ON BILL AND STEVE'S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESSES

GREAT THOUGHTS

Kara Swisher says it well on the Wall Street Journal blog, All Things Digital, with the headline, "Bill Gates finally gets to say he graduated from Harvard, Booyah!" (image source here).

In addition to getting his honorary degree, Bill also delivered a commencement address to a crowd of 1,500 at an invitation only attendees.  As another WSJ story noted, he spent a fair bit of time and effort getting ready for his address.

There's a great anecdote in that story about how Bill's address was inspired partly by George Marshall's commencement address at the same venue, sixty years ago in 1947 (Marshall of the Marshall Plan).

And he did well, as you can judge from this transcript of the address. 

Full videos of the speech are also available via links on Kara's post.

As I mentioned in a post last year, one of the best commencement speeches given by a technology leader in my view, was this one by Steve Jobs to a Stanford graduating class a couple of years ago (here's the video of the address, via YouTube). 

Steve very much encourages one's focus on things one loves, while Bill inspires to focus on things that seem way too complex at first glance.

Both coincidentally, show the merit SOMETIMES of dropping out of things you're supposed to do.  In Bill's case, it was out of Harvard entirely to start MicroSoft (as it was spelled early on). 

In Steve's case, it was dropping out of Reed College, and then "dropping in" to attend some calligraphy classes.  As I highlighted in last year's post, that later proved invaluable in making Apple Apple, and later the Mac.  And then the iPod, and now the iPhone, and so on.

Reading the transcripts, it's clear that each address is delivered from the heart.

Both speeches are very well worth reading in their entirety (Bill and Steve here).  I won't quote any spoilers.

They're great book ends as far as commencement addresses go, and even more fun to read after viewing their historic interview together by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the D Conference a couple of weeks ago.

And as for George Marshall's speech I will quote a spoiler.  These words in particular for me are timeless:

"It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.

Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.

Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist."

Strips the political rhetoric of any stripe right away, don't you think?

Comments

[Brian Hayes]

It's difficult to read the George Marshall snip that you selected. It's common sense roars loudly across the savannah.

I've been thinking how much easier it is for the ideologue, so much ground already laid out, and how much more difficult it then becomes for everyone else.

Marshall and most Americans of the era slapped away puffery and our respectable best efforts remained.

I agree that our better policy is, as Marshall said, "not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."

[SachMan]

Thanks for linking us to Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford. I found the story about the calligraphy classes quite interesting. Imagine our websites/blogs resembling a DOS window? :)

However his third story about death and mortality -

"...death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."

Very profound to say the least!