P a u s c h P a g e | 14
［applause and laughter］ And so I think it’s very telling that my very favorite moment in ten years of
this high technology course was a brilliant ad lib. And then when the videotape is done and the
lights come up, he’s lying there lifeless and his teammates drag him off! ［laughter］ It really was a
fantastic moment.
And the course was all about bonding. People used to say, you know, what’s going to make for a
good world? I said, I can’t tell you beforehand, but right before they present it I can tell you if the
world’s good just by the body language. If they’re standing close to each other, the world is good.
And BVW was a pioneering course ［Randy puts on vest with arrows poking out of the back］, and I
won’t bore you with all the details, but it wasn’t easy to do, and I was given this when I stepped
down from the ETC and I think it’s emblematic. If you’re going to do anything that pioneering you
will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it. I mean everything that could
go wrong did go wrong. But at the end of the day, a whole lot of people had a whole lot of fun.
When you’ve had something for ten years that you hold so precious, it’s the toughest thing in the
world to hand it over. And the only advice I can give you is, find somebody better than you to hand
it to. And that’s what I did. There was this kid at the VR studios way back when, and you didn’t have
to spend very long in Jesse Schell’s orbit to go, the force is strong in this one. And one of my
greatest – my two greatest accomplishments I think for Carnegie Mellon was that I got Jessica
Hodgins and Jesse Schell to come here and join our faculty. And I was thrilled when I could hand this
over to Jesse, and to no one’s surprise, he has really taken it up to the next notch. And the course is
in more than good hands – it’s in better hands. But it was just one course. And then we really took
it up a notch. And we created what I would call the dream fulfillment factory. Don Marinelli and I
got together and with the university’s blessing and encouragement, we made this thing out of whole
cloth that was absolutely insane. Should never have been tried. All the sane universities didn’t go
near this kind of stuff. Creating a tremendous opportunistic void. So the Entertainment Technology
Center was all about artists and technologists working in small teams to make things. It was a twoyear
professional master’s degree. And Don and I were two kindred spirits. We’re very different –
anybody who knows us knows that we are very different people. And we liked to do things in a new
way, and the truth of the matter is that we are both a little uncomfortable in academia. I used to
say that I am uncomfortable as an academic because I come from a long line of people who actually
worked for a living, so. ［Nervous laughter］ I detect nervous laughter! And I want to stress, Carnegie
Mellon is the only place in the world that the ETC could have happened. By far the only place.
［Shows slide of Don Marinelli in tye-dyed shirt, shades and an electric guitar, sitting on a desk next
to Randy, wearing nerd glasses, button-up shirt, staring at a laptop. Above their heads were the
labels “Right brain/Left brain”］ ［laughter］ OK, this picture was Don’s idea, OK? And we like to refer
to this picture as Don Marinelli on guitar and Randy Pausch on keyboards. ［laughter］ But we really
did play up the left brain, right brain and it worked out really well that way. ［Shows slide of Don
looking intense］ Don is an intense guy. And Don and I shared an office, and at first it was a small
office. We shared an office for six years. You know, those of you who know Don know he’s an
intense guy. And you know, given my current condition, somebody was asking me … this is a
terrible joke, but I’m going to use it anyway. Because I know Don will forgive me. Somebody said,
