Larry Page's University of Michigan Commencement Address

You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don't have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and... I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work.

The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn't even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

THE TECH AWARDS ISSUES A GLOBAL CALL FOR 2009 NOMINATIONS

The deadline for nominations is March 27, 2009. Individuals, non-profit organizations and companies are eligible to apply in one of five award categories: Environment, Economic Development, Education, Equality or Health. Online nomination forms and award criteria can be found at The Tech Awards .

The Tech Awards program receives hundreds of incredible nominations from around the globe each year that collectively represent the power of technology - both simple and complex - to transform the world and effect positive change - Peter Friess, President of The Tech Museum of Innovation.

No Time to Forget About Innovation

As the World economy is spiraling down it's easy to spot the innovators, the're the optomistists who see an opportunity to try something new. Corporations need to invest in Research and Development to save money on taxes, but can they see beyond the products and services they produce today? Most of the time innovation comes from a fresh source, a creative individual who has an idea and sees a new way of solving a problem.

The last great wave of innovation was sparked by the invention of the transistor creating an electronic revolution that gave us efficiency and productivity gains benefiting all human endeavors. I believe the next wave of innovation will apply our computing and communications advances to create a better world of work and play.

If No One Sees It, Is It an Invention?

Johnny Chung Lee had an idea and rather then writing a paper or speaking at a conference he decided to make a demo video on YouTube. 6,215,740 views later he's been recruited by Microsoft's Applied Sciences in the entertainment and devices division, where he hopes to get the biggest wow for the smallest amount of work.