the following for starters:

• Larry Osterman, here and here (working at microsoft and Windows sound)
• Raymond Chen (Win32)
• Mark Russonvich, here and here, (sysinternals and windows architecture)
• Anders Hejlsberg and the C# design team (in-depth look at programming languages)

Answer 11

Cooper is a kind of a specific session to agile development, but I really recommend it.

Answer 12

FLOSS Weekly with Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz is a good ongoing interview series with various Open Source Programmers, Community leaders, Evangelists and business people. Useful to catch a glimpse of things happening outside your general fields of focus.

Answer 13

Not Programming Related at all, but one of the most inspirational speeches I have heard:

The Last Lecture

Or google "The Last Lecture" to see it on YouTube (YouTube is blocked where I am).

Answer 14

Growing a Language, by Guy Steele

JavaScript: The Good Parts, by Douglas Crockford

The "Clean Code Talks" - Google Tech Talks - such as:

The Clean Code Talks -- Unit Testing

And, of course: Erlang The Movie!

Answer 15

Lecturefox has a huge list of IT related lectures (both video and audio).

If you didn't know about Youtube's EDU directory it has a huge amount of online video'd lectures for Universities. The first ones I found:

• MIT
• The first internet router
• UC Berkley's Java course (and a lot of others here)

Unfortunately there's no UK university's on there that I could find.

One other set that I'll add is Steven Skiena's lectures (author of the Algorithm Design Manual)

(This is from the other duplicate of this question)

Answer 16

The Importance of Programming Literacy (PyCon 2007)

Answer 17

Fear of programming:

http://rubyconf2008.confreaks.com/fear-of-programming.html

Answer 18

• OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0 by Dick Hardt: for the content and the AMAZING presentation style.
• The secret to making money online by David Heinemeier Hansson (the creator of Rails) at Startup School 08: simply awesome (even if not strictly programming oriented).