RailsConf 2006: Paul Graham: "The Power of the Marginal"

(This article also appears on Tucows Farm.)

“Well, well, well…” said Paul Graham at the start of his keynote to much audience laughter. “I thought that having to speak just before Damian Conway’s classic rants on Perl and Klingon, with a complete multimedia slideshow would be the toughest gig I’d ever have to do, and now I hear I have to compete with a band!”

(The band he’s referring to is why the lucky stiff and the Thirsty Cups, whose amazing performance, The Professor’s Pudding, will be covered in a later entry.)

After warning the audience that he was going to contradict both the Old Testament and Yoda, he launched into his well-delivered and intriguing presentation, The Power of the Marginal. It’s an excellent polemic on the advantages of being an outsider, the corrupt tests that cause the jerks to rise to the top, how being on the outside leaves you free to take the risks that are commensurate with rewards, how small is beautiful and less is more, and why you know you’ve won when your work is being called “inappropriate”.

Although it was written and presented to a community consisting largely of software developers writing for a non-mainstream programming framework, The Power of the Marginal should be required reading for creatives of all sorts, whether you’re a writer, an artist, an engineer or a chef. If you are a maker of things or ideas, be sure to read this essay.