Skateboarding
Go inside the mind of Mullen as he revisits TEDx.
Maybe it’s because Rodney Mullen’s genius on a skateboard is undisputed that the 47-year-old is so private about his skating (his video part was released in 2004).
And maybe it’s because so few skaters are seen as geniuses that Rodney is a little less shy about speaking to authors, scientists, and mathematicians.
Rodney recently gave his second (and so far unreleased) TEDx talk, incorporating the “Beautiful Minds” theme of the speakers at this year’s TEDx OrangeCoast in Costa Mesa, CA. Speakers included poet Ken Arkind and mathematician Cedric Villani, winner of the Fields Medal (pictured below).
“Rodney’s unique poetry and humility in sharing ideas make him a one-of-a-kind storyteller,” said executive producer Mojdeh Eskandari. “He really brought his magic. So many who saw him were excited and enthused.”
A math major at the University of Florida and the son of a nuclear researcher, Rodney holds two engineering patents and has long worked with his various companies in product design.
In his previous TEDx talk, How Context Shapes Content, Mullen discussed expression, individualism in groups, and the similarities between the skating and hacking/open source communities.
“The degree in which we connect to a community, is in proportion to our individuality,” he told a crowd at USC after acknowledging that his previous visits to campus often ended with security kicking him out.
Hackers, he continued, are “a very similar community that’s extremely conducive to innovation,” he said. “The open source community, the basic ethos of it is to take what other people do, make it better, and give it back so we all rise further.”
The talk, posted in July 2012, garnered over 600,000 YouTube views.
