Where the Heck Are All the Commencement Addresses?

Ken's Blog

So why are we talking about commencement addresses in December? I'm not sure -- guess I couldn't wait until May. ;-)

Thanks very much for your comments on the "Steve Jobs's Commencement" post. And thanks very much especially to George Appiah, who has found and passed along one superb commencement address...

Paul Graham (founder of Viaweb, acquired by Yahoo!) -- The Address That Was Never Given.

Why was it never given? Apparently because school authorities vetoed it. That, of course, means that his material must hit even closer to home than some of Steve Jobs's comments did (some of which Stanford authorities could not have enjoyed).

This "non-speech" touches upon something I've been preparing and will post on later this week. But mostly, there is just so much great thinking here. Do print and read it when you have a reflective moment or three.

George, thanks for passing that along. It reinforces that there is mighty wisdom to be found in commencement addresses. Sometimes, too mighty? But they are hard to find.

I don't know about you, but I expected to find an absolute ton of great commencement speeches online. After all, as Paul Graham talks about, this is the chance for a highly successful person to give back and affect the minds of those ready for a life-changing message. Grads in the audience should be armed with their camcorders and uploading to YouTube. And "pre-YouTube," one would assume that transcripts would already exist online by the hundreds.

Only one problem... commencement addresses are rarer than hen's teeth (I'm told by my rural friends these are quite rare). I've done searches for a combination of "commencement" together with university names and celebrities. Nada. Where are these great pearls?

As Steve Jobs's and Paul Graham's thoughts show, there is real gold in finding this kind of wisdom online. If you find any great commencement addresses, please comment here or at the Steve Jobs post. Let's see if we can't build a little repository of "commencement address wisdom."

All the best,