TED 2015
“Back to the Future”
or
“My Annual Optimism (Re)Vaccination”
In March 2015, I was lucky enough to attend the TED conference for a 3rd time. As always, it was an exceptional opportunity to visit the future, explore the world (galaxy and universe too) and collide with 1,200+ extraordinary people. TED manages to be a 5 day intense helping of both brain candy and soul food, but the content, atmosphere and community provide longer-lasting nourishment too. Best of all, it’s a free all-you-can eat buffet at www.ted.com. Enjoy the tour!
TED continues to expand its influence and global presence with each passing year. With over 2.5 billion views online (up from 1 billion views in late 2012), TED talks have been translated into 100-plus languages and more than 1,900 talks (and growing) are available on the TED website.
If that weren't enough, TED has gone forth and multiplied, spawning sub-brands such as TED Global (held on Copacabana Beach in Rio last year), the TED Prize (a $1 million grant to pursue an earth-shaking goal), TED Women, TED Salon, TED India, TED@, TED City, TED Talks Education, TED Youth, TED University, TED Fellows (1,000 young applicants for 20 coveted spots), TED-Ed (450 animated lessons for school age kids with 120 million views to date), TED Radio Hour and TEDx, local, independently organized events (more than 12,000 so far and 10 new events held each day!), just to name a few.
Put simply, no global platform for disseminating new ideas has ever existed on this scale.
For a brief refresher on TED’s mission and history (or if you suffer from insomnia), I encourage you to read my blog from the TED 2013 and blog from the TED 2014 conferences. I've reproduced the background in italics below.
TED’s mission is “Ideas Worth Spreading” and while its initials stand for “Technology, Entertainment, Design”, the talks span a broad range of topics across the arts, sciences, humanities, psychology, medicine, business, philosophy and geopolitics. TED talks are meant to educate, inspire, challenge, entertain and whet/quench the curiosity appetite in 5–18 minute bite-sized chunks. At their best, TED talks make complex topics seem accessible, tell compelling stories and are, quite simply, world-class public speaking. As the Economist recently observed, “TED has done more to advance the art of lecturing in a decade than Oxford University has done in a thousand years.”
A brief history: Although I read about the original TED conference as a teenager in the mid ‘80’s, I watched my first TED talk on-line in 2006 not long after Chris Anderson (TED’s curator) utilized the emerging web video platforms to bravely open up (for free!) the long secretive, mysterious and elitist TED conference to the global village. Although this “radical openness” was controversial (especially with TED founder Richard Saul Wurman), the content went viral, surpassing 100 million views by 2009 and 1 BILLION views in November 2012. Soon, TED’s bite-sized, 18-minute speeches became a powerful way of communicating complex topics, sharing passions and launching dialogues. Celebrities from every walk of the arts, science and business endorsed the talks and shared their own favorite talks and playlists; although not everyone is a fan. Since then, the TED franchise continues to grow and democratize, with the ultimate distributed empowerment of ideas being TEDx, where almost anyone can put on a TED conference in their local school, garage, theatre or military base.
The unavoidable consequence of all this success, of course, is that the bar for what makes a “great” TED talk keeps going up. TED doesn’t take the easy road to keep quality rising, however. They work hard to coach accomplished subject matter experts to become tight, well-rehearsed speakers instead of seeking out the world’s best speechmakers. The result is an important authenticity missing from the typical highly-paid speakers circuit. Outstanding TED talks combine unexpected insights, deeply personal stories, humility/humor and the rare brilliance of making technical, nuanced and (often) controversial topics easy to understand.
The stakes are going up too. The big “ah-ha” for me at TED 2015 was the following: while TED occasionally gets criticized as naïve hucksterism, make no mistake, speakers are shooting with live ammo. TED has, and continues to be, a launching pad for more than just academic conversation. Each year, from the TED stage, start-ups are founded/funded, ideas are patented, musical careers are launched, schools and hospitals are built, bills are introduced, laws are changed, charitable funds are raised, and kickstarter projects are kickstarted. Take a passionate and deeply well-informed advocate, combine with an urgent and important issue, stir in an ounce of brilliant oratory, add a pinch of global instant digital distribution and bake for 5 days with 1,200 of the most ambitious, committed, wealthy and well-connected people on the planet and you get a hothouse of change. At TED, “ideas worth spreading” don’t stay ideas for very long. Just ask Deb Roy (who went from giving a TED talk about how babies learn to talk called The Birth of a Word while a professor at the MIT Media Lab to founding a company called Bluefin Labs to selling Bluefin to Twitter where he is now the Chief Media Scientist), Sugata Mitra (from a low-tech experiment in rural India Hole in the Wall to winning the TED prize so he could Build a School in the Cloud) or even Bono in 2005 launching the One Campaign at TED. The (not so) secret of TED is that it’s equal parts discourse AND entrepreneurship (broadly defined).
The conference’s early-Spring kick-off provides for an annual festival of media attention, whether giddy praise, shrill criticism (“chicken nuggets for the brain”), retractions or debate about TED’s legitimacy and effectiveness as a platform. While I admit a slightly :-) positive bias, which I am shamelessly sharing with all my friends, I suggest tuning it all out and judging for yourself. Immerse in the online talks or, if you can swing it, spending 40 glorious hours in Vancouver, at a TEDx event or the next TED Global event. You won’t regret it.
On to the conference!
TED 2015: 5 days, 112 speakers, 3 singers, two modern dancers, a saxaphone/drum combo, an 11-year old piano virtuoso, a Mexican guitar duo, a Sri Lankan opera singer, an Iranian stand-up comedian and 1,200 extraordinary attendees (present company excluded). For a gorgeous professional photo gallery of the 5 days, click here or here.
TED is gaining comfort and confidence as it settles into a second year at its new home at the beautifully situated Vancouver Convention Centre. TED’s custom-designed “pop-up theater” in-the-round integrates so seamlessly into its surroundings that you almost forget there may have been an insurance seminar in the room just a week before. Endless floor-to-ceiling glass looks out onto views of towering mountains across the water as sea planes glide in for a landing. The setting alone makes you feel like something epic is about to happen.
The theater’s beauty is a fitting match for the gorgeous production quality of TED talks; painstakingly rehearsed oratory, giant high-def screens with retina-quality display resolution, perfectly-tuned acoustics and a tightly choreographed dance of images and film. It is beautifully orchestrated, world-class elocution and audience engagement. TED understands how to use light, sound, staging and presentation to immerse its audience in talks so effectively you may forget you are learning about particle physics or laser oncology.
As always, TED 2015 defied easy explanation: an intense 30+ hour marathon of talks from an unimaginably broad range of disciplines. The effect can be dizzying and a little jarring: a jaw-dropping talk on “4-D printing” and one on technology to create a sixth human sense is paired with emotional stories of triumph over disease and transgender love. Or an exhilarating expo on surfing in the Arctic Circle can share a session with a speech on marital infidelity that was so stunning it caused one TEDster the need to “go lay down for 30 minutes.” Or a pin-dropping speech on cyber-bullying and talks on violence and race relations, linked together by a funny video short called “Dog vs Tater Tot.” Audiences ping-pong between the former Prime Minister of Australia discussing China/US relations and sitting blindfolded while listening to a talk by a performance artist who simulates self-injury. A surprise talk might involve the Dalai Lama, Skype-ing in for an impromptu interview. TED seeks to overwhelm its audience with the vertigo of too many amazing ideas to process real-time. A given 2 hour TED session (and there were 15 of them!!) can leave audiences alternatingly enthralled, inspired, crying, doubled over with laughter, singing or even taking a cognition break with group calisthenic air squats:
Emerging from these intense sessions, TED attendees spill out of the theater into social breaks, interactive exhibits, gourmet food truck lunches and evening parties to debrief, debate and discuss the content and cross-pollinate with the speakers and 1,200 of their closest friends. The ethos is decidedly low-key and overtly anti-networking, yet you can almost feel the neural fireworks going off in the crowd. A random group of 4–5 people chatting in the hall can easily contain: 1) the CEO/Founder of an social networking app with 100 million users, 2) the head of cancer research at Sloan-Kettering, 3) a former member of the British House of Lords who now works at 10 Downing Street, 4) the leader of a “green school” in Bali and 5)the Athletic Director of University of Michigan who just retired as the Chairman of a Fortune 500 company. While one attendee dismissed the conference as “the dork Olympics”, it’s hard not to walk around TED feeling, um, like you may not have fully reached your potential.
As I described in my TED 2014 blog, the atmosphere at TED is West Coast relaxed and collegial, yet under the surface is an intense marketplace of ideas. Conversations contain very little small talk; they go deep and impactful quickly. TED attendees self-select into a conference that contains almost zero direct connection to their day jobs but which allows them to think broadly about the world for 1 week each year. It is an unusual paradox: attendees represent some of the most successful and accomplished Type A people on the planet (the kind of place where 25–35 year olds have nametags with titles like: “Retired”, “On Sabbatical”, “Investor” or “Philanthropist”), yet they seek out a “brain-spa” like atmosphere where creativity and passion define the hierarchy, not money or fame. For 5 brief days, the 1% (celebrities, CEO’s, billionaires, politicians) bow at the feet of academics, physicists, police officers, starving artists, astronauts, scientists, designers, teachers, troubadours, social workers, a “cross-cultural psychologist who speaks 9 languages” and activists, all of whom are filled with contagious passion. Incredibly refreshing! For a description of the tiers of TED attendees (the “A”s through “F”s), see my 2013 TED Blog.
One big difference between TED and many other conferences is that the speakers are highly integrated into the social fabric of the week; they grab snacks and conversation with interested attendees during breaks, they are available for dinner at organized events, they debate other speakers in the halls (there were no less than 5 experts on exoplanets this year), they rock out to the bands that play the TED evening parties, etc. This creates an even broader sense of community and facilitates the kind of “idea alchemy” I described earlier.
While still filled with its share of the rich and famous (Bill Gates, Al Gore, Peter Gabriel, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, etc all wandered the halls), this year’s TED felt more sober, more earnest, with more gravity and substance and less flash than in prior years (no Cameron Diaz this year and Matt Damon sent the head of his water.org charity instead of turning heads himself). Maybe Vancouver is just a tad too far for Hollywood to travel or maybe attendees are self-selecting into a conference that increasingly focuses on more serious issues.
TED can also be a carnival of gadgetry when it paints its optimistic vision of the future. The conference hall is filled with a buffet of futuristic hands-on exhibits: virtual reality masks, test drives of a fully electric, three wheel, single driver “microcar” (half-car, half-motorcycle), try on a stratospheric exploration spacesuit, play on a harmonograph swingset, live multi-dimensional displays of the Twittersphere’s reaction to TED, etc. There are free yoga classes and massages between talks, oxygen bars, organic fruit juice smoothies blended via stationary bike power, more varieties of artisan coffee and chocolate than I thought mathematically possible, endless platters of gourmet food and snacks to be enjoyed in beautifully designed lounges.
More substantively, TED 2015 wrestled with the paradox of our times: technology is making our heads spin at an unprecedented rate, driving us to be incredibly optimistic about a future of longer life expectancy, cheap space travel, personalized medicine, etc and yet the world is more unstable than ever due to stateless terrorists, cybersecurity breaches, income and racial inequality and political polarization in the US and Europe. TED landed resoundingly on the optimistic side of the scale. Even when it explored the dark side of the global village, it did so by highlighting those who shine a light through activism, philanthropy, community empowerment, lobbying and innovation.
At its core, this is the lasting inspiration of TED. A parade of knowledgeable and passionate people with the courage and conviction to take that first small step and then tell the rest of the world about it. The lesson is simple but powerful: set a positive example and hordes of like-minded people will line up behind you.
The 110+ speakers I saw were broken up into 3 groups: 1) the main stage (TED talks, 18 minutes), 2) TED Fellows (group of extraordinary young people trying to change the world, recruited by TED to talk, future main stage speakers, 6 minutes) and 3) TED University (prominant TED attendees who auditioned to give a speech, 10 minutes). Below are my favorites, with a 4th category broken out (musicians, dancers, comedians)
My top 10 (ok, 16) main stage talks are below (links to the talk itself if already online or to a blog post if not…check www.ted.com frequently as they are uploading new talks every day):
Anand Giridarandas — A Tale of Two Americas (MUST WATCH!): exceptionally engaging tale of two men linked together in a life-or-death struggle following 9/11.
David Eagleman — Can we create new senses for humans?: demonstration of a mind-blowing invention by a neuroscientist that will allow people to take in their surroundings via a new input beyond the 5 senses
Esther Perel — A New Conversation About Infidelity: Brilliantly answers the questions: “Why do we cheat?” and “Why do happy people cheat?” and “Can a relationship recover from cheating?” Also watch Esther’s 2013 TED talk: The Secret to Desire in a Long-Term Relationship
Martine Rothblatt — Entrepreneurial Heroism: Incredibly uplifting family story. Feel like you’ve overcome/accomplished a lot? Martine founded SiriusXM Radio, came out as transgender, committed to an interacial marriage, had 4 kids (one of whom contracted a rare heart/lung disease), founded a second company to find a cure for her daughter’s illness (United Therapeutics, worth $8 billion today!) and is now working to create transplantable organs from the pig genome AND(!) a robot version of her wife.
Dave Isay — Everyone has a Story the World Needs to Hear: 2015 TED prize winner and founder of StoryCorps giving an emotional and interactive talk on the power of two loved ones sitting down, face to face, and asking each other questions.
Theaster Gates — How to Revive the Neighborhood: inspiring talk by a community activist who is transforming a crumbling South Side Chicago neighborhood into a “miniature Versailles”. Not just another gentrification story, but a creative way to use art and imagination to make a community thrive again AND keep the core residents from fleeing.
Daniel Kish — How I Use Sonar to Navigate the World: funny and impressive talk by a blind man who “sees” better than people with sight. Daniel repeats a frequent TED theme of not letting fear paralyze you.
Joseph DeSimone — What if 3-D Printing was 100x Faster?: Just when you thought you understood 3-D printing, along comes Carbon 3D, who has developed a breakthrough that takes it to another dimension. The implications for our world are pretty staggering.
Suki Kim — What I Learned Teaching English in North Korea: poingnant and touching talk about making an emotional student-teacher connection in a land devoid of freedom, access and belief in the future.
Chris Burkard — Surfing the Arctic: exceptional talk about redefining joy and pain, accompanied by gorgeous photo and video of an extreme surfing photographer who is driven by tackling the coldest, wildest, most remote surfing destinations. Watch Chris in action here.
Roman Mars — How to Design a Flag: funny talk about how a city’s flag can give you a window into the principles of great design. Roman is the host of 99% Invisible, a Kickstarter funded web radio show on the humor and insights in the obscure.
Clint Smith — Kids not Caskets: short but riveting poetry-based talk on how poor, urban African-American kids are raised to be afraid and trained that they cannot play with the freedom white children enjoy. Clint is a MASTERFUL storyteller and teacher so watch his two prior talks at TED and TEDx events until this talk is online.
Alan Eustace — Leaping from the Stratosphere: Thrilling tale of a world-breaking free-fall jump from 135,000 feet. What would you do with your money if you hit it big at a technology company? The head of engineering at Google self-funded a 3 year project to build a custom-designed space suit, strap it to a weather baloon and dive to Earth at over 800 miles/hour. Watch the video of this little “stunt” above until TED puts this talk online.
Abe Davis — Hearing is Believing: a companion talk to Dave Eagleman in terms of re-ordering your belief about the laws of nature. Abe demonstrated how to capture sound from silent video. The MIT-developed technology is pretty unreal, and the TED audience was immediately abuzz about the implications on surveillance and privacy.
Sophie Scott — Why we Laugh: rollicking and hysterical talk by a British neuroscientist on the science of laughter. Sophie reminds us that laughter has enormous social content and humans have highly tuned detectors for “real” laughter vs polite laughter.
Monica Lewinsky — The Price of Shame: As you would expect, Monica caused quite a stir at TED as one of her first public appearances in a decade. She described herself as “patient zero for online bullying” and made an emotional appeal for all of us to use our online voices to combat it.
My top 3 TED University talks were:
Bill Gates — The Next Outbreak? We’re Not Ready: Bill returned to the TED stage to give a short talk on Ebola as a case study for how and how not to attack future global infectious disease epidemics. As always, he was detailed, knowledgeable and committing billion$ to the cause. He invited the TEDsters to join him after the talk in a simulated Ebola treatment center in a room in the convention hall.
Bill Gross —What Makes a Good Startup?: The founder of Idealab gave a short but crisp talk on the ingredients necessary (but not sufficient) for success in start-ups. Bill’s research suggests that timing of launch has more to do with success than the idea, the team, the business model or funding.
Bruce Haden — A Different Kind of Drug Death: A harrowing tale of his brother’s death from drugs is artfully weaved to make a case for not treating drug use as a criminal justice issue but rather a mental health issue.
My top 8 TED Fellows talks are below:
Greg Gage — A Human to Human Interface: prepare to have your mind blown a 3rd time by a neuroscientist as you watch a demo of Greg’s invention.
Matt Kenyon — A Paper Monument: Subversive artist who has creates “blank” notepads with the names of Iraqi civilians who died since the US invasion in 2003 microprinted into the ruled lines. He has written hundreds of letters to Congress on the pads in order to get the names entered into the permanent Congressional record.
Cosmin Mihaiu — Reinventing Physical Therapy: Romanian-born entrepreneur who has created a new way of engaging in PT through software-based video games.
David Hertz — Empowerment Through Cooking: Brazilian, Jewish, Gay Chef who is teaching low-income young residents of Brazil’s favelas to be professional chefs through a movement he calls “social gastronomy”. Those who graduate “pay it forward” creating a way out of the slums. Check out his impressive organization.
Jedidah Isler — Chasing Massive Black Holes: Astrophysicist doing a charming, funny talk on “blazars” (you know, hyperactive, supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies). Jedidah was the first African American woman to receive a PhD in astronomy from Yale. May this cease to be noteworthy soon!
Aomawa Shields — Finding the “Goldilocks” Planet: fascinating talk by astrononomer and astrobiologist on simulating the climate of “exoplanets” to find those with the optimum distance from their star to be habitable to life. Aomawa is also passionate about teaching astronomy to middle school girls of color.
Nizar Ibrahim —Discovering New Dinosaurs: Morroccan-born “Dinosaur Detective” paleontologist who uses bioinformatics to identify previously undiscovered species of dinosaurs. He painted a picture of a bizarre, lost world (“the most dangerous place in the history of our planet”). Check out more of his work here: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/nizar-ibrahim/
Trevor Aaronson — Terrorists in Our Midst: Shocking talk alleging that the FBI is funding and staging terrorist activity on US soil in order to lure “real” terrorists into its undercover operations. Trevor calls this “national security theatre” and showed evidence that our government is preying on mentally ill and economically desperate men the US DOJ can portray as dangerous. Stay tuned to see if the FBI refutes Trevor’s claims.
TED 2015 was also chock-full of outstanding musicians, singers, dancers and comedians. Here are my faves:
Moon Hooch: Two saxaphones and a drum set rocked the TED stage (and the after-parties) in a most unexpected way. Free Jazz meets Electronic Dance Music = “Cave Music” = “Reverse DJ” (live music with layered recorded effects added). Do yourself a favor and find out when these guys will be in your town
Aloe Blacc did an extraordinary 3 song acoustic set, including a plaintive chant of “I Don’t Want to Die Young” as he put up his hands, channeling the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” movement
Negin Farsad, the hilarious Iranian “social justice comedian”, returned to TED as a TED Fellow and did 2 great comedy sets.
Somi gave several impressive performances featuring her hypnotic, deep, rich and broad vocal range.
ELEW (aka Eric Lewis) brought his fiery brand of piano rock jazz to the TED stage
Rodrigo y Gabriela, a stunning Mexican guitar duo. Watch them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-qgum7hFXk
Legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones joined cellist Joshua Roman and Somi onstage for an indescribable jazz dance improv
Teitur did an excellent acoustic set at TED 2015.
Only at TED moments:
Cocktails at 1 am with Jeff Bezos in his hotel suite. The only way I can describe the experience is “surreal”. The rest is off the record.
On a related note, learning how deeply connected the non-profit and technology communities are with help from the founders of Ka-Boom, IAVA, Chalkbeat/New Classrooms and Ethos Water
Being asked for conference advice by an 83-year old “TED virgin” who turned out to be Lord David Young. Lord Young was, among other things, one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest aides, Chairman of Cable & Wireless, Enterprise Advisor to David Cameron and an accomplished technology venture capitalist. I asked him his secret, he replied, “Life is like a bicycle, if you stop pedaling, you fall off”.
Overhearing two attendees wondering if Monica Lewinsky and Al Gore had bumped into each other in the hallways of the conference and what, if anything, was said.
Trying on hazardous material suits to simulate being an Ebola worker in West Africa, then listening to Bill Gates hold court on bioterrorism.
Astronaut/David Bowie cover artist Chris Hadfield opening up for Amanda Palmer and Moon Hooch, who created a huge mosh pit on the dance floor of the Fairmont Pacific Rim at a TED Afterhours party
Catching an extraordinary Vancouver sunset from a 45th floor party at the Rosewood Georgia residences
Reminiscing about the “dot com” era with Jason Pontin, former Editor-in-Chief of Red Herring magazine and Tim Koogle, former CEO of Yahoo, now an “organic farmer”
TED Attendee: I was employee number 110 at Google. Me: Wow, what did you work on? TED Attendee: I invented AdSense. Me: So, I guess that worked out pretty well?
Drinks with Li Lu, who described himself as “an investment banker”. Turns out he was a key student leader during the Tianamen Square protests and a once-rumored successor to Warren Buffett.
Chatting with an 18-year old Harvard freshman who chose to attend TED instead of partying in Cancun for his college Spring Break. Came this close to asking him why he thinks he got into Harvard, then realized it was a stupid question
Trying to keep up with the Chief Product Officer at Netflix and a VC as they discuss Net Neutrality
