Bob Ballard was yesterday's final speaker at BIF 2 and my guess is that he has told the same anecdotes about his career and experiences a thousand times. Even the sharpest blade dulls over time, but Ballard's blade seemed sharp as ever. My assumption is that he is an exceptional fundraiser -- a necessary skill for a true explorer. In only 15 minutes he got us all jazzed about everything from the Titanic, to 12 foot worms at the bottom of the ocean, to a new inner space center to be launched in the Ocean State. It is hard to not admire Bob and be incredibly impressed by his life story.

Dean Kamen was today's first storyteller and perhaps the world's most famous living inventor. Kamen wasn't selling his funky Segway scooter (although we did see an amazing application of that technology in a wheelchair), he was laser focused on his education program called FIRST. He's been promoting and growing FIRST for more than 15 years and it's been amazingly successful. Of course (and thankfully), he's not nearly done, since his mission is to give kids the opportunity to embrace science and mathematics and view them as meaningful and worthwhile disciplines.

A mentor once told me that good leadership is like writing in the snow. You write your message in the snow and over time, new snow covers it up. So you write your message again. And again. And again. Until it sticks.