Every so often a web site comes along which really excites me, VideoLectures.Net is such a portal. I can't stress to highly that you must visit this web service (doesn't mean you have to ignore my other posts!). VideoLectures.Net is sponsored by some of Europe's leading technology societies, and the wealth of free engineering lectures is dumbfounding. Here are just a few examples … which also demonstrate some of the content categories:

• Conferences (all): The International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media
• Lectures (all): Machine Learning from Cambridge University
• Interviews (all): Tim Berners Lee
  (or)
• Tutorials (all): Fuzzy Logic Tutorial from the Konstanz University

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyhow!) that this content has been added to the Engineering Learning Wiki Lecture Section and its embedded custom Google Co-op Search Engine. As I spend more time on the site I will integrate it with more sections of the wiki.

Did I mention you will find nary an advertisement on VideoLectures.Net! This service truly is promoted the concept that knowledge should be free. As a final aside, even if you are not a technologist, link on over and you'll find sections ranging from Business to Philosophy. However, the primary focus of the site is technology based content.

In my first "Blast to the Past", I return to my November 21, 2006 posting, The Living Past. We often like to fool ourselves that the life of yesteryear was more genteel. As we enter a new presidential campaign season and gear ourselves up for the muck raking commercials that both major parties will fling at each other, watch some past campaign commercials. It wasn't much better … from the 1964 Johnson / Goldwater election:

• We Will Bury You | Campaign Commerical Video
  (The Republicans link our fear of Nakita Khruschchev to LBJ)

And LBJ responds with a "peace" commercial … rather funny given how he took us into Vietnam.

• Peace Little Girl – Daisies | Campaign Commerical Video
  (Beware the atom bomb and by implication, Barry Goldwater)

I chose this content for Blast # 7 as it is indicative of how the web has exploded with phenomenal material which both support formal education at all levels (Engineering Learning Wiki), or for the eternal student in all of us. Both of these commecials are from the web site: The Living Room Candidate.

The 1964 election was the first campaign that I can remember. Visit my earlier post to learn some of my recollections as an eight year old boy!

In August of 2006 I moved this blog from MSN to Typepad. Earlier today I topped 100,000 lifetime page views for this blog while hosted on Typepad. Those of you who have been with me throughout this entire journey have read 602 posts on categories ranging from Legos to Web 2.0. You've also had the opportunity to learn a little about Rich Hoeg, the individual, via posts like Loppets for LingYun and Pheasant … Not Just for Breakfast Anymore.

In addition to your direct visits, another 450 individuals visit every day via RSS. Finally, my relatively new entry, the Engineering Learning Wiki, now experiences over 100 page views per day.

Thus, over the next seven days I will bring back some of my favorite posts … a blast to the past.

Thank You! Expand any image for a clearer view of my stats!

Everyone wants to grow their organization. It is often felt that an organization must "grow or die". Obviously, it is easier said than done. While I don't have the answers, Patrick Viguerie and Sven Smit who are both directors at McKinsey and Company recently published a new book, The Granularity of Growth. While purchasing the book is always a good option, here are two good sources to better understand the author's theme:

• Book Review: 1-800-CEO-Read: The Granularity of Growth
• Podcast: McKinsey on Finance (scroll down to Summer 2007)

I discovered this blog, Software Engineering Matters, via one of my Google Search Bots / Google Alerts. If your discipline is software engineering, it's definitely work a look and RSS subscription.  Here is how the blog author, Nicholas Chen, describes himself:

I am currently pursuing a Ph.D in software engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am a programming language fanatic and love learning new programming languages. At the moment, Ruby, Smalltalk, Haskell and Erlang are the most interesting languages to me.

I have added this blog to the "blogs and pods section" of the Engineering Learning Wiki. If you know of other serious engineering focused blogs which are authored by individuals (not companies), please let me know in the comments section.  I would like to expand this part of the Engineering Learning Wiki.