A big thanks to Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen for pointing to free presentations made available by TED (Technology, Education & Design). TED is an annual event held in Monterey bringing together "1000 thought-leaders, movers and shakers . . . for four days of learning, laughter and inspiration." You may watch some of the TED talks now.
Reynolds linked to the six available videos, ranked them, summarized key points and critiqued each speaker's delivery. His ranking starting with his favorite: Sir Ken Robinson, Majora Carter, Hans Rosling, David Pogue, Tony Robbins, and, last, Al Gore. Each talk is 15 to 20 minutes long.
I watched Robinson and I highly recommend you take a look. He is extremely funny and he presents some ideas I will be thinking about for the weekend at least. He says that we don't know what the world will look like five years from now and yet teachers are supposed to educate for that mysterious future. In education, creativity is as important as literacy, he tells us, and should be given the same status. The final point I wrote down as I listened was a good reminder: if we are not prepared to be wrong, we will come up with nothing original.
Do you think we can imagine what the legal profession will look like in five years? My guess is that it will be one of the last pieces of our world to change. I am looking forward to June 30, 2011, so I can turn back and read what I have just written. I have no doubt that some events will have occurred both within the profession and in the world which I could never imagine as I post to this blog today. Very exciting!
Note added at 2:45 PM Mountain: Soon after writing the above, I read the lastest post at a blog I follow.
This post written by Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service entitled "The Right People Dissolve Complacency" addresses lawyers' resistance to change:
While lawyers (at least litigators) are paid professional advocates, they (and this is true for most lawyers) are resistant to change. That's actually an understatement. Experimentation is not in their vocabulary. Any change that does occur can only happen (i) if it is so incremental as to be inconsequential; and (ii) only after the idea has been analyzed to death.
Experimentation is a part of creativity. And Robinson reminded us that being prepared to be wrong is a necessary factor in creativity. Robinson also said creativity is as important as literacy. We know lawyers are literate but are they creative? If Robinson is correct about the importance of creativity, will this resistance to change and experimentation have a detrimental effect on the profession as it steps into the 21st century? If so, in what activities? Will resistance to change be an asset to them in any activities or practices? If so, which ones?
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