[hashtree]

Truly a great speaker/thinker, able to communicate his thoughts well.

As a former avid Scala developer, I started down the path of watching every Rich Hickey presentation I could find one week. Every video tweaked my thinking just a tad (as I almost always agree with his line of thinking), and I came out of it a better functional programmer and a Clojure developer.

Note: I still do/love Scala, I just develop much less of it in favor of Clojure.

[gosub]

I was sold the first time I saw "Clojure for lisp programmers". I consider "The language of the system" and the simple/easy talk two modern classics.

[SkyMarshal]

Both Hickey and Odersky are awesome, having to choose between Clojure and Scala is just an embarrassment of riches. The JVM ecosystem is fortunate to have both building on it.

[jonahx]

Would you mind sharing links to your other favorites?

[sandyarmstrong]

Just look down http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich-Hickey . Probably the most famous talks are "Simple Made Easy" and "The Value of Values".

I'm also a big fan of the talk on persistent data structures, simply because it was my first introduction to them.

[cgag]

Yes, "Simple Made Easy" is a must watch imo. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

"Are we there yet" is also great: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hic...

I also love "Hammock Driven Development": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc