31 August 2006
Pit-stop for doctors
One of the "Ten Faces of Innovation" described in Tom Kelley's recent book is that of the cross-pollinator, who "can create something new and better through an unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts".
Tom is the general manager of TEDPrize supporter IDEO. During a recent talk he mentioned as an example of cross-pollination "taking a group of emergency room doctors to see how Nascar pit-teams work". Time is of essence in both the ER and a car race, and "doctors were impressed by the high level of preparation and coordination of the pit team". Tom explained that while the Nascar teams are perfectly synchronized and approach the car from planned directions and carrying all the necessary tools and parts on them, doctors often enter the ER just to start asking nurses to gather, every time anew, the necessary tools and machines and drugs. Of course there is at least one major difference between the two situations: pit teams can prepare and rehearse for a known situation, while the doctor has first to figure it out. But after the visit, Tom said, at least one hospital started designing ER procedures differently, creating prepackaged toolkits for the most common situations, designing new procedures, and trying to rationalize and better synchronize the movements of medical personnel.
Now the Italian daily Il Giornale has a story on the same topic involving a hospital in Britain, London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and the pit crew of Italian Formula One top team Ferrari.
The newspaper has Martin Elliott, a surgeon, tell how "until a couple of years ago it was chaotic: there was alot of noise, everyone moved around with no coordination with the others". The Ferrari people filmed the doctors at work, then dissected the images with them. "For years we've been convinced that we were doing things pretty well, but seeing the tape it was shocking to notice our lack of coordination", says Nick Pigott of the intensive-care unit. The Ferrarists, explains Il Giornale, gave suggestions on people's training, disposition, synchronization and how to codify effective and time-saving procedures and routines. Elliott told the journalist that the cross-pollination "has transformed the intensive-care unit in a center of silent precision" where "complications have been substantially reduced".
[Cross-posted on LunchOverIP]
29 August 2006
Ze Frank on TEDTalks
Ze Frank rose to Internet fame in 2001 with his viral video How to Dance Properly, and has been a purveyor of imaginative online comedy ever since. His latest experiment, the show, is posted daily at zefrank.com. In this performance, drawn from the TED2004 archive, he offers the signature blend of comedy, technology and social theory that made him our favorite philosopher comic. (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:42)
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29 August 2006
Mena Trott on TEDTalks
Mena Trott is the 28-year-old founder of leading blog software company Six Apart (Creators of Typepad, Movable Type, LiveJournal and Vox). In this talk, she explores the personal side of blogging. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 17:30)
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29 August 2006
Richard Baraniuk on TEDTalks
Richard Baraniuk is a Rice University professor with a giant vision: to create a free, global online education system. In this presentation, he introduces Connexions, the open-access publishing system that's changing the landscape of education by providing free coursework and educational materials to everyone in the world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:18)
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29 August 2006
Jimmy Wales on TEDTalks
Jimmy Wales is founder of Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, ever-expanding, and thoroughly addictive encyclopedia of the future. In this presentation, he explains how Wikipedia's collaborative system works, and why it succeeds. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 20:47)
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15 August 2006
Ross Lovegrove on TEDTalks
Ross Lovegrove is an industrial designer, best known for his work on the Sony Walkman and Apple iMac. In this highly visual presentation, he presents his recent work -- from furniture to water bottles -- which is organic in form and inspired by nature. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:14)
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15 August 2006
Amy Smith on TEDTalks
MIT engineer Amy Smith designs ingenious low-cost devices to tackle tough problems in developing countries. She received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant in 2004, and was the first woman to win MIT's famed Lemelson Prize. In this talk, she explains the vision behind her inventions, which include eco-friendly charcoal and a laboratory incubator that doesn't require electricity. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 15:48)
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13 August 2006
Natalie MacMaster at the Cape Cod Melody Tent
Every summer I escape California for Cape Cod in hopes of injecting my kids with a little bit of the East Coast. After settling in with the troupes, I quickly check the local papers to see what music and theater is playing during our stay. I've gotten pretty lucky in past years and this year was no exception. What did I see was playing? A double bill of two of my favorite performers -- Bela Fleck and Natalie MacMaster. I have seen Bela Fleck play live a number of times before and am always blown away by his creativity and versatility (on the banjo, no less). But as virtuosic as Bela Fleck is, the star of this show was Natalie MacMaster. As she did at TED2002 and TED2003, Natalie won over the audience with her charm and exuberance (and a little bit of step-dancing) and then blew everyone away with her astonishing bowing technique, engrossing melodies and the pure musicality of her joyous music. If Natalie comes to your town, you must drop everything and go hear her play. You will thank me.
11 August 2006
TEDster Zem Joaquin has launched
TEDster Zem Joaquin has launched a new green column in House and Garden magazine, beginning with the September issue, on newstands now. Joaquin, an entrepreneur and activist in the environmental movement, also writes her own green products and design blog called ecofabulous, whose motto is sustainable. sexy. stuff.
She is a friend and protegé of and advocate for William McDonough, the green architect and co-founder with Michael Braungardt of the Cradle to Cradle design movement, who has spoken at several TED conferences in the past.
Zem's column in H&G is as well-written and humorous as her blog, and teaches environmental know-how without preaching. Under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief Dominique Browning, H&G has been integrating green design editorial for many years now, and features Graham Hill, founder of Treehugger and Laurie David, executive producer of An Inconvenient Truth as contributors.
09 August 2006
Jennifer Lin on TEDTalks
Jennifer Lin is an extraordinary young concert pianist, 14 years old when she appeared at TED. In this performance, she plays Joseph Hoffman's "Kaleidoscope," Robert Schumann's "Abegg Variations" and Jack Fina's "Bumble Boogie," as well as a dazzling improvisation based on a few notes chosen by a well-known audience member (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:51)
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09 August 2006
Sirena Huang on TEDTalks
Sirena Huang started violin lessons at four, and made her professional solo debut at age nine, with the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra. Now 11, she has won top prizes in numerous international competitions, delighting audiences worldwide with her virtuosity and musical imagination. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 25:25)
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07 August 2006
Martin Rees: An Apollo project for green energy
Sir Martin Rees is dismayed by the "worrisome lack of determination" shown last month in St Petersburg by the leaders of the G8 countries to accelerate the development of clean energy technologies. In an editorial published by the journal Science this week (only the abstract is available online), he calls for a significant increase in public R&D spending for technologies "that are too far from market" (nuclear fusion, biomass, geothermal, solar, wind etc), funded by carbon taxes or other similar instruments.
Unless the global approach to energy changes radically, he says, "the world will continue to become more reliant on fossil fuels beyond 2030" and that will lead to disastrous increases in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Sir Martin is famed for his pessimism (his most recent bestseller is titled "Our final century" - meaning the one we're living; he has predicted "a 50 percent chance of a really severe setback to civilization by the end of the century"; and last year at TEDGLOBAL in Oxford he warned against the risks of bio and cybertech) but he is also one of the world's most respected scientists and the president of Britain's Royal Society.
In the Science article (the Guardian has a write-up) Sir Martin calls for a high-profile, sharply-focused programme "analogous to the Manhattan or Apollo project, but on a global, rather than national, scale". These projects, he writes, have shown that when a goal is given a high priority "things can be done much more rapidly than would have happened in the normal course of events".
[Cross-posted on LunchOverIP]
07 August 2006
Bono buys a stake in Forbes
Elevation Partners, a private-equity group of which U2 singer, make-poverty-history activist and TEDprize winner Bono is one of the 6 partners, has bought a "significant minority stake" (rumored to be of more than 40 percent, and worth US$ 250 to 300 million) in Forbes Media, which includes Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. Today's International Herald Tribune has the full story. The IHT comments: "Of course, Bono's investment in a magazine that celebrates wealth and consumption is bound to raise eyebrows". But it turns out that Steve Forbes' favorite U2 song is "One": "We're one, but we're not the same"..
[Cross-posted on LunchOverIP]
01 August 2006
Jeff Han on TEDTalks
Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences . Here, he demonstrates — for the first time publicly — his intuitive, "interface-free," touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 09:32)
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01 August 2006
Nicholas Negroponte on TEDTalks
Nicholas Negroponte is former Director of the MIT Media Lab, and founder of the non-profit, One Laptop Per Child, dedicated to making the famed "$100 laptop" a reality. In this talk, he outlines some of the challenges of getting the laptop produced, and explains why he stepped down as Media Lab director to focus on the initiative full-time, "for the rest of my life." (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 18:21)
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