I just returned from my first TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Long Beach. My colleagues at Kauffman have been urging me to go for a number of years, but each year I had a different (valid) excuse. This year I didn’t have one. Admittedly, I was skeptical of spending an entire week listening to various speakers give speeches, but I went.
Wow! What an amazing line-up of incredible people doing incredible things with their lives to change the world. There were the usual networking opportunities that events of this kind always offer. But the true value of the conference was watching and then thinking about the implications of those on stage.
You can watch for yourself by going to ted.com, where you’ll find a combination of videos from this year’s conference and those from previous years. Watching them is the best antidote to the anxious worry I know is out there throughout the country about our best days behind us. The people on that stage as well as the roughly 2,000 in the audience surely don’t believe in that, and they are living their lives to prove the pessimists wrong.
I admit to having plenty of worries about the future myself, but when I am lucky enough to witness an event like what I just saw I count myself grateful to be living in a country and at a time that is capable of celebrating such awe-inspiring creativity, commitment, and inspiration. Go to the site and spend some time there; you’ll see what I mean.
I like the technology ones, most of the others are less than worthless. I remember a TED of some idiot going on about movement in income bands in society, but neglects to mention that the bands are closer in poorer societies. I don't like people withholding key pieces of information.
Posted by: Ian Random | March 08, 2012 at 05:21 PM