AU 2007 Day 2: It's Tough to Hire a Good Keynote Speaker

How to pick a keynote speaker? It's not easy. You need to find some one whose background in immediately impressive so that people will attend. You are told how much you can spend. So you scour the Internet looking for people who speak for a living (easy enough to do), could be interesting, somewhat relevant to your audience, and sign someone. Then you just pray your speaker will be well received, that he'll be informative, inspirational and entertaining -- and that the evaluation forms will come back with high marks.

Lo and behold, there is a website to make it easy for the conference planner. www.keynotespeakers.com lists many speakers, what they will speak on, their credentials, how much they charge (a range, at least) and even suggest what to say to introduce them.

Ray Kurzweil, the keynote for the Manufacturing Presentation, is listed keynotespeakers.com and according to the site, he can speak on a variety of topics ranging from the future to education to disabilities for anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000. For this event, he spoke of the future.

Call me jaded but listening to yet another Harvard/MIT professor/graduate discuss how computers are getting more powerful...the paradigm shift....how technology changes are occurring at an exponential rate...well, it's just so last decade. Being constantly amazed how kids can do wonders with the new technology only serves to make one sound old and out of it. I've heard a hundred times how a couple of students in college turned a pet project into a $150 billion dollar business (Google).

I thought I'd check out Mr. Kurzweil's background. I found out he received a bachelors degree from MIT but in Literature and Computer Science. I wasn't sure how the audience of engineers, architects and designers would relate. He has had some notable successes as an inventor, however, though I could find no evidence of Mr. Kurzweil being a CAD user.

I found my attention wandering. But I perked up during the following comments:

• Chimps don't really use tools, they just put sticks in the ground. Mr Kurzweil says though they have thumbs, differences in their hands still prevent them from grasping tools properly. With all due respect, I would think that if chimps had superior brains and ruled the earth, one of them would be lecturing how humans could never compete with apes due to the inferior anatomy of a human.
• Nanotechnology will make robotic blood cells. With it, you could do a Olympic sprint for 15 minutes -- or sit at the bottom  of a pool for 15 minutes. I imagine many pro cycling teams are monitoring the progress of this technology.
• How can a 10 year old catch a fly ball, something that takes a half dozen partial differential equations with out ever knowing calculus. Umm, it turns out that calculus and differential equations are separate subjects. To me, this example only seems to point out the inadequacy of mathematics to efficiently express even simple natural phenomenon.

I would like to ask my readers what keynote speakers they have found to be truly memorable. Please comment.

Comments

[Al Dean]

I loved Tom Kelley at SolidWorks World years back - for a design audience, he actually made people think differently - same for SeymourPowell more recently. Ray Kurzweil made me want to chew my own arm off..

[Randall Newton]

While I have been thrilled, amused, and bored by keynote speakers over the years, the one I quote the most often is inventor Dick Morely from COFES 2001. His pearl of wisdom was "the decisions you make this quarter have a five-year life span."

[Greg]

I agree with Brian... and the topic of calculus and DE (ODE, PDE, whatever) has extremely interesting consequences if you ever try to analyze how a fly, with very few neurons, can land essentially on the head of a pin. The control system modeling and simulation required for this is quite astounding.

[Rachael Taggart]

You know, I think one of the most interesting keynote speakers I have heard in a long time is Alan Kay, who was at COFES 2003. He was a total surprise. He completely predicted and mapped out Web 2.0, explained tagging, democratizaton of data and so on, in way that had me and just about all of the COFES attendees seeing things in a different light. It wasn't 'stock' keynote. It was entirely new and worthwhile

rach

[Stan Przybylinski]

Back in 1987 I attended an event at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), the countries first R&D consortium and some thought the savior of the computer industry. (Right.)

The speaker was K. Eric Drexler whose topic was the seemingly preposterous (at the time) nanotechnology. As he expounded on what he believed was possible, I was dumbfounded and disbelieving.

As things turned out, so much for MY future as a futurist.

[ralphg]

Keynote speakers tend to have stock speaches they give, no prep time, just profit.

Most expensive speaker I may have ever heard at a CAD event was Rudy Giuliani at a Bentley event: he used his speaking fee to promote his new book.

Best ever was that design duo who spoke at SolidWorks World a couple of years ago.

Biggest thrill was Steve Wozniak, but he also does a stock speach.

[Brian Duguid]

If you think that calculus and differential equations are unrelated, I suggest a visit to Wikipedia or any online maths site will put you straight.

I also think you're mistaken to suggest that maths can't describe even simple natural phenomena - it does pretty well with gravity for a start, and can describe the motion of both the ball and the catcher's skeleton without much difficulty. What is less straightforward is what goes on in the 10-year old's brain and nervous system - and nobody would ever claim that to be a "simple" phenomenon anyway.

A point worth making is that there are interesting lessons for CAD here - how to take a tool which is optimised for deterministic manipulation of geometry, and adapt it to design problems where the solutions are indeterminate. There are a number of interesting developments with the use of genetic algorithms in building design which are worth thinking about here.