I saw Catmull's keynote at SIGGRAPH 2008, and it was spectacular. It had some common elements to this one, but was different overall. What really struck me was

I saw Catmull's keynote at SIGGRAPH 2008, and it was spectacular. It had some common elements to this one, but was different overall. What really struck me was how he is not quite a manager, nor a technical person, nor a creative person, but somehow an "organizer" for all 3 of the above groups to work together to create magnificent works of art. I think in large part this comes from his technical background, which is simply incredible: student of Ivan Sutherland's (of Sketchpad fame), inventor or discoverer of z-buffering, antialiasing, texture mapping, subdivision surfaces, b-splines, and key developer of Renderman! (For those not in computer graphics, any one of these would be sufficient to give you lifetime fame.)