TEDBlog September, 2010 Archive
10 September 2010
Fellows Friday with Sean Blagsvedt
What work of yours are you most proud of?
That would probably be what I’m doing now, which is Babajob, a web and mobile portal dedicated to helping informal-sector workers — at the bottom 90% of India and the developing world — find better jobs and opportunities over the phone.
I came across a Duke University paper while I was working at Microsoft Research that said people get out of poverty primarily via income diversification. People go into poverty due to healthcare-related debt, but they usually get out by doing things like changing jobs.
What this particular paper found was that those people with the strongest social networks could find out about jobs and could use that to land a better job that could potentially pull them out of poverty.
So at this point three years ago I had this insight that said, “Well, if only we could figure out some way to digitize all of this information, and figure out ways to make it scale, we might be able to catalyze the escape from poverty by connecting people with some more data about their work and the job opportunities they have.”
In some ways this is a very capitalist idea — this is about efficient markets. The idea is, if you give people more efficient markets and give them access to data, people will take advantage of this for their own rational self-interest, make better choices and raise their income.
09 September 2010
Local TEDxChange events have big plans
Cross-posted from the TEDx blog: On Monday, September 20, TED and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-host TEDxChange, a TEDx event that focuses on the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations 10 years ago. TEDxChange will look at how we’ve done in the past decade to meet the goals, and what needs to be done to ensure the health and well-being of future generations.
The event will include speakers Melinda French Gates, Graça Machel, Hans Rosling and Mechai Viravaidya, and a performance from Bajah + The Dry Eye.
But the conversation won’t end that day, or even in New York.
Around the world, TEDx organizers will be hosting webcast events of TEDxChange, and some will curate their own set of speakers and programming:
TEDxAmsterdam will be hosting an interactive dinner, inviting 8 African entrepreneurs to present their ideas to 100 change-makers from Amsterdam with the goal of gaining real, actionable support for their projects.
In Spain, TEDxMadrid has curated an audience of representatives from the UN, local representatives from the Millennium Development Goals campaign, local philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, NGOs and individuals interested in accomplishing the MDGs, with the goal to foster the growth of a community of people whose goals align with the MDGs.
TEDxBuenosAires‘ speaker lineup includes Jorge Gronda, Toty Flores and Martin Churba, all of whom are helping the country think outside the box in terms of business, social activism and humanitarian work.
TEDxNashville will host their event in a theatre at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and confirmed speakers include Trapper Markelz, who will discuss how the online gaming industry can encourage people to think differently about their health, and Nicholas Christakis, an expert in social network analytics …
Read about more amazing local events >>
Find a TEDxChange event near you >>
09 September 2010
An independent diplomat: Carne Ross on TED.com
After 15 years in the British diplomatic corps, Carne Ross became a “freelance diplomat,” running a bold nonprofit that gives small, developing and yet-unrecognized nations a voice in international relations. At the BIF-5 conference, he calls for a new kind of diplomacy that gives voice to small countries, that works with changing boundaries and that welcomes innovation.(Recorded at BIF-5, October 2009 in Providence, Rhode Island. Duration: 20:38)
Watch Carne Ross’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
Find out more about our content partner, the BIF Conference >>
08 September 2010
Art of substance and absence: Alwar Balasubramaniam on TED.com
Alwar Balasubramaniam’s sculpture plays with time, shape, shadow, perspective: four tricky sensations that can reveal — or conceal — what’s really out there. At TEDIndia, the artist shows slides of his extraordinary installations. (Recorded at TEDIndia, July 2009 in Mysore, India. Duration: 16:51)
Watch A. Balasubramaniam’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
07 September 2010
Why I’m excited about TEDxChange, by Melinda Gates
Via the Gates Foundation’s Foundation Notes blog: On Monday, Sept. 20, TEDxChange will look at the eight Millennium Development Goals set by the UN back in 2000 — and assess how close we are to reaching them by 2015. Melinda Gates made the video above to invite the world to watch online or at a local satellite event. From her post:
I have personally seen that, yes, even one person can affect the world. Whether it’s a mother-in-law in India learning a new way to ensure that her grandchild is born safely, or a medic administering lifesaving polio vaccines to hundreds of children — small acts add up. The future is not fixed. We all have a hand in how it plays out.
Learn more about TEDxChange and find a local TEDxChange viewing event >>
07 September 2010
The child-driven education: Sugata Mitra on TED.com
Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education — the best teachers and schools don’t exist where they’re needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 17:14)
Watch Sugata Mitra’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
06 September 2010
Powerful first-person reports from Pakistan, from TED’s Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson, curator of TED, was born in Pakistan, and last week, he and the Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz, his wife, spent several days in the flood zones there. They visited refugee camps and flooded villages, spoke to local aid workers and unusual volunteers, and collected many stories that simply aren’t being told by world media — stories of personal heroism and commitment in the face of this massive tragedy.
Chris has been aggregating these stories on his personal blog, interspersed with his own on-the-ground reports, photo and video. It’s a powerful read, with more to come throughout the week as more stories come in. Above is a short video Chris shot, of a refugee camp at Thatta; below is a shocking video sent by Dr. Awab Albi of the deplorable conditions at a pediatric ward in Shikarpur.
If you’re moved by these reports to get involved, Chris recommends starting at On the Ground in Pakistan.
04 September 2010
Lifesavers: Saturday TEDTalks Playlist
As a 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes New Zealand, and millions of people are being displaced by the monsoon flooding in Pakistan, we are reminded of Mother Nature’s powerful force and our lack of control over her moods. However, today’s playlist presents lifesavers: three speakers who have found ingenious solutions to the consequences of disaster.
Some of these solutions are being used to help the flood victims of rural Pakistan, with the help of Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund and TED’s Chris Anderson. Chris shares these stories on his own blog: http://tedchris.posterous.com/.
With his Lifesaver filter, Michael Pritchard demonstrates his solution to finding clean drinking water in desperate situations, in what appears to be a wine-into-water-type miracle.
Lalitesh Katragadda invites us all to be cartographers through his demo of Google’s Map Maker, a tool which helped saved thousands of lives during the aftermath of the 2008 cyclone that ravaged Myanmar.
Erik Hersman and his team knew two things when violence broke out in Kenya three years ago: lives were in danger and everyone had a cell phone. They used this to build Ushahidi, a tool that allows the fast dissemination of information and updates in crises and disasters.
We’d love to hear more of your favorite TEDTalks about lifesaving solutions. Add your suggestions to the comments below, join the conversation on Facebook, or email contact@ted.com with the subject PLAYLIST: LIFESAVERS. (Jog your memory with the TEDTalks spreadsheet.)
Curator of this playlist: Rachel Tobias
03 September 2010
Report from a Mission Blue hope spot: The Sargasso Sea
Mission Blue supporter Richard Rockefeller reports: Light winds, clear skies, a leisurely agenda and frequent laughter belie this group’s intensity of purpose. We are a collection of TEDsters, Bermudian government officials, scientists, media folk, and of course, Dr. Sylvia Earle, 2009 TED Prize Winner — spending a few days in the azure waters of the Sargasso Sea, the “golden floating rainforest of the sea,” as Sylvia has called it. On a mini version of April’s TED Mission Blue Voyage in the Galapagos, we are here to learn about the mysteries of the Sargasso Sea — another of Sylvia’s “hope spots” — and its critical value to life on earth. And we are here to help protect the entirety of it — more than a million square kilometers — if we can.
We motor out over the shallow — and healthy-appearing, I’m happy to report — reefs of the Bermuda Bank, through islands and strands of viscid, exotic smelling, light grey and pink coral spawn, which we photograph and collect in paper cups for closer examination. The spawn is often clumped together with lacy yellow Sargasso weed, or Sargassum, which spawns, in turn, endless puns about the ocean’s “sargasms,” etc.
Sargassum is named for the Sargasso Sea, a huge gyre created and bounded by the four great currents of the Atlantic Ocean. The weed often appears in patches as large as football fields, but the ones we encounter today are much smaller -– squash-court sized, at most — as the tail of Hurricane Danielle disrupted the big ones a few days ago. It looks pretty from the deck of our boat, truly golden against the deep ocean blue, but from this distance, not so very interesting after the first few patches. It is only when you get up close that the intricate structure of pea-sized air sacs on top, which keep it afloat, combined with a complex web work beneath, begin to suggest deeper secrets.
Sargassum, and the enormous sea from which the name derives, comprise an extraordinary and unique ecosystem. It not only harbors many creatures found nowhere else, it serves as an essential breeding ground and nursery to many of the species — eels and bluefin tuna, among others — that grace the waters and shores of the entire Atlantic Ocean.
Snorkeling among the weed hints more clearly at this diversity, as baby flying fish skip away across the water’s surface and comma-sized items zip among the weedy strands, too fast for these aging eyes, at least, to follow. We get a clearer view when Chris Flook, Collector of Specimens and Bermuda Lionfish Project Coordinator at the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo, comes alongside our boat and gives us a close-up view of the astonishing variety found in only a few scoops of Sargassum: baby puffers, needlefish, triggerfish, bonito and the well-disguised and rather cuddly-looking but voracious Sargassum fish. Each baby Sargussum fish, or “critter” as Sylvia calls them, is a little fingernail-sized but completely recognizable version of the adults we know.
We need to protect this incredible resource from harvesting, overfishing, dumping and other human abuse and negligence, and we need to do it soon. Compared to other large, high-seas protection efforts, this one may be relatively easy.
And as such, we hope that the completion of this conservation effort will set an example for others to follow in short order.
On Monday here in Bermuda, we kicked off our Sargasso Sea expedition by celebrating Sylvia Earle’s 75th birthday. You don’t need to know Sylvia personally to know what she wished for as she blew out the candles on her cake (a flour-and-sugar diorama of the Sargasso Sea, of course) surrounded by friends and colleagues. The wish is one that TED seeks to grant in honoring her with the TED Prize, a wish big enough to change the world.
Join us in granting Sylvia’s wish through the Mission Blue campaign -– and do your part to save the seas.
These gorgeous photos come from LookBermuda
03 September 2010
The world’s oldest living things: Rachel Sussman on TED.com
Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world’s oldest continuously living organisms — from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast to an “underground forest” in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 14:09)
Watch Rachel Sussman’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
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