“Volunteer firefighter Mark Bezos tells a story of an act of heroism that didn’t go quite as expected — but that taught him a big lesson: Don’t wait to be a hero.”
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“If I should have a daughter, instead of Mom, she’s gonna call me Point B … ” began spoken word poet Sarah Kay, in a talk that inspired two standing ovations at TED2011. She tells the story of her metamorphosis — from a wide-eyed teenager soaking in verse at New York’s Bowery Poetry Club to a teacher connecting kids with the power of self-expression through Project V.O.I.C.E. — and gives two breathtaking performances of “B” and “Hiroshima.”
MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language — so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son’s life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch “gaaaa” slowly turn into “water.” Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn.
Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.
“JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases. At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. Learn more about his work and learn how you can join in at insideoutproject.net.”
I’m off to the TED2011 conference, which will be my 10th TED conference. I’ll be stopping by LA this weekend to meet up with some TEDsters, then in Palm Springs all of Sunday to meet with TEDx organizers, then Long Beach for a backstage peek, then back to Palm Springs the rest of the week. Let me know if your going, in LA, or follow me on twitter for updates. And yes, that is me on the back of a shared bike last year cruising around the resort during one of the session breaks with my friend Ash from Australia. Also follow the Facebook Fanpage for occasional quick updates.
For those of you that could not make it to the DLD conference in Munich this year like myself, there is a livestream of their lectures all 3 days. Take a peek at their schedule then grab some food and watch the all day series of talks. Keep in mind the schedule is in Munich time, so I think about 5-6 hours ahead of EST.
*they also have a great archive of each video in that livestream url. Watch these anytime.
Cocohon 555 celebrates a gathering to bring together a feast with 5 pigs, 5 wine makers , and 5 chefs. I’m thinking about going to the one in Boston next sunday. They have dates in NYC, Seattle, Napa, SF, DC, Chicago, Denver, LA, and New Orleans as well. Looks pretty amazing. Has anyone here been?
“Cochon 555 is a one-of-a-kind traveling culinary competition and tasting event–five chefs, five pigs, five wine makers–to promote sustainable farming of heritage breed pigs. Each stop along the ten-city tour offers hard-working local farmers the opportunity to connect with like-minded agriculturalists, renowned chefs and the pork-loving public. Our goal is to help family farms sustain and expand their businesses and to encourage breed diversity. Cochon 555 is the only heritage breed pig culinary competition in the country.”
Back in October I posted about an amazing experience in touching a living lung during TEDmed2010. Well, now the talk about the Vitro machine that helps keep these organs alive for transplants is online here.
“Dr. Keshavjee mesmerizes the TEDMED audience as he unveils a breathing lung on stage and describes how this technology is saving lives.”
One of my favorite conferences to attend in the best location in Monterey CA is the EG conference happening April 7-9. It’s a very intimate gathering with 300 attendees and speakers for 3 days over lectures, conversations, and an assortment of entertainment ranging from discovery, music, technology, the mind, and amazing stories… or at Matt Groening of the Simpsons who also attends says “It’s like being a fish and analyzing your water…it’s too hard to describe the EG experience.”
I’d highly recommend anyone that can come to attend since I’ll be attending this year as well. it’ll be my 3rd year. Also, for those of you that might need a bit of help, if I can get 4 other readers to attend, I can get a pretty good discount off for each of you. If you are interested, throw me an email and I can send you more details.
Charity Tillemann was the opening act at TEDmed 2010 back in October. Watch the video, and don’t miss out on the amazing talk after her singing. It’s an unbelievable story and I don’t want to ruin anything so if you have 20 minutes, watch the video and be prepared to be amazed with her story. I got to have dinner with Charity later that night and she is quite a firecracker of a personality!
Ads on the web are horrible. Marketing needs to change, and more importantly, the meaning needs to change and relate back to a user desire, versus a forced upon undesirable interrupting ad.
TED is launching a short project to solve this issue, or at least to understand it more. They got million of people to watch 18 minute ads about ideas worth spreading, so why not take on the challenge in making ads worth spreading… or bette yet, what is an ad in the web world… what should it be, a broadcast, an idea, a problem, a challenge, a solution, or something else.
Watch the video above and learn more about this project which you can participate in here.