Pop an ollie and innovate! | Rodney Mullen | TED
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN people share it as an inspiring talk linking skateboarding creativity to hacking and open-source knowledge sharing.
What it is
Skateboarding pioneer Rodney Mullen talks about how the open skate community and its environments drive the invention of new tricks out of pure passion. He draws parallels to collaboration and open source.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2018 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec iam_takada · 2018-04 · on “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”
Talk on innovating in your field by Rodney Mullens: [this video] Grew up playing Tony Hawk. His talk really inspired me follow my creativity.
Recommends ridv · 2020-04 · on “For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression”
Really awesome seeing someone talk about skateboarding here on HN as it relates to the subjects covered by Knuth in this article. I grew up skateboarding and I credit the years those years with a huge amount of learning I didn't even know I was doing. To expand upon what you said: it's amazing when you take that trick, a kickflip for example, and you're so confident in your consistency, that you apply it to something new. Kickflip to rock to fakie, kickflip down a set of stairs, kickflip to 50-50, and so on. The consistency you gain from that trick opens up the door to a whole new world of combinations. There's so much about skateboarding, the culture (or counter culture in some cases) aroun
Recommends lloeki · 2020-08 · on “Skate Warrior 1992, 1999, 2020”
Cue Rodney Mullen’s TED talk: “Pop a Ollie and Innovate!”. If anyone’s in a position to draw such a comparison between skaters and hackers, it’s the Godfather of skateboarding. Also, “This is Eric Koston”, the comparison is indirect, but the section around “we’re trespassers” resonates deeply. [this video] [LINK]
Recommends psychomugs · 2021-07 · on “The YouTube revolution in knowledge transfer (2019)”
This has been extremely pronounced with skateboarding. Technical tricks that used to take years to land are now being done effortlessly by kids filming throwaway clips shot vertically on their phones. Rodney Mullen, the godfather of basically every trick that involves jumping up and flipping the board and landing on it, has a great TED Talk on epistemology in skateboarding [1]. The biggest block is often just to see proof that something can be done. He also draws apt comparisons with the open source community. Interestingly, he apparently invented a lot of his tricks in isolation on a farm; some genius thrives in the woodshed. Thinking in McLuhanisms, these new mediums have undoubtedly exten
Cites lloeki · 2018-01 · on “Snow shovelling can kill”
I'm on to 37 and started skateboarding 10 months ago. Took back my way to block climbing which I didn't practice for 15 years. Also started calisthenics. This is after a sizable weight gain and huge drop in fitness down to rock bottom. I was quite athletic when I was 18-22, but stopped doing sports with any regularity around 23-25 and gradually degraded physically. Some day around 32 I woke up and felt so bad in my own body I decided to put an end to this over the next 7-10 years (since it was the time I took to dig myself into that hole I figured out it would take about the same time to reliably dig myself out of it), changed my diet (this is key!), and started running, which I hate, but ba
Cites lloeki · 2021-05 · on “Tony Hawk on his skateboarding legacy”
Hmm, not too sure about that comparison, Tony Hawk is really good, but to me a Carmack of skateboarding would be some one more like Rodney Mullen or Daewon Song. See e.g how Mullen explains his fundamental approach to skateboarding in "Pop a ollie and innovate". [this video]