Werner Erhard : The man behind The Forum

Werner Erhard is the creator of transformational models and applications for individual, organizational and social transformation. His innovative ideas have stimulated academic conversations at many Universities, most recently in the areas of integrity, leadership, and performance.

A brief history: Content derived from Wikipedia entries on ‘Werner Erhard’ and ‘Erhard Seminars Training’

Werner Erhard was known more for EST (or Erhard Seminars Training) in the past. EST was a unique training program that delivered the promise of lasting transformation to its participants. Listen to the man himself in this video

The purpose of est was to allow participants to achieve, in a very brief time, a sense of personal transformation and enhanced power. The est course was offered from late 1971 to late 1984. The last est Training was held in December 1984 in San Francisco; and in its place a newly developed course called ‘The Forum’ came into existence (since Jan 1985). Below is a brief video that comprises of Werner Erhard Interviews shot in different parts of USA.

‘est, Inc.’ evolved into ‘est, an Educational Corporation’, and eventually into ‘Werner Erhard & Associates’. WE&A purchased the assets of est in 1981. Later, WE&A’s name was changed to Landmark Education, and est was changed to The Landmark Forum. The business was then sold to former employees, with Erhard’s brother Harry Rosenberg becoming the CEO.

Present: The Landmark Education, incorporated in 1991, has taken on the game of taking transformation to millions of people all over the world. Its curriculum for living has been truly giving new life to people.

Since his retirement in 1991, Werner Erhard has been working away from the public eye and devoted time to to academic investigation, and presentations in writing and lectures of his ideas. After reading all the material about Werner Erhard and est on Wikipedia, you can help but wonder – how was it like? Well, I finish off with this video here:

[Quick Update: Visit http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=433651 to download Werner Erhard’s Scholarly Papers.]

[Another Update: A batchmate of mine from the Landmark Advanced Course and SELP expressed her concern that I am violating copyrights by posting the above link and/or videos.

Firstly, the PDF files downloadable from the above links clearly state in their opening page – “FAIR USE: You may redistribute this document freely, but please do not post the electronic file on the web. We welcome web links to the document(s). We revise our papers regularly, and providing a link to the original at the above URL ensures that readers will receive the most recent version. Thank you, Werner Erhard, Michael Jensen, S. Zaffron, K. Granger.”

Secondly, the videos are linked to their original source (which is allowed legally by Youtube, unless the owner of the video explicitly disables video embedding). I have also explicitly stated in this post that I have derived most of the material from Wikipedia (which is also an open and free source).

So, there is no copyright violation of any sort.]