What do you do with your lunch hour, hang out with the gang in the lunch room, go for a walk, take a nap or continue to work? Most of these are not bad ideas (though working through lunch can be counter-productive).
Here’s another idea. Why not use one lunch-break per week as a lunch-and-learn session?
There is a wealth of video content available on the web and not all of it fake MythBusters’ clips about farting. Today I ate my lunch in front of the computer and watch Guy Kawasaki’s presentation, “The Art of the Start” from TiECon 2006: a useful 40 minutes.
You don’t have to spend a fortune on seminar sessions. Here are just a few sources of free video content, which you could use for personal development:
TED is a good place to start. As of today’s date -November 8, 2013- there are more than 1,500 talks in their archives. Presenters at the annual TED conferences give talks that are generally no more than 20 minutes; they are a good length for lunch and learn sessions. Some of the recent talks I’ve watched:
The Paperworks series of videos from Common Craft. These are shorter clips including:
Tubetorial has a collection of how-to videos dealing with web development, technology and content.
MIT Video is a free, open streaming media web site of the most significant public events at MIT. It features speakers and guests from across the campus and around the world. The collection dates back to February 2001, and holds more than 500 video lectures. As well, MIT OpenCourseWare has a number of audio or video courses. You do have to dig around to find which of the courses offer video components.
Princeton University has a collection of lectures available at the Event Streaming page.
This list just scratches the surface of what’s available. What other on-line video resources would you recommend to someone looking to learn?
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Ian
The Khan Academy has some good stuff
..or Instructables for the handy folk out there
..or The RSA on YouTube
Cheers
Buzz
Jon, The RSA whiteboard talks are among my favourites.