Great presentations and meetings

Via Jen Dodd, one of those top ten lists that actually seems interesting is Best Presentations Ever , with links to the videos, on KnowHR blog. Highlights include Martin Luther's I Have a Dream speech, Steve Jobs introducing the Macintosh in 1984, Malcolm Gladwell, Larry Lessig and Seth Goldin. KnowHR's readers responded; their top 10 presentations list is here. They include J F Kennedy in Berlin, Al Gore on global warming, Steve Jobs again, in 1997 this time, and someone called Ze Frank on what makes a website popular (2004 vintage). Quite a gamut.

In a complete coincidence, Nature has just started an Essay series covering "six scientific meetings that had such a great impact, they can be said to have changed the world. Each piece is written by an expert who attended the conference in question. The authors recall what it was like to live through these momentous occasions, and reflect upon the events' broad and lasting legacies." The first Essay (Nature 455, 174–175; 11 September 2008), published to coincide with this week's attempt to circulate a beam through the world's most powerful particle accelerator, is "Paris 1951: The birth of CERN", in which François de Rose, who chaired the meeting that founded Europe's premier facility for experimental nuclear and particle research, relives the five days of drama that changed the world of physics.