Books, film, art, food — and science and social issues — were at the center of the talks at the sixth TEDSalon in London. The event took place on May 10 in a packed Unicorn Theatre, with the support of longtime TED partner frog.

“Our bodies are made of atoms, but our lives are made of stories”, host and TEDGlobal curator Bruno Giussani said, introducing the event’s theme: “Unseen Narratives.” We are our stories, he suggested, our memories, desires, passions, dramas. Stories are what our imagination projects, what our creativity produces, what helps us to make sense of the world and relate to others. And an eclectic set of little-known stories the Salon presented.

The evening started with a sharp talk about the million children who live in orphanages in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Georgette Mulheir, CEO of nonprofit Lumos, told how behind each of them “there is a story of desperate parents who feel that they have run out of options” and explained the huge emotional, developmental and economic cost of separating children from families. Mulheir’s groundbreaking work focuses on helping governments from Eastern Europe to Sudan reform systems, close down orphanages, and set up alternative services reuniting children with families or foster care. When they started, more than 200,000 children were in orphanages in Romania; now there are fewer than 10,000. “This is one form of child abuse that can be eradicated in our lifetime.”

Another story of youth and growing up, but of a radically different kind, was told by movie director Beeban Kidron. She’s a co-founder of Filmclub, one of the largest after-school organizations in the UK. She beautifully narrated a film she made specially for the TEDSalon, a story about the power of stories and creating a common narrative and about the transformational power of film. “If we want different values,” she said, “we have to tell a different story. Or, as a 12-year-old said after watching The Wizard of Oz, ‘every person should watch this movie, because unless you do, you may not know that you too have a heart.’”

David Battistella, another filmmaker, followed his heart from Canada to Florence when he fell in love with the story of the Florence Dome and Filippo Brunelleschi’s Renaissance struggle to build it. “Everything that went into building the Cupola went into building the modern world,” he said in a powerful talk, and then went on to describe inventions, designs, technologies — and the power of human ingenuity.

Choreograher Jasmin Vardimon, whose eponymous company is in residence at contemporary dance powerhouse Sadler’s Wells in London, brought a sequence of her piece “Yesterday” to the Salon. In it dancer Aoi Nakamura, tracked by a camera, simply and hauntingly traced maps on her skin, representing the physical memories that are stored in our bodies rather than in our minds.

Stem cell pioneer Pete Coffey was next, leader of the London Project. Fifteen years after stem cells were isolated for the first time, the first real clinical trials using stem cells are now taking place. Research carried out by Coffey and his team has shown that stem-cell therapy can halt the course of a common form of blindness (AMD, or age-related macular degeneration) and possibly restore sight. Coffey made both a scientifically and economically convincing case for this therapy.

Communication entrepreneur Laura Galloway told a tale of “genetic tourism”: presented with a DNA test kit, she found to her surprise that she’s genetically related to the Sami people, the last remaining indigenous people of Northern Europe, who inhabit large portions of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and a corner of Russia. Galloway’s experience with Arctic farmers’ markets, festivals and the Sami led her to suggest that genetics may bring us increasingly in contact with our “original sources.” “Everyone belongs somewhere,” she said. “You have a tribe. DNA is your birthright.”

The first session was closed by three science comedians. The Festival of the Spoken Nerd, comprising Helen Arney, Matt Parker and Steve Mould (it’s them in the photo), examined the ubiquitous barcode — a hilarious and informative story of lasers and math and of a piece of technology that’s so embedded in our lifes that we dont’ notice it anymore.

There are many places where we can find hidden stories. Author Tracy Chevalier opened the second session by sharing how she looks at artworks to find those narratives. She described how she came up with the story of The Girl With the Pearl Earring by interrogating Vermeer’s painting and its historical context, how Chardin’s Boy Building a House of Cards can suggest a story of two servants, and how the wistful look in the eyes of an anonymous portrait inspired in her yet another story.

From those three paintings, the Salon jumped to thousands, with Phaidon’s editorial director, Amanda Renshaw, describing the ten-year journey to curate The Art Museum, a unique and uniquely ambitious art book. The project started with a question: If you had unlimited space, unlimited budget, and access to the most important, the most beautiful and most desirable works of art from around the world, what would you put in an ideal museum? Ten years later, the result is itself a piece of art. Renshaw talked about the process, the choices, the organization of such a vast array of artworks from all around the world — from cave paintings to today’s — and the panic and joys associated with it. And at the end of her talk, one of the attendees found an envelope carefully hidden beneath their seat, and won a copy of the 992-page, 3,000-photo book.

Health practitioner, former Buddhist monk, and talented juggler Andy Puddicombe, the go-to meditation teacher for British politicians, executives and celebrities, was challenged to change the audience’s minds about meditation in 10 minutes. “When is the last time you took 10 minutes to do nothing?” he asked. He dispelled the idea that meditation involves seating in awkward positions for long periodsof time, and invited to take care of our mind, 10 minutes a day. “Our mind, the one that needs to be focused, creative and spontaneous for your to thrive, needs to be taken care of.”

British pop band Red Box was first active in the 1980s and early 1990s. Under the leadership of Simon Toulson-Clarke, it is now back on tour forging new path sand stories made of music and friendship. They played the beautiful “Brighter Blue” from their new album Plenty, and their classic “Heart of the Sun.”

Norwegian historian and economist Sturla Ellingvag told a story of pressure, transparency and dialogue. When a young Norwegian woman was brutally killed in London and her presumed murderer escaped to Yemen where he lives free, protected by his father’s wealth and connections, Ellingvag and others started a Facebook group to put pressure on multinationals to cancel their contracts with the father. 53,000 signed up, and at the end several companies withdrew their business connections with the father, because of the family’s refusal to let their son stand trial.

Tristram Stuart bounded on stage next to share his mission to expose global food waste. Stuart used nine (still good) biscuits from a small box salvaged from a bin outside a supermarket the morning of the Salon to illustrate what happens to our food and how we waste it on such a colossal and systemic scale. If 9 is our total food supply: 1 is lost before leaving the farm; 3 are used to feed livestock, but we get only 1 back; and 2 are thrown away in various ways. Food waste is colossal, and it happens for different reasons, both in developed and in emerging countries.

The closing speaker, Pam Warhurst, raised the roof of the theatre with the story of Incredible Edible. This is the story of the transformation of a “normal” market town, Todmorden, 15,000 inhabitants in the north of England, around the narrative of food. By focusing on community (turning plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens), learning (teaching food in schools and more) and business (promoting local food), the entire town was brought into the movement, with the inclusive motto “If you eat, you are in.” It’s a powerful, inspiring story of the (real) power of small actions. Edible landscapes are now being replicated in England and around the world, from New Zealand to Chile.

Bringing the Salon to an end was a showing of a 360-degree photo of the speakers and of the audience listening, taken by British photographer Thomas Mills.

Attendees left with copies of Andy Puddicombe’s book Get Some Headspace and of frog’s design mind magazine, whose current issue is devoted to the theme of “Passion.”

A group of TED translators was in the audience and wrote their own take, while TEDster Nesta Morgan turned the event into art sketches.

(Reported by Caitlin Kraft Buchman. Photo Dafydd Jones/TED)

One of the TED’s curators, Bruno Giussani, had been in discussion with Nasheed and his entourage about a possible talk on climate change and the vital challenge that rising sea levels represent for the Maldives. Indeed, the group of islands in the Indian Ocean are the lowest country on Earth, with the highest point at just 2.4 meters (7 feet and a half) above sea level, and Nasheed has been a very active and vocal proponent of serious measures. At the end of March “The Island President“, a film about Nasheed and his environmental fight will open in American theatres and, later, in other countries. It was finished before the coup, and it’s a must-see for anyone interested in climate change, but also in the situation of small countries and in the way the global decision-making process functions.

When Nasheed was forced to resign, the discussion between TED and his team remained open, but another theme became more urgent: what Nasheed, in an op-ed article a few days ago in the New York Times, called the “dregs of dictatorship”. On that topic, yesterday, in a makeshift “studio” in the Maldives, Nasheed recorded a short talk that was shown this morning at TED in Long Beach. It’s a powerful and important cautionary tale for many countries that are transitioning to democracy. In his words: “I believe that the events in the Maldives represent a warning for other Muslim nations undergoing democratic reform: dictators can be removed in a day, but it can take years to stamp out the lingering remnants of their authoritarian rule.”

Here is Nasheed’s recorded talk:

“Journeys can be of many sorts,” TED European director, and the evening’s host, Bruno Giussani said, opening the Salon. And indeed the program was eclectic, featuring nine speakers, two performers, a fireside chat and the unveiling of the new issue of design mind magazine — published by partner frog and fully devoted to TEDGlobal 2011. The audience was also very diverse: 250 attendees gathered at the Unicorn Theatre from all over the UK and from several European countries.

The latest work of the opening speaker, Taryn Simon, is on show (until the end of the year) at the Tate Modern in London and at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Titled “A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters,” it is a remarkably insightful investigation into the nature of genealogy and the way our lives are shaped by the interplay of many different forces. Simon spoke at TEDGlobal (see her TEDTalk) three years ago, and has been described by the Observer as “the most important photographer of her generation.” Through powerful and surprising storytelling, she took the audience on a narrated tour of her new work, from India (where we met Chandraban, the man who gives the title to the work, who walked one day into an Indian land registry office to find that he had been declared dead, at the instigation of members of his family who wanted to appropriate his land) to Kenyan healers, modern China, a Ukranian orphanage, occupied Poland, and more.

Mark Rock was next. The founder of Audioboo and creator of a technology that makes it seriously easy to “capture the spoken word,” he believes that the explosion of technology and of online innovation in the last few years has left oral history behind. From the treble of a child’s sadness, to water washing on the shore, an earthquake, or a mother’s voice forever silenced by death, the audience was reminded of the fundamental power of voice, and shown ways to make oral storytelling more permanent.

British soul singer Alice Russell took then the stage, accompanied by guitarist Alex Cowan, for an encore of her TEDGlobal 2011 performance, singing her unique take on “Crazy.”

“There is that other singer, or rather that intriguing pop phenomenon,” said Giussani introducing the next speaker, “a young woman who has gone in four years from absolute anonymity to first-name global recognition.” He was referring to Lady Gaga of course — the topic of Jörg Reckhenrich‘s talk. A German management thinker and artist, Reckhenrich tracked and analized Gaga’s rise and the rules of “Gaganomics.” (Some hints: You gotta have talent, work hard, create a narrative and an emotional impact, and need the ability to orchestrate human relationships.)

Giussani then unveiled the latest issue of design mind magazine, published by frog. The magazine, printed in big format, is rich in articles about TEDGlobal 2011 (of which frog is a partner) and in further explorations of its theme, “The Stuff of Life.” Its cover image is a photo of one of the hundreds of actions around the world prompted by the InsideOut project by JR, the winner of this year’s TED Prize. One of those actions took place in Bastrop, Texas, which was devastated by wildfires — and whose population gathered nonetheless around this artistic project, led by the magazine’s editor Sam Martin, showing strength, resilience and hope. The story is told in this video.

The closing speaker of the first session, Catherine Mayer, Time magazine’s London Bureau Chief, offered in an insightful and witty way her “anatomy of a (new) species” composed of the growing number of people who seem to be living agelessly, as if “the ages of man” had disappeared under the conjunction of higher life expectancy and better socio-economic circumstances. Mayer calls this group — of which she acknowledges she’s part — “amortals.“

The second sessions was opened by neuroscientist Neil Burgess, who tackled the very basic question: “Where did I park my car?” by discussing in details how the brain navigates space and develops virtual “maps” of the locations we have been to. Sensory information from the environment, especially distance and direction to boundaries, captured by place cells and grid cells play a key role in letting us know where we are — or in allowing us to remember where our car is parked, and to find it.

Erik Johansson, a young übertalented Swedish photographer and retoucher, discussed some of his work, which involves the creation of photos that show impossible scenes, but manage to maintain a sense of realism. This “impossible realism” plays on the moment’s hesitation, when seeing his photos, before realizing that while they feel familiar, they have unexpected twists and do not make sense. Photos like this one:

The TEDSalon audience was presented with a copy of The Wiki Man, the just-off-the-presses book by ad guru and TED star Rory Sutherland (see his TEDTalks here and here). Giussani sat down with Sutherland for a conversation about the book — a brilliant pastiche of insight, irreverence and debunking. The often-amusing discussion ranged from behavioral economics (Rory looks forward to the time when Daniel Kahneman’s bus tour will be “overturned by screaming, admiring Japanese school girls”) to the nefarious impact of spreadsheets and from technological innovation to the appropriate age for reading Brave New World.

A glimpse  into the future was then provided by Lisa Harouni, the CEO of Digital Forming, which brought along a series of complex 3D-printed objects to make a convincing argument that 3D printing will disrupt the landscape of manufacturing, and will do so soon. As “additive manufacturing” (the technical name) becomes more available and ubiquitous, Harouni said, we will be offered the possibility to download product data from the web, customize it and print locally, instead of shipping the product itself.

Next, Somali archeologist Sada Mire took the audience to the land that she had to flee as a child and where she now heads the Department of Antiquities (when she’s not lecturing in London). Discussing some of her discoveries — cave paintings, ancient writings — she made an impassioned plea for us to start considering cultural heritage as a human right, and culture as an essential building block for reconciliation and healing in countries torn by droughts, wars and ethnic conflicts.

Preston Reed then erupted on stage, and rocked the house with his mindblowing, unique way of playing the acoustic guitar, mixing chord-based grooves and wild polyrhythms with percussive uses of the instrument.

The closing speaker was author and Member of the British Parliament Kwasi Kwarteng, who revisited the hundreds of years and tens of thousands of miles of the British empire, the theme of his recent book Ghosts of Empire. Analyzing how we became the societies that we are today, Kwarteng posited whether the empire was really “nothing more than a series of improvisations conducted by men who had very different ideas about government and administration.”

(Reported by Caitlin Kraft-Buchman. Photos by Robert Leslie. More photos of the event: TED’s Flickr stream. Also, TEDster Nesta Morgan was in the audience and has been drawing the speakers: her sketches are also on Flickr.)

TED Blog exclusive video: US astronaut Ron Garan is currently on board the International Space Station with five colleagues from the US, Russia and Europe. (This is Garan‘s second trip to the ISS.) For TEDGlobal 2011, he recorded a talk sharing the perspective from space and describing the wide range of scientific experiments that are run on the station during missions, taking advantage of its unique situation — and describing how these developments can then be applied on Earth.

Fares Mabrouk speaks at TEDxCarthage

I’m just back from Tunisia where I attended (and spoke at) TEDxCarthage, held in Tunis. It has been a short visit, only two days (and this post is just a quick note without pretense). But it was a very intense visit, and I come back with a lot of hope and optimism for the future of this country, and — despite the current events in Libya — for the entire region. I could visit the city, discuss with many people, and TEDxCarthage was a great event. I have found a calm city, at no moment I had any feeling of insecurity. Sure, soldiers protect ministries and embassies, and tanks are on display on crucial locations, but just next to them people sit at cafe tables and discuss politics, and the discussions are not shallow. Nobody whispers anymore when it comes to naming the (former) president. There is a lack of direction right now, with most of the old political class out of business (the tall building of the former president’s party is now empty, and so is part of the infamous Interior ministry, even the plaque with the name of it above the door has disappeared, and there are few policemen in the streets), and the new political class still not fully formed, and is engaged — in these very days — in discussions over the rules of the July 24 constitutional election, in which Tunisians are going to elect the parliament tasked with writing a new constitution. But despite this lack of direction, the collective intentions seem canalized towards a proper political modernization. Yes, the people I have met, and the TEDx attendees, are a specific subset of the population, but talking with national guardsmen in the streets, overhearing discussions at the next table, reading the local press, discussing with journalists and rappers and dancers who were once censored, made me optimistic about this country. But of course the country needs help and support: academic exchanges, technical help in designing democratic institutions, etc. Also, I saw very few tourists.

Here a photo of the former Interior ministry building guarded by the military:

Now, on to TEDxCarthage. First it’s worth noting that many of the young people involved with organizing it were among those who were in the streets back in January and were key in making the revolution happen. Despite this obvious, and natural, political background, the event was not a political happening. It was perfectly in the spirit of TEDx: a forum for discussion, targeted at its audience and attuned to this specific moment in the history of the country. The audience was mostly young people, under 35. Mixed: secular women next to women in veil, young bearded Muslims next to non-religious types. And there is no way to underestimate the impact of mobile phones and social networks: these (Tunisia as well as Egypt and elsewhere) were and are not “facebook revolutions”, but facebook/twitter/cellphones and digital photos/videos are the infrastructure of them. They would have happened anyway, but over a much longer period of time. The twitter stream out of TEDxCarthage was insanely intense. These young people are connected beyond belief — only 35% of Tunisians have access to the Internet, but cell phone penetration is over 110 %. At the end of the event I took this photo from the stage while the organizer Houssem Aoudi was thanking the speakers: most of the attendees were photographing with their cell phones.

In Egypt, Moubarak’s government had understood that cell phones and the Internet are among the weapons that will bring down dictators — and closed them down for two days. The problem is that you can’t shut down the Internet and cell phone networks without hurting the whole economy — banks, airlines, tourism, corporations, universities.

The speakers now. They spoke French, or Arabic, or English, of mixes of them — in particular of Arabic and French, which in Tunisia seem to be a single language, with people switching from one to the other mid-sentence seamlessly, without even a glimpse of hesitation. Theme of the event: Imagine History (Read: the history they are writing now). The intent was to explore democracy of course, and what a democratic country and a democratic society should look like, in the Arab context. Note that the event took place on March 20, anniversary of Tunisia’s independence from France (1956), but this was barely mentioned, the focus being on the “new” freedom.

The opening speaker was Nagla Rizk, associate dean for graduate studies at the American University in Cairo. She spoke about education, freedom and nation-building, discussed Tahrir Square events, the new bottom-up reality in many Arab countries, and the need to capitalize quickly on the well of new ideas that are pouring out of these movements. Sami Ben Romdhane was next. He’s the head of IT infrastructure at eBay in California, and a Tunisian, and a hero to young, tech-savvy Tunisians. His talk was about tech innovation opportunities in a free country: how to create a culture of innovation in Tunisia, what could the government do, what could private organizations do, what could individuals do.

Nicolas Kayser-Bril, one of the founders of data-journalism and aggregation website Owni in Paris, spoke about press freedom, crowdsourcing, online journalism. Fares Mabrouk (shown in the photo at the top of this page) was next. Tunisian, Yale Fellow, he is starting the Arab Policy Institute, a liberal think-tank for the Arab world. But he didn’t even mention it in his speech, which was about “the moments like this one when everything is possible.”

Dancer Nawel Skandrani then gave a talk interspersed with dance where she spoke about the role of different cultural expressions in a free society — with a strong angle on dance of course: back many years ago she founded the Tunisian National Ballet, then resigned when a culture minister decided that ballet was not aligned with Islamic values, and has been fighting ever since to allow the diversity of cultural expressions to exist in the country. And an example came right afterwards, with a powerful rap duo, Lak3y, performing (rap was also censored and pushed into the underground under the old regime). At other moments during the event, Salaa Farzit, a 50-something singer of traditional music, sang for the first time in public an old song of his that was censored until last January, while metal-rock band Yram gave an energizing three-song performance.

Majed Khalfallah then spoke forcefully about open government — about making access to information a constitutional right, and mandating transparency online for public contracts and bids, for instance. Aboubakr Jamai closed the event. He’s the former editor of a recently defunct (or rather closed down by the regime) magazine in Morocco, Le Journal. His was a powerful speech about “The necessary madness of believing in ourselves.”

Among the small stories that are part of the bigger story, this one: there were demonstrations in Morocco too in the past few weeks, repressed by the regime. So a group of young people decided to demonstrate differently. One day they declared it was “blood donors day” and went out en masse to donate blood to hospitals. The next day they called for people to offer a flower to the first police officer they saw, and so they did. Revolutions have their own poetics.

As said, it was a perfect TEDx: perfect in spirit, in corresponding to the audience, and to the historic moment. The more I attend TEDx events like this one, the more I’m in awe at the TEDx organizers and the TED community, and glad of being able to offer such a neutral platform for key conversations.

– Bruno Giussani, TED’s European Director and host of TEDGlobal

Solar Impulse, the solar airplane that Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard described in his captivating talk at TEDGlobal 2009, took off successfully this morning from Payerne airfield, in Western Switzerland, on its maiden flight. The aircraft (which has a wingspan of 63.40 meters but a weight of only 1600 kg and a speed at takeoff of just 45 km/h) climbed to 1200 metres. Test pilot Markus Scherdel used the opportunity to test various manoeuvres (turns, simulating the approach phase) and to verify the plane’s controllability, which so far had only been simulated with computers.

“This first mission was the most risky phase of the entire project. 87 minutes of intense emotion, after 7 years of research, testing and perseverance. Never has an airplane as large and light ever flown before! The success of this first flight allows us to envisage the further program with greater serenity”, said a delighted André Borschberg, CEO and co-founder of the project, after the plane landed.

The airplane’s wings are covered with solar cells, but for this first test flight they weren’t connected — the four engines were powered with ordinary electricity. Next for the Solar Impulse team: longer flights, followed by night flights, and in two years an attempt at flying around the world, in five legs of five days (and nights) each, powered only by solar energy.

(TED European director Bruno Giussani wrote earlier this year a long essay on the Solar Impulse project for the European editions of Wired: it is available here in English and here in Italian).

For her new film, “Earth Made of Glass“, which will premiere on April 26th at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York (Film’s trailer – Facebook group – Director’s statement – Premiere tickets info), Scranton has focused on a post-war situation, that of Rwanda, where in the 1994 genocide at least 800’000 people were killed, according to estimates.

The film powerfully casts the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, fighting to expose the truth of what happened in 1994 (including the hidden role played by the French government) while trying to lead his country through a delicate reconciliation process — and to put in place the conditions for economic and social development. And an ordinary man, Jean Pierre Sagahutu, a genocide survivor scouring the countryside to find clues about his father’s unsolved murder.

As each relentlessly pursues the truth, they find themselves faced with a choice: to enact vengeance, or forgive. Scranton’s careful narrative succeeds in dissecting their struggles to uncover the foundations of what it means to forgive — as an individual, and as a nation — and to try to end hatred and violence.

Wicker-Miurin (in the photo at right) was one of the featured speakers on Monday at a TED Salon in London. She spoke forcefully and inspiringly about Benki, a young tribesman from deep in the Amazon, facing the threat of deforestation, which not only has an impact on climate change, but also, much more immediately, on the existence of his people. Becoming a leader very early in life, he recognized that the environment, the animals, the rivers, the air he breathes and his tribe’s existence were in danger. That’s when he took a step out of the Amazon and traveled 3000 km to the Earth Summit in Rio — to tell the world outside about the world inside the forest, and connect the two worlds. He spoke, but he also learned a lot, and brought those learnings home. Almost 20 years have past and the Ashaninkas (Benki’s tribe) have reforested 25% of their territory, created schools, brought satellite Internet to the village, and more.

After describing other profiles from around the world, Wicker-Miurin summarized the seven characteristics of the “new leaders”: they go away from what they know; build bridges and walk across them; have a sense of the great arc of time; know that they depend on others; remember that “it’s not about them, but it starts with them”; and have humility.

The TEDSalon was organized around the release of a special edition of design mind, the magazine published by TEDGlobal partner frog design — who also created the awesome TEDGlobal program guide. design mind is fully devoted to the recent TEDGlobal2009 (the mag, 100 pages of great coverage, interviews, original essays and photos, is available here). Hosted by TED European director Bruno Giussani and by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Sam Martin, the event was attended by 125 people (Flickr photostream) including many of those featured in the magazine, together with TEDsters past and new, speakers and TED Fellows.

Another speaker was Fabio Sergio, the creative director at frog, who explored the possibilities of using data produced by the human body to educate the human mind. His main proposition goes like this: We live in a world of data. From keeping track of our household expenses to sharing our running data with the community at Nike+: What would happen if we extend this to more areas? He sees four intersecting opportunities: Access to our own data streams and services to accrue and store our bitcrumbs forever; individual and collective aggregations to reveal hidden patterns; well-designed interactive tools of self-reflection to visualize, manipulate, and shape raw data into meaningful information; and social networks that encourage and sustain virtuous behavior by treating it as social currency.

The evening also featured an interview of Misha Glenny, the underworld investigator (author of “McMafia“) who sat down with Giussani for a follow-up to his remarkable TEDGlobal speech. Glenny discussed very openly, and with genuine humour, his research methods, the encounters with his sources, and some behind-the-scenes episodes. Andreas Raptopoulos, founder of FutureAcoustic, gave an exclusive technology demo of reactive soundscapes. And singer/songwriter Lou Rhodes concluded the program with a stunning “unplugged” live performance.

(Photos: Robert Leslie)

Four of the speakers that participated in the first TEDGLOBAL in Oxford (July 2005) have all published new books recently.

Former Afghani minister and head of Kabul University Ashraf Ghani (watch his TEDtalk), together with Clare Lockhart, has penned “Fixing Failed States: A Framework For Rebuilding A Fractured World“. They discuss the “between forty and sixty nations” — that’s one-quarter of all the countries in the world — that are broken to various degreees and have become “the breeding ground of networks of criminality and terror”, and suggest an integrated state-building approach that goes beyond military intervention and humanitarian aid to make them “stakeholders in a global system”. It’s a radically optimist book. Since Ghani spoke at TEDGLOBAL, he and Lockhart have co-created the Institute for State Effectiveness.

In “We Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production“, British innovation and creativity guru Charles Leadbeater (watch his TEDtalk) makes the case, based on countless well-documented examples from all over the world, that innovation in the era of the Web has become a collective, collaborative effort. “You are what you share”, he writes. Walking his talk, he shares part of the final book and the full first draft on his website.

Groups of people increasingly coming together to share, work or take public action are also the starting point for Clay Shirky‘s new book “Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations“. The social-media master (watch his TEDtalk) contends that “when new technology appears, previously impossible things start occurring”. For example: “We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Love motivates people to bake a cake and money motivates people to make an encyclopedia. Now, though, we can do big things for love”. The reference, obviously, is to Wikipedia, which is just one of many examples used by Shirky. Recently, he told me that the book somehow was born at TEDGLOBAL 2005: “That speech was the opportunity to link a lot of my earlier work into a coherent structure”. He’s blogging and discussing the book at HereComesEverybody.org.

Carl Honoré‘s previous bestseller “In Praise Of Slow” discussed our culture obsessed with speed (that’s the topic of his TEDtalk). In his new book, “Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood From The Culture Of Hyper-Parenting“, he applies that lens to growing up in today’s developed societies, and says that we are raising “a generation of overprogrammed, overachieving, exhausted children”. Based on extensive research — fact after example after anecdote (including that of the father of a tennis player who drugged his child’s opponents) — and beautifully written, “Under Pressure” is not a parenting manual. “Slow”, in the meantime, has built up to somewhat a global movement, and Carl is one of the co-founders of a website for all things slow, Slow Planet. Where they remind us that “slow is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace; it’s about working, playing and living better by doing everything at the right speed”.

The next TEDGLOBAL will take place in Oxford, 21-24 July 2009. More details will be forthcoming in September.

(Note: Some of the cover images above may be different from what you will find online or at your local bookstore, depending on the different country-specific editions of each book.)

To reach Edward O. Wilson’s office on the Harvard campus, one must first push through a door with a sign warning the public not to enter. Then, enter a creaky old elevator and press two buttons simultaneously. This counterintuitive procedure transports one into a strange realm. It is a space that holds the world’s largest collection of ants, some 14,000 species. Curators are checking the drawers, dominated by the tall figure of Dr. Wilson, who is trying to contain his excitement: the 14,001st ant species has just been discovered in the soils of a Brazilian forest…

Continue reading the insightful story by the New York Times (or watch E.O. Wilson’s 2007 TED Prize speech on the Encyclopedia of Life, which is featured in the NYT article).

Plus: Andrew C. Revkin writes about E.O. Wilson’s visit to the New York Times offices on the NYTimes blog Dot Earth.