I Must Be A Malcolm Gladwell Hater

Lots of chatter in the comments to last week's blog post about the Malcolm Gladwell keynote at NECC.

Here are excerpts from recent commenter opinions:

The need that some people have to be simply given more and more and more - what is it about human beings that they become so self-absorbed that they don't appreciate quality but instead just attack it and say, oh it wasn't enough for "us."

and

it seems that instead of just being glad to have such a brilliant mind speaking at your event - he's done bigger events - you're instead expecting Gladwell to deliver the knowledge that you have (or your peers) rather than being glad to receive what Gladwell is good at /for and experienced in.

and

Y'all must not give many keynote speeches. The speaker is on the circuit to promote a book, or other product. He or she gives dozens of such speeches a year. While most do attempt to build in some sort of reference to the event audience, the speech/slides/jokes are necessarily not from-scratch original every time.

Rather than comment further... (a - I'm not saying it was good enough for 'us'; I'm saying it wasn't any good; b - Personally, I don't think Gladwell is a 'brilliant mind', and anyway I'm no one's hagiographer; c - If that's the case with keynotes that pay out such mucho bucks, then that's just lame and we shouldn't stand for it)... I'll just let a few pros take on Gladwell.

Check out these heavy-thinking pieces about Malcolm's work from two guys a heck of a lot smarter than me; here's links to new critical pieces on two fine (and very different) blogs: EducationalInsanity and Edjurist.