Total TED immersion
You have heard of TED, because you are always on the lookout for new trends and developments in science, technology and economics, right?
If you do not know TED, you are missing out big time. It is one of the most spoken about conferences where “the world’s greatest thinkers and doers” meet every year to present their newest findings, discuss, engage and enjoy.
TED started out in 1984, and stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design.” Participation is expensive - and chances are, even if you have the cash you won’t get a seat, because TED is sold out in advance, way in advance. But do not despair! The internet is here to save the day for you.
Almost all TED talks are available online, making ted.com one of the most inspiring and interesting resource for brain food I know of these days. You can search by attributes “inspiring, funny, jaw-dropping…”, topics, speaker - and trust me, almost all of those talks are more than worth the 5-20 minutes you will spend watching them. Seriously. So take the time and dive in. You will laugh. You will be excited. You will be surprised.
Here are some of my favourite talks - your mileage may vary of course:
- Clifford Stoll - 18 minutes with an agile mind
- Malcolm Gladwell - what we can learn from spaghetti sauce
- Lawrence Lessig - how creativity is strangled by the law
- Rives - select from three videos on the site, and once you are hooked, his website has some more media to indulge
- Ben Saunders - three things to know before you ski to the north pole
- Will Wright - toys that make worlds
- Aubrey de Grey - why we age and how we can avoid it
- Richard St. John - 8 secrets of success
- Hans Rosling - the best stats you’ve ever seen (well, at least as non-consultant, as the Consultant Ninja points out)
And you will find John Doerr, Bill Clinton, Philippe Starck, Richard Branson, Larry Page, Stephen Hawking, Norman Foster, Jane Goodall… it just goes on and on. (To be honest, it took me two days to complete this post because whenever I was looking through the list of talks for the one I really liked, I discovered new ones that I just had to at least skim through)
To round things off, this year’s sponsor Autodesk has had visual artists work out pictures mirroring the contents of the various speeches, which you can download in one big (over 50MB) PDF from their site. They call it “TEDBIGVIZ”. This way of visualization is really powerful. You can grasp the concepts and ideas of the talks without having heard/seen the talk, but of course it is even better when you use this to recap contents already familiar to you.
So, instead of getting dull TV, I recommend you feed your brain with some quality stuff.
Of course, if there are other resources (preferably free) for inspiration and insight, please share them in the comments!
