Presenting Malcolm Gladwell

Few journalist/non-fiction writers have had a bigger impact with their writing over the last few years than Malcolm Gladwell, though it's hard to explain exactly what he writes about. The TED website puts it this way: "Malcolm Gladwell's work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence." Others have called him a pop-sociologist of sorts. He has written three wildly popular books. The first, The Tipping Point (2002), you have surely heard of even if you have not read it. Blink (2007) followed after that, and his latest book, Outliers, has been out just a few weeks.

Malcolm uses PowerPoint for the first time at Pop!Tech 2008
In this presentation below Malcolm discusses the theme of Outliers and uses a few examples to show how talent is wasted. He makes some rather amusing comments about PowerPoint at the beginning of his talk. I like this presentation, but the number of times you should mention the word PowerPoint in a live presentation (with or without PowerPoint) is zero.

 

TED talk Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce
Malcolm gives an interesting talk below at TED (2006) on spaghetti sauce and the nature of choice and happiness.



Malcolm talks about his book Blink at SXSW (05)
Very short clip below (about 5 minutes).



Malcolm's best-selling books
If you have not read at least one of Malcolm Gladwell's best-sellers then perhaps you can find some time during the holidays to check 'em out. All three are relevant, but if you can only read one, I'd go with The Tipping Point.

More Talks by Malcolm Gladwell
Here you can find many more talks by Malcolm Gladwell on the Leigh Bureau website. Here's his website.

Comments

[Jay Goldman]

Gar —

Great post on Gladwell! I recently saw him participate in an onstage conversation about Outliers — not quite the same as giving a talk — but he was as good as you say. Some notes from the conversation with Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a long time friend of his:

http://jaygoldman.com/2008/12/02/malcolm-gladwell-talks-about-outliers-at-rotman-school-of-management/