Larry Page Commencement Speech | Hacker News Reader

Larry Page Commencement Speech

google.com

73 pointskortina16 comments

What immediately struck me about this speech is its normalcy, especially being given by such an extraordinary person.

I sorta half expected Larry Page to give me the golden secret...how to start the next Google. His answer? Dream Big.

It's such a cliche phrase, but the caveat is that life is incredibly precarious. His other message is much more profound to me: Love those who support you and give that same love back.

What surprised me most about the speech is the particular sentence Page boiled things down to, "Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting." YC's one-sentence is "Make something people want".

Any guesses as to why Page included the word "uncomfortably" in his one-sentence? My guess is that if the idea is big enough it's going to feel strange working on, because most people will believe it's impossible.

I would think he means stretching your limits.

I was at this speech yesterday (my sister just graduated from the University of Michigan) and it was excellent. His opening bit about how his parents met had the crowd roaring.

This speech was far better than the one I had to listen to 2 days ago.

I just graduated from the University of Florida and had to listen to Harris Lance, the CEO of Harris talk about how great he was. At one point he recommended the engineering students to put their dreams on hold, get a job, save the economy, and wait to take that backpacking trip across Europe you've been thinking about until you've made your first million.

What/who the fuck is Harris? Get out of the South.

-Someone on the West Coast.

Probably http://www.harris.com ; I think they're the Harris Semiconductor, makers of analog electronics, whom I asked for a couple of chip samples many moons ago. They were nice enough to send them (international mail), and I built and demoed my prototype.

Thank you, Harris.

Thanks for posting. Carl Page was my undergraduate adviser at Michigan State, and I remember him fondly. It was nice to hear Larry's remembrances of him.

I enjoyed the line "Sometimes, it's important to wake up and stop dreaming."

I think is a nice balance to all the advice you get about "dreaming big" at commencement speeches. Dreaming big is only good if you have the motivation to accomplish those dreams.

video with minor failed audio at the beginning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfNayaL9MYc

Compared to the one Steve Jobs gave at Stanford, Page's speech is uninspiring.

I watched this from the students--felt great to sit through the commencement and be declared a graduate.

As for the speech itself, I thought the delivery was poor, and the speech itself a little long for what he talked about. I also thought it was a little weird--he basically boiled down his parents meeting to his dad looking up his mother's skirt.

"oodles of time", "some old gasbag"... sounds a lot like Kurt Vonnegut.

Just to be clear, there are other ways of acquiring polio, namely oral-to-oral transmission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio#Transmission

I read the speech prior to seeing it on youtube and I thought to myself what a great speech. His speech kind of shows that successful trait and why Larry is where he is today.

After i watched the video though i just wondered whether he was just alittle nervous or awkward. The words in his speech were great, but his delivery was 'for lack' of a better word not as confident as the words in his writing.

Anyway, regardless i would love to see larry and/or sergey speak here some time. Not sure if they have ever done so here in Oz.

I was also at his speech. He had a few good moments, but Sergey is definitely the better public speaker of the two. Larry was a bit awkward.

Oh well, it felt good to have such a notable alumni speak. Go blue!

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