Complexity, Agility and Resilience.

I am a huge fan of TED talks and I am constantly looking for more video which is both educational and entertaining. Today I ran across (via browsing on my Apple TV, love that thing) a set of talks from “The New Yorker Conference Stories From the Near Future” and they hit the sweet spot for entertainment and mental stimulation.

So far I have made my way through watching:

A talk from Malcolm Gladwell on hiring and the issues with mismatches in the way we filter and assess people for new work. As always he shared ideas which really altered my way of thinking by questioning some fundamental assumptions we all make about how we discern the best candidates for jobs.

A talk from Eric Haseltine the former chief technology officer of the U.S. intelligence community. His was a really cogent talk on how we need to change our current processes and methods for dealing with the new security situations we face and how we need to focus on ideas as the new battlefield and not on being a bigger, badder elephant. I really enjoyed this talk as it showed to me that some people in our defense establishment may actually understand the nature of the opponents we face.

There were many other good talks and interviews. Check it out.