Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" was delivered on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium. Over 450 Carnegie Mellon students, staff members, and friends of Pausch attended the lecture, leaving only standing room as this was more than the auditorium could hold. Pausch later commented about this in an interview, saying "A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding – hopefully at the appropriate times – that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way." The first introduction of the speech as well as the series of lectures was given by Indira Nair, the Vice Provost for Education at Carnegie Mellon. Nair first explained the university's aforementioned lecture series called "Journeys", in which eight more professors from Carnegie Mellon would share their insights on their professional and personal experiences over the years.
Brandan Robertson
Robertson created his first podcast, "Prayer Warriors Radio", at the age of 15 and through that medium was able to conduct interview with well-known national evangelical leaders such as James Merritt, the former President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Robertson attended Long Reach High School in Columbia, Maryland, where he frequently led campus bible studies and Christian programs. Robertson continued blogging and podcasting until 2010, when Robertson began attending college at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. At Moody that Robertson began a popular student radio show called "The Bridge" on Moody Campus Radio, which sought to expose the student body at Moody to leading Christian voices from outside of the evangelical tradition to spark ecumenical conversations throughout the campus. Through this radio show (and later podcast), Robertson began gaining a wide audience beyond Moody as he conducted interviews with internationally renowned Christian leaders such as N.T. Wright, Miroslav Volf, Timothy Keller , and Brian McLaren.