Malcolm Gladwell made a stop at Books Inc. in Mountain View to promote Blink, his latest book on the large role of the unconscious in decision making. I first came across Gladwell through a top link at blogdex of his New Yorker article titled Something Borrowed. It was amazing how in-depth and engaging the piece was. I have since read several other very well written and equally well researched articles on his website

Incidently, just over a week ago, I had listened to a speech through IT Conversations that he gave at the Web 2.0 conference. It was so great that it really made me look forward to this event though I've never gone to a book signing or reading

In the Bay Area he has stopped this week by San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto. I was a bit surprised he would come this far south but it's really cool since I lunch on Castro St at least twice a week

I left work shortly after 6pm to arrive early in case there was traffic on 237. It wasn't too bad and I must have gotten to the store 20min ahead of the 7pm event. Though Gladwell walked in on time, I think the store delayed the start by half hour to make sure other people could attend. I was there on time, why couldn't others do the same? No matter, I sat on the first row directly facing the podium (3rd seat from the author's right).

It was surreal to see him as he came in, I said hello and he nodded back. I had seen his picture on the dust jacket and his website but it was something else to see him in person. His afro was a bit smaller than the pictures I've seen and something didn't look very dignified about the plastic bag he came in with (food I had thought, but it was props for the taste test)

I was a bit bummed that he essentially told the same story I had listened to, about the Aeron chair, all the same time saying how he doesn't get to tell it much. He also prefaced the story by saying how he thought it was a good one for a techie audience. Some of the stuff like the rope experience was better to see than to hear. I have some pics (thanks John for lending the camera) of the sip test that are cool haha. I also took some vids but it was lame how the camera cut off at the 3min mark

The Q&A (Question & Answer) was awesome. I'm always scared that the author might get stumped or that he might derail from actually answering a question but Gladwell was in top form and he graciously admitted when he did not have an answer. Kudos on the audience for the good questions, except that first guy who was saying in a long and round about way how snap judgements were related to the creative area of the brain

A psych student asked how he felt about hardly contributing to other people's research and findings. The people cheered him on when he answered that exposing these ideas to a larger audience was something quite admirable really. He used the term popularizing to describe how he was making the material more accessible. In all fairness, his insights and how he presents the information is nothing short of stellar

One of the greatest talking points of the evening was how all the decisions we make may end up being snap judgements and that our lives are spent finding justification to make sense of our unconscious gleanings. That's deep

He made some brief but snarky comments about politics and Bush, he summed up my own feelings of disinterest because I too cannot vote. Though Gladwell lives in New York, he's Canadian (I'll have to admit here my newfound respect for my northern neighbors). A blurb on his sites reads

Malcolm Gladwell was born in 1963 in England, and grew up in Canada. He graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto in 1984

I haven't finished the book yet but it's great so far. It's pretty easy to read though at times some of the excruciating details become overwhelming. Mostly, it's very interesting

I wanted to tell him how I loved his work for the New Yorker (Getting Over It, the SUV story, and not so much the Ketchup one though I admire his enthusiasm across the board), that I was probably one of the few who actually heard him tell the Aeron story. I wanted to ask him about the book tour, about the Slate email conversation though the other author's name (James Surowiecki) escaped me at the time. What were his feelings on the Roots naming their last album after his first novel (The Tipping Point)? Was he going to have dinner in the area? All these mundane things I guess. I was quite star-struck, I kinda blurted something about how I loved the Q&A while he autographed my copy of Blink, that was it

Short video I made of the event


I actually emailed him and the kid replied which is nice, typos, improper punctuation and everything

the roots naming their album the tipping piont was the single coolest thing that ever has happened to me.
cheers,m .

My other regret was not getting anyone to come with though I suck so much at explaining stuff, it was never gonna happen. Even after feeling ecstatic from hearing Gladwell speak, I had a hard time telling Rene (with whom I met for dinner) why the book and the author and the talk were so great

We had some Cantonese food at Kirin at the end of the street, it wasn't bad but I ate too much