More Teaching Company greats

Courses from The Teaching Company have become a habit for me during exercising and driving. Just before Christmas I finished watching Nature of Earth: An Introduction to Geology by WVU's John J. Renton. His lecture on plate tectonics was worth the price of admission. More recently I finished Understanding the Brain (DVD) by Vanderbilt's Jeanette Norden. The coverage of the course was a masterful mix of the anatomical, the functional, and the clinical.

In the car, on CD I listened to European Thought and Culture in the 19th Century and 20th Century by UNCC's Lloyd Kramer and I'm in the middle of 5 courses on Great World Religions.

Over many years, I have been impressed with the uniform quality of these courses. I recommend them without reservation

A leadership blast

A nice short stack of powerpoints on slideshare that captures some important truths about leadership:

Little Book of Leadership Powerpoint from Phil Dourado

It takes a minute or so to scan. Take a look.

Blog covers creativity imperative talk in Singapore

Lim Kong Weng, an equipment engineer for IBM and Management of Technology grad student at NUS, covers the recent talk in Singapore on "The Creativity Imperative and the Technology Professional of the Future" here.

Creative modelers: 2 techniques from Athens

Module 6 of my course, Creative Modeling for Tech Vision, is available at my site on slideshare.net. I've also provided it in the viewer below.

MTV: 2 Techniques from Athens from David E. Goldberg Transforming Higher Education

Made to stick

A couple of weeks ago, I heard Dan Heath present the title message from his book, co-authored with his brother Chip, Made to Stick. The book talks about sticky or viral messages that inherently get passed from person to person. Starting from urban legends, moving through direct mail and other forms of advertising, and continuing to more serious media and messages, the book lays down a sixfold decomposition of what it means to be sticky:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

Individually, each of these things sounds reasonable, and I know that I use these ideas in my thinking, but the conscious combination of these elements is remarkably powerful.

I had been struggling with the writing of a sales letter before reading the book. After reading the book, I smacked my forehead, rewrote the letter, and it was incredibly more impactful. I don't yet know whether that particular letter worked, but don't stop for coffee, don't take a break, and go buy and read this book. You'll be glad you did.

Learn don't plan

Have been studying Michael Watkins, The First 90 Days. In organizations that are urdergoing realignment--where change is necessary but recognition of the need for it is lacking--a collective learning style of change can achieve better alignment and better awareness of the need for change than a plan-then-implement style of change. This seems especially relevant in most university settings, where the change is resisted organizationally with a vengeance.

Are you a creative tech professional?

My recent lecture at the National University of Singapore, The Creativity Imperative and the Technology Professional of the Future, is on line and can be viewed here. The powerpoints are viewable on slideshare (here) or in the viewer below:

Creativity Imperative Tpotf 10 07 Nus from David E. Goldberg Transforming Higher Education

It's been a while

since I last blogged. I went on vacation, got too relaxed, then the semester hit, and all heck broke loose. Anyway, quite a lot has happened in the intervening time, and I'll try to catch up with some posts over the next week or so.

Engcom.net covers engineering beat

A website called EngCom was recently brought to my attention. Engcom is a community-driven site that links to articles of engineering interest in 13 categories and asks site readers to rate the articles from boring to interesting. In addition to news articles, the site has features that include humor and inspirational and motivational quotations and stories. Learn at the About description here.

WPE-2007 last call

he 2007 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering has posted its final call for papers here. The event is shaping up to be a turning point in engineering thought.