TEDBlog May, 2011 Archive
10 May 2011
Remembering Omar Ahmad
TED speaker Omar Ahmad died this morning of a heart attack in San Carlos, California, where he was the Mayor. A Mayor with a very open line to his constituents. In December 2009, when he pitched us what would become his short talk for TED University at TED2010, his suggested title was: “How to effectively lobby elected officials and move them on issues you care about.” Now, coming from an elected official, it could have been a quip, a wisecrack, a provocation — but it was in fact an invitation: an invitation to get involved, to learn about the political system and about raising issues properly, to “add weight to your views” in the eyes of politicians. In other words, Omar wanted everybody to contribute to a better polity.
Omar was close to completing a TED Book titled Citizen Advocate: How to Get Government to Move Mountains and Change the World just before his passing. We hope to release that work soon.
He will be badly missed.
10 May 2011
Silk, the ancient material of the future: Fiorenzo Omenetto on TED.com
Fiorenzo Omenetto shares 20+ astonishing new uses for silk, one of nature’s most elegant materials — in transmitting light, improving sustainability, adding strength and making medical leaps and bounds. On stage, he shows a few intriguing items made of the versatile stuff. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 9:41)
Watch Fiorenzo Omenetto’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 900+ TEDTalks.
10 May 2011
Following the TED Fellows
Experimental, organic, and polymathic, the TED Fellows program continues to provoke, inspire – and defy convention. The initiative was inspired by the success of 100 groundbreaking Fellows from around Africa at TED Global in 2007, which included Alexandra Graham, cofounder of Lagray Chemicals, the first vertically integrated pharmaceutical manufacturing company in West Africa;Mohammed Bah Abba, innovator behind the pot-in-pot cooling device;Ainea Kimaro, biogas evangelist, whose work has reached from Rwanda to Tanzania; and Segeni Ngethe, founder of Kenyan e-commerce pioneer Mama Mikes.
Mohammed Bah Abba describes the fabrication of the pot-in-pot coolerImage courtesy of Rolex Awards
TED India Fellow Irfan Alam, founder of SammaaN Foundation Image courtesy of The Hindu
The TED Fellows initiative has since grown to include individuals from six continents, including around 100 from TED India. These mavericks, innovators, and paradigm-shifters operate in areas of interest ranging from robotic self-assembly to human rights activism. They continue to embody a fresh, youthful curiosity in their work, projects and initiatives. Here are what a few Fellows from the class of 2011 are up to:
The Fractal Architecture of Xavier VilaltaSu
Xavier Vilalta is a Spanish architect whose firm, XV Studio, uses fractal geometry to innovate in the built environment.Suzane Lee is a pioneer in the field of growing clothes. She uses a bacterial cellulose to propagate fabric that can subsequently be molded into dresses – or anything else that suits her fancy.Sumit Dagar is an interaction designer whose signature product, the Braille Phone, varies the height of a pixel instead of color to communicate information on a touchable “screen”.Sanjana Hattotuwa, founder of Groundviews, is a citizen journalist who seeks to capture and document post-conflict Sri Lanka in unflinching detail.
Kahumbu Stephanou organic farming pioneer
The 229 (and counting) Fellows represent a unique collection of cross-disciplinary pioneers from diverse places. The program team has sought to identify individuals whose work has the most potential for amplified impact. For example, Working Villages, Alexander Petroff’s organization, consists of only two full-time employees, but has overturned notions of food self-sufficiency in the Kivu region of the Congo.
Biomodd Philippines
Meanwhile, visual artist, filmmaker, biologist, and author Angelo Vermulen has propagated a worldwide series of cross-cultural, symbiotic installations, within which social interaction, ecology, and game culture converge. DK Osseo-Asare believes that low-cost, low-tech architecture can not only be climate-responsive and ecologically sensitive, but also aesthetically progressive and grounded in local culture. And entrepreneur Su Kahumbu contends that organic farming is the most cost-effective way of producing food in Africa.
Courtesy Halls of Learning
Jessica Green conducting microbial research
The TED Fellows program proudly associates itself with Fellows-led initiatives such as the renowned Ushahidi crowdsourcing platform, Jamaica’s Halls of Learning, the Green Lab at the University of Oregon and the Santa Fe Institute. As the program evolves into its third year, the noticeable accomplishments of our current Fellows and alumni continue to be a testament to the transformative power of recognizing and nurturing individuals whose ideas make a difference.
09 May 2011
Announcing the finalists in TED’s Full Spectrum auditions
Last month we announced our first-ever TED auditions, to explore the theme of TED2012: Full Spectrum. The challenge to the TED community: Make a one-minute video that describes your idea worth sharing — and how you’d share it with the world.
We received hundreds of submissions from around the world in our short timeframe, and narrowed our finalists down to a group of 17, with a wide range of formats and styles. Watching through these hundreds of one-minute videos was intriguing, hilarious, occasionally very moving. Most of all, it was inspiring to see how many people are thinking deeply about great ideas and how to share them.
It’s thrilling to announce the list of 17 Full Spectrum audition finalists. They’ll be presenting their auditions on May 24 in New York City, and we’ll be livestreaming the event worldwide. Congratulations to these finalists:
Chris Plough
Virgil Wong
Jess Hobbs
Dr. Jane Rigby and Dr. Amber Straughn
Cesar Kuriyama
James McBennett
Reggie Watts
Kevin Carroll
Joe Sabia
Onyx Ashanti
Eric Singer
LeeAnn Renninger & Tania Luna
Jared Ficklin
Erik Wahl
Lior Zoref
Beth Urech
Joshua Walters
Follow many of these finalists on Twitter >>
09 May 2011
Tales of ice-bound wonderlands: Paul Nicklen on TED.com
Diving under the Antarctic ice to get waaaaaay too close to the much-feared leopard seal, photographer Paul Nicklen found an extraordinary new friend. Share his hilarious, passionate stories of the polar wonderlands, illustrated by glorious images of the animals who live on and under the ice. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 17:56)
Watch Paul Nicklen’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 900+ TEDTalks.
06 May 2011
The hidden beauty of pollination: Louie Schwartzberg on TED.com
Pollination: it’s vital to life on Earth, but largely unseen by the human eye. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg shows us the intricate world of pollen and pollinators with gorgeous high-speed images from his film “Wings of Life,” inspired by the vanishing of one of nature’s primary pollinators, the honeybee. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 7:40)
Watch Louie Schwartzberg’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 900+ TEDTalks.
06 May 2011
Fellows Friday with Peter Haas
Interactive Fellows Friday Feature!
Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via Facebook. This week, Peter asks:
How can we move the discussion of NGO efficacy beyond just the numbers (total number of people served versus overhead costs, etc) towards the long term impacts of projects?
Click here to respond!
Many NGOs support infrastructure development to communities in need. What’s unique about what AIDG does?
AIDG is one of the few groups that’s focused on supporting small and medium enterprises, while also helping people doing infrastructure projects have access to high quality engineering expertise. We connect entrepreneurs with engineers who can help them make a better product and get closer to achieving international standards.
We also provide trainings in different aspects of engineering to the general public as part of our broader outreach. In Haiti, we’ve been doing a very large project for engineering training as a result of the earthquake in January of 2010. We started a program to train masons in confined masonry construction, a type of construction that makes buildings more resistant to collapse. So far, we’ve trained 3,000 masons out of 12,000 in the country.
You studied philosophy and psychology in school. How did you gain expertise in confined masonry, engineering, and business?
In my TED talk I discussed confined masonry, but I’m not an expert on it. I’m not an expert on engineering or business, either. What we do at AIDG is bring in other people who have expertise, and rely on them to do the trainings. What I think I’m able to do is see clearly what the deficiencies in a region are. I have an eye for what are good businesses to try to support, and what will fail.
I spent a year traveling around the world, volunteering for different NGOs. Because of my previous work on a horse ranch organic farm, I was able to repair things that people in the villages I traveled to weren’t sure how to repair. I realized, through that experience, that the typical NGO model really doesn’t work for giving village-scale infrastructure. There’s no economic incentive to preserve upkeep knowledge. People who have the knowledge of how to repair things generally get better jobs and move away. And people don’t treat the donation of an infrastructure project the same way they treat infrastructure that they’ve had to save up for and buy.
It got me wondering, “How do you institutionalize the knowledge of how to repair things?” And, “How do you make sure these projects that are done out in villages actually succeed?”
05 May 2011
Distant time and the hint of a multiverse: Sean Carroll on TED.com
At TEDxCaltech, cosmologist Sean Carroll attacks — in an entertaining and thought-provoking tour through the nature of time and the universe — a deceptively simple question: Why does time exist at all? The potential answers point to a surprising view of the nature of the universe, and our place in it. . (Recorded at TEDxCaltech, January 2011 at Pasadena, CA. Duration: 15:54)
Watch Sean Carroll’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 900+ TEDTalks.
05 May 2011
Browse our live chat with Neil Pasricha, or join in — until 2016
TEDTalks star Neil Pasricha, the author of “The Book of Awesome” and the new “Even More Awesome,” came by the TED office on Tuesday to be part of a one-hour live chat with TEDsters. He asked people to chime in on this question: “What do you do to make your life awesome?” Some lovely and surprising answers …
Luis Eduardo Dejo: a letter and a family picture I got from my mom and a painting from my friends before coming to the US give me that sense of being home. And that is AWESOME
Sherif Ibrahim: A girl I know, more of a friend, is saving money every week off of the paychecks she receives into a special bank account she made specifically for building an orphanage in Egypt… The look in her eyes and the passion she holds for it tells me she’s going to get it done. Doing something for others in this sense is, well, beautiful.
Nicholas Hirsch: I read to kids at the library on Saturday mornings, take long walks outside just to remind myself that the sky is still there, and find ways to surround myself with interesting and happy people. :)
Toni Smith: Awesome = waking up at 4am in New Zealand because you can’t sleep and finding an AWESOME Ted talk which just happens to have a link to an active conversation on the other side of the world about awesome things in many peoples’ lives!
RUSHABH SANGHAVI
Awesomeness:
Parking your car exactly between the lines in one shot.
Placing your legs within the block on a chequered floor.
Watching an aeroplane from in-between your fingers.
The first O-ring you blew in your life in cold.
When you helped an elderly and got replied ‘Thank you, son’ in a shaky voice.
Gary Burnett: Arriving home and your dog bounds over to you, knocks you down and licks your face frantically. Welcome home – awesome!
Amber Kearney: the beach makes me happy. mostly surfing, but really anything about the beach. i know there’s been some research done to show that salt water is a natural therapy, I just put it into practice!
As you can tell by the photo above, we had a good time with Neil on this chat — which was meant to run for exactly one hour. He asked to extend it 10 more minutes … then 10 more minutes … then 10 more. Finally we realized we’d better just leave it open for a while. What’s the maximum our system allows? 2068 days, 23 hours, and 27 minutes:
In photo above, that’s Neil in the orange sweater, with, from left around the table: TED.com editor Emily McManus, TEDx postproduction specialist David Webber, TED’s customer support rep Will True, media specialist Angela Cheng, film + video editor Kari Mulholland, Neil Pasricha, Neil’s rep Sarah Burningham, TED’s community catalyst Corvida Raven, and TED writer/editor Ben Lillie . Photo: Mike Femia.
04 May 2011
Twitter presents: great taglines for Eli Pariser’s talk
Eli Pariser’s TEDTalk “Beware online ‘filter bubbles’” is surprising, funny and a little bit scary. And as a side benefit, we noticed that people who share this talk have been coming up with some pretty great taglines before they RT the link. Excerpted samples below:
@fbliss: Don’t be a rat in an information maze:
@keysinthecloud Watch this if you thought you were paying attention:
@davebarbush Wake up and smell the algorithms:
@arpik Recommended for people living online …
@nickieprice Google & Facebook take note: I don’t want no stinkin’ filter bubble!
@Alliant_Library An interesting piece on why algorithms should not be curators of the world:
@JoostvandeLoo We are blinded by filter algorithms designed by clueless designers
@robertsck01 … makes me wonder what I should be doing to break outside my bubble -
@benintheory Info dystopia now, w/hope for redemption.
@tuffstudio Why we are going back to web 1.0:
@raoulteeuwen @Google : Can you please add a ‘Unfiltered’ button?
@wisdom Or, “be careful what you ask for, it might just be ALL you get [online]“
@mstinalee So we have food deserts (http://bit.ly/mkJYU4), cultural deserts (u know who u are), and now – Internet deserts …
Seen another good one? Written another good one? Hit the comments below …
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