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Why TED takes two weeks off every summer

Why TED takes two weeks off every summer

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TED.com is about to go quiet for the weeks of August 1 and August 8, 2022, while most of the TED staff takes our annual two-week summer holiday. Yes, we all, or almost all, go on holiday at the same time. (No, we don’t all go to the same place.) We’ve been doing it this []

Introducing “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking”

Introducing “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking”

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TED curator Chris Anderson’s guide to creating talks that are unforgettable.  A great TED Talk is proof that a carefully crafted short presentation can unlock empathy, stir excitement, spread knowledge and promote a shared dream. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview. Done right, a talk is more powerful than anything in written []

40 travel tips from hard-traveling TED staffers

40 travel tips from hard-traveling TED staffers

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TED staffers travel a lot — to TEDx events all over the globe, to TED conferences in Canada, Brazil, the UK …. so we love to trade travel tips for making the most of work and fun trips. Here are 40 of our best — including some oddball but practical ideas for vacation travel (to use up those []

10 steps to tame your email inbox and keep chaos at bay

10 steps to tame your email inbox and keep chaos at bay

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Just like you, we at TED get inundated with email. And just like you, many of us think of an overflowing inbox as a guilt-inducing, anxiety-laden reminder of things left undone. As TED’s User Experience Architect, I like my inbox the same way I like my designs: simple, orderly, and communicating clearly what to do []

How to take great photos—even on your cell phone

How to take great photos—even on your cell phone

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Taking great photos isn’t just about having a nice camera. I’m a firm believer that good photography comes from smart photographers who think creatively and know how to make the most of what they’ve got—whether they’re working with fancy DSLR or an iPhone. On TED’s design team, where I manage TED’s Instagram account, we’re always []

The evolution of a TED Book cover

The evolution of a TED Book cover

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In his talk, “Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is,” Chip Kidd (a TED Books designer in his own right) gives a wonderfully concise description of what book cover designers do. He says, “My job is to ask this question: ‘What do stories look like?’”   For David Shoemaker, the designer who made the []

How to run a brainstorm for introverts (and extroverts too)

How to run a brainstorm for introverts (and extroverts too)

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Cocktail party trivia: Brainstorming was invented in the 1930s as a practical idea-generation technique for regular use by “creatives” within the ad agency BBDO. That all changed in 1942, when Alex Osborn — the “O” in BBDO — released a book called How to Think Up and excited the imaginations of his fellow Mad Men. []

10 research tips for finding answers online

10 research tips for finding answers online

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Before Danielle Thomson was our TED Prize researcher, she wrote trivia for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and spent years finding difficult-to-source info for The Late Show with David Letterman. And she has quickly established herself as our staff secret weapon. When one of us can’t get our hands on a piece of information []

25+ apps to make your everyday life easier

25+ apps to make your everyday life easier

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At our small, fast-moving nonprofit company, everyone does a couple of jobs — and productivity apps help us manage roles that shift between coding, writing/designing and running a full-scale conference twice a year. We asked the TED staff what apps they can’t live without. And beyond the classics—Instagram, Google Maps, Spotify, Uber, Seamless—we found some []

10 tips for editing video

10 tips for editing video

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By Kari Mulholland The techniques that video editors use to shape their content reveal a lot about how people create meaning in the world. Editors have a deep understanding of how people think, feel, remember and learn, and we use this knowledge to build powerful, moving stories and experiences. The best editing decisions come from []

Talks that inspired New Year’s resolutions for our staff

Talks that inspired New Year’s resolutions for our staff

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Happy New Year! To celebrate the closing of the year, we asked people around the TED office what talks have inspired them to make a New Year’s resolution. Below, check out their answers. Hint: many found aspirations hidden in unexpected talks. And several might help you formulate the perfect resolution. [ted id=1569 width=560 height=315] One answer that popped up again []

Get the daily TED Talk newsletter delivered to your inbox

Get the daily TED Talk newsletter delivered to your inbox

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It’s something you have been asking about for a while: does TED have a daily email newsletter? Finally, the answer is yes. You can get the daily TED Talk sent straight to your email inbox every weekday morning, along with a playlist of the day. How do you sign up? Head to TED.com/newsletter. If you’re []