Next year, TEDGlobal will be held for the first time in Latin America — in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from October 6-10, 2014, on the beach of Copacabana. The theme for the event is, appropriately, “South!” and will be a celebration of the innovation, dynamism and creativity pouring out of South America, as well as out of the global south at large. Because fresh ideas can come from any direction.

“Rio has been beckoning TED for many years, both metaphorically and literally,” says curator Chris Anderson, explaining why we opted for this new location. “It’s at the heart of a continent bursting with fresh thinking. We’re delighted to finally be going. This conference will be ambitious, a thrilling new chapter for TED’s growing community of global souls.”

TEDGlobal Director Bruno Giussani adds, “We are proud of the conferences we’ve held in Edinburgh. As TED’s international reach has expanded, Latin America has emerged as a clear and exciting next move. Rio is not only a hub of innovation, but presents a rich history and exquisite physical setting.”

Registration for TEDGlobal 2014 will open in October. Stay tuned to the TED Blog for more information…

The longview of the TEDGlobal 2013 main stage, home to many amazing moments today. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Something special happens when you think again. All it takes is an insightful thought and — all of a sudden — your brain does a backflip and you see faulty assumptions underlying what you’d always taken to be true. The first day of mainstage talks at TEDGlobal 2013 brought so many of these paradigm-shifting moments — and many more that just happened to be a lot of fun. Below, some highlights of the day.

1. John Kenny plays the carynx. John Kenney is best known for playing the trombone. So when he stepped on the TED stage wielding a carynx — an ancient Celtic horn with a bell shaped like a boar’s head — our jaws collectively dropped. As he played, the boar’s tongue wagged, producing an unearthly wail that evoked an ancient, misty moor. Read more about the talk »
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2. George Papandreou speaks amid protests. As former Prime Minister of Greece stepped to the stage to give a personal talk about the failure of leadership, protesters marched down the street to the Edinburgh International Convention Centre to oppose his presence. We spoke with the protesters and asked if they’d like us to ask Papandreou a question from them on stage. See what they asked »
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3. Manal al-Sharif gets a standing ovation halfway through her talk. Telling the story of why she dared to break the Saudi ban on women driving — and to film the whole thing — Manal al-Sharif struck a major chord with the audience when she said, “It’s because I love my country that I’m doing this. I believe a society will not be free if women of that society are not free.” Read more about the talk »
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4. A drone lands on the red carpet. As Andreas Raptopoulos presented his bold idea — Matternet, a network of drones to serve the 1 billion people with no access to roads — he flew out one of the crafts in question as he spoke. The friendly quadcopter surprised everyone in the room as it made a graceful landing on the famous TED carpet. Read more about the talk »
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5. Hetain Patel pulls a great reveal. Anyone who speaks Mandarin Chinese knew right off the bat the secret of this refreshing talk/performance on identity, a welcome moment of hilarity during the day. Read more about the talk »
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6. Jane McGonigal declares a thumb war. In the early morning at TED University, Jane McGonigal led the  audience in a massive multiplayer thumb-wrestling match. Every single person in the audience was connected to everyone else — with both thumbs. Read about all the talks from TED University Session 1 »
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7. George Monbiot wows. George Monbiot was asked just three days ago if he would speak at TEDGlobal. According to his tweets, he memorized his talk on the train. And he absolutely wowed with his talk about what could happen if we “rewild” wolves, deer, mice, hawks and more. Read more about the talk »
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8. Kelly McGonigal says stress may have upsides. In perhaps the most comforting talk of all time, Kelly McGonigal explains to a super-stressed crowd that they will be just fine, so long as they believe stress is a good thing. Read about the talk »
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9. This TEDx clip with the flying pigs. This hilarious video was shown during Session 2, “Those Flying Things.” Enjoy.

Sugata Mitra won the 2013 TED Prize, and received $1 million to build a School in the Cloud. Could you nominate the 2014 Prize winner? Photo: James Duncan Davidson

With less than a week to go until nominations for the 2014 TED Prize close on June 16, we would like to ask you a question: Is there someone in your life who’s inspired you with a large-scale vision to change the world? To put it another way: Do you know a capable leader – perhaps a teacher, mentor or colleague you’ve worked with — who would do great things with a $1 million?

We bet that there is, but in case you aren’t convinced — here are five reasons to nominate someone you know for the 2014 TED Prize.

1. Because they just might win! Perhaps it’s an obvious thing to point out, but how proud would you feel if someone you admired professionally got the chance to embark on the project of a lifetime — one with the potential to inspire people and change lives across the globe — all because you took 10 minutes to fill out a nomination form?
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2. To mobilize the unique TED community. As you may have noticed, TED brings together people like no other. The TED Prize is an opportunity to spread an inspired project to the extensive community of TED attendees, TEDx organizers, TED translators and other contributors — plus the millions who visit TED.com every day. The TED Prize isn’t just seed money toward a wish to inspire the world, it’s a chance to work with the very special people already involved in TED.
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3. Because TED Prize wishes can have a ripple effect. Even the biggest dreamers can’t predict all the changes that their work may bring about. For every carefully planned action taken to realize a TED Prize wish, there’s an unexpected reaction. This story about José Abreu’s wish shows how the Prize can set off a chain reaction. Who knows what your nominee’s wish could do?
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4. Because a million dollars can go a long way. In today’s world of billions and trillions, one million dollars can feel like small change in the face of big global problems. But with the TED Prize, that million goes a long way — thanks to the resources and support of the TED community. Coupled with a naturally motivated, enthusiastic Prize winner, our resources help take that one million to even greater heights.
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5. Because even if they don’t win, you’ll help inform future Prize wishes. TED Prize wishes of yore have assumed the imaginative goals of contacting extraterrestrials, starting a food revolution, and making the world a more compassionate place. If you nominate someone, at a minimum, you’ll be showing the TED Prize team what type of wish matters to you and what type of thinker, leader or doer you think should be honored  – and help this community decide who to add to this impressive list.

Head to http://www.tedprize.org by June 16 to nominate the person floating in the back of your mind as you read this post.

Convinced? Here’s where to apply »

This graphic originally ran on the TED Fellows Blog. Read more »

Makayla Lewis sketched these notes while watching Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk online.

At TED 2011, Sunni Brown encouraged doodling everywhere – classrooms and meeting rooms included. “The doodle … engages all four learning modalities simultaneously, with the possibility of an emotional experience,” she says in her classic talk. Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite!Yes, it’s proven that doodling helps you remember things more efficiently.

Graphic notetaking is the doodle, evolved and tamed. So it is no surprise that the many creative people and visual learners who attend TED conferences and locally organized TEDx events choose this method for capturing information.

What does a graphic notetaker do? They must majorly multitask: they listen to a talk, synthesizing everything a speaker is saying, breaking down everything into phrases and drawings, linking ideas and statements, and adding aesthetic details and colors. All of this is done in real time, with little to no briefing beforehand. It requires more than a good eye or artistic talent; you need an excellent ear practiced in active listening. An arsenal of visual vocabulary doesn’t hurt, either.

We’ve scoped out the wildest graphic notes floating around the TED ecosystem and culled great tips for graphic notetaking, from the masters themselves:

• Gavin Blake of Australian graphic facilitation agency Fever Picture set up a huge whiteboards at TEDActive 2013, where he drew notes depicting the essence of each talk at the conference. His key pieces of advice: Be as present as possible, keep the current of visualizing and iterating going, and don’t worry about things falling through the cracks. Read more »

• Craighton Berman, the artist who created graphic notes for TEDxMidwest in his Sketchnotes 101, has advice too. “Instead of recording what’s being said verbatim, good sketchnotes capture the meaningful bits as text and drawings. Better sketchnotes use composition and hierarchy to give structure the content and bring clarity to the overall narrative of the lecture. The best sketchnotes express a unique personal style and add editorial comments on the content entertaining and informing all at once,” he says. He recommends every graphic notetaker have a toolbox of typography, text spacing, containers, connectors, frameworks, icons, shading and color.

• Sunni Brown, in her master list of visual notetaking tips and truisms, focuses on the very foundation of the art: listening. She writes about the importance of picking out metaphors and similes, descriptor cues and paying attention to the narrative build. But most importantly, she says, you need to turn all other voices off: “Suspend your own frame of reference. Focus externally. Turn off your ego. Quit thinking everything revolves around your opinion. Give the stage in your head to someone else!”

• The artistic trio of Fernanda Deuriarte, David Christie and Tom Oswald from Innovation Arts will be the graphically scribing TEDGlobal 2013, “Think Again,” which kicks off today in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Watch their progress June 10 to 14 on our Flickr page, as you follow the conference beat-by-beat here on the TED Blog.) They offer three tips:

1. The less you think about it, the better the result. If you concentrate too much on each task it becomes almost impossible. It’s like being in a state of flow.
2. Illustrations are great to make your sketchnote engaging, but it’s more important to get the essence of the conversation, to get your structure right. Map out a start, middle and end and let your audience read the story you’re trying to tell.
3. Don’t be afraid to stop and listen. You’ll usually be able to summarize two or three paragraphs into a few words and a nice illustration.
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But our globe-trekking distribution team has also created many special TED offerings to help spread ideas with the help of local partners. Here — as we get ready for TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again” — a look at the ways you can watch TED around the world, in no particular order.

China: In China, there are multiple ways to get a dose of TED inspiration. Sina, one of China’s largest media companies (it owns Weibo, the Twitter of China), hosts TED Collections, eclectic playlists of talks around topics like Business, Education and Art. Youku, the second largest video site in the world after YouTube, has TED Shows — entertaining playlists of talks around themes designed for TV and movie fans. And NetEase, renowned for its Internet portal, offers TED Studies for universities.

Canada and the UK: TED Weekends on the Huffington Post, which brings together bloggers who take ideas inspired by a TED Talk through different twists and turns, is available not only through the Huffington Post in the US, but also in Canada and the UK. Coincidentally, TED2014 — our 30^th anniversary event — will take place in Vancouver.

Japan: Public broadcaster NHK brings TED Talks to a national TV audience in Japan with the primetime series, Super Presentation! This program harnesses TED speakers’ persuasive ideas to help teach English, and empowers a new generation of independent thinkers. The show airs Friday nights at 11pm on NHK Education. Meanwhile, on June 15, Yahoo! Japan will begin offering TED Ideas in Business, a curated collection of talks designed to share wisdom in the workplace.

Argentina: Starting on June 15, TED10, our cable video on demand programming, will be available through Cablevision, the largest operator in Buenos Aires. In fact, Cablevision represents TED’s first partnership in Latin America of many more that we’re working on this very moment.

Brazil: TED is teaming up with the science and culture magazine Superinteressante to create idea visualizations — artistic representations of the underlying ideas in TED Talks. We’ll be bringing these visualizations to TED.com too. 

Australia: What about the “big screen”? No, not that lovely plasma in your living room … the BIG screens that you see in places like Time Square. In two weeks — to coincide with TEDGlobal 2013 — TED Talks will be broadcast in outdoor venues around the world, from Federation Square in Melbourne to Big Screen Plaza in New York City. Curated for outdoor viewing and transient traffic, this little experiment is another big way we’re finding to spread ideas.

Kazakhstan: Ideas Worth Spreading is a television series, which airs to a national audience on Bilim TV. The show takes the back-to-basics approach of airing TED Talks with clean introductory and closing slates, three times a day. Each evening during primetime, a TED Talk premieres in Kazakh with repeat broadcasts in Russian twice the following day.

Korea: TED Collections are available in Korean through TV Cast, a video site of Naver, the country’s dominant search engine. And just last month TED10 became available on all major cable systems in Korea, thanks to a collaboration with Home Choice. In addition, Korea Telecom serves up TED Shows to a fast-growing audience for its IPTV platform.

The Middle East: Soon MSN Arabia will join TED’s family by making TED Collections available in Arabic — covering 15 countries from Egypt to Algeria, Tunisia to Morocco. In partnership with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Higher Education, this September TED Studies will be made available to all universities for free in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Brazil: Here, TED Talks are brought to you via TED’s partnership with Netflix. TED Shows are also available on Netflix in the US.

Spain: The new TV show Buenas Ideas TED is a 13-part television series airing on TVE “La 2.” Shot documentary style, the series shows the Spanish cast and crew unpacking ideas from TED Talks as they discuss them, interview guests and visit local sites. Airs Sundays at 15:00.

Africa and beyond. Planning a trip to Namibia or Nigeria? Tune into the TED Radio Hour, an original 60-minute radio show (produced in partnership with NPR) that airs not only in the United States, but in Africa, parts of India, Australia, New Zealand, even literally up in the air with Delta Airlines. The TED Radio Hour – a sonic journey through ideas, inventions and fresh approaches to old problems – digs deeper into subjects broached on the TED stage. Hosted by Guy Raz, each episode looks at a central question, examining it through conversations with TED speakers and guests. Music and sound weave throughout each episode, bringing themes and concepts to life through vivid storytelling.

TEDGlobal 2013 kicks off June 10-14 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Check out information about attending or watching from home with TED Live »

The cast and crew of the new Spanish television show, “Buenas Ideas TED.”

The concept behind Buenas Ideas TED, the 13-part Spanish television series that debuts today on TVE: to create a 21st century version of the literary salon or Greek agora. The show brings together classic TED Talks — about technology, entertainment and design, about our relationships to work and to each other, and about the ways our lives will look different in the future — and first-person decision-making by the show’s cast and crew, seamed together with smart visual effects. The premiere episode even includes an interview TEDxMadrid organizer Antonella Broglia, who told the TED Blog this summer how excited she was to see a tweet after the event from an attendee calling it “the best Saturday of my life.”

Buenas Ideas TED, directed by Miguel Castro and hosted by Xosé Castro, will premiere today — Sunday, May 26 — at 15:00 on TVE, the public broadcaster with the biggest reach in Spain. Watch it on “La 2,” where it is available both with subtitles and dubbed into Spanish. Below, a taste of this new show.

Buenas Ideas TED – 26/05/13

• Buenas Ideas TED – 26/05/13

We are excited to introduce you to three new speakers who’ve been added to the program for TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again.”

First, jazz-pop singer Jamie Cullum will take the stage to perform during session 10, “Imagined Beauty.” Just last week, Cullum released this nerdily adorable video — shot in one continuous Steadicam take — for the song “Everything You Didn’t Do.” Check it out above and marvel at the incredibly quick scene changes.

Photographer Fabian Oefner has also been added to the TEDGlobal program. Oefner brings together science and art in his stunning visualizations, which are meant to give us a sense of awe at the natural forces at work around us each and every day. In March, Oefner wowed us with the project “Black Hole,” which used the centripetal force of a spinning drill to splatter acrylic paint in the most beautiful patterns – all captured in millisecond through a unique sensor rig. See the images and how they were created on his website.

Finally, sustainability expert Johan Rockström is rounding out the program, taking the stage during session 8 “State of Nations.” Rockström recently published the book Bankrupting Nature: Denying Our Planetary Boundaries about the deep denial our culture is in about the magnitude of environmental challenges ahead. At TEDGlobal, he’ll speak about how this impending crisis may be an opportunity to spur innovative thinking.

Check out the full lineup of TEDGlobal 2013 speakers here, and read their detailed bios. Below, a few other speakers who made the news this week:

• As we read the news that U.S. beekeepers lost 1 in 3 of honeybee this winter – due to a deadly combination of pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition – we couldn’t help but think of bee scholar Marla Spivak, who’ll speak during the session “Listening to Nature.” Her talk will no doubt be poignant given this recent development. She tells the TED Blog: “It’s good that the complexity of the bee issue to coming to light:  Bees are dying from multiple, interacting causes. Sometimes one factor is the driver (e.g., parasitic mites or viruses), sometimes poor nutrition, sometimes drought, sometimes pesticides, but in the end, all these factors interact to weaken bees.  Our bees, all of our bees (honey bees and all the thousands of species of wild bee pollinators) need help. While scientists figure out causes and solutions to the pathogens, parasites and pesticide problems, everyone can help by planting flowers and keeping them clean of pesticides.”
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• In this great profile of frequent TED speaker Marco Tempest in Wired, Apollo Robbins — the so-called “gentleman thief” and session 4 speaker — stops by his loft and discusses the differences in their magic. Says Robbins, “Marco approaches the craft through his passion for innovation and technology. I approach the craft through the study of applied deception.”

In other news, we’ll be paying particular attention to session two, “Those Flying Things,” which focuses on debate about drones. While the session will feature fascinating demonstrations of how drones can be used to great end, we also can’t forget their potential to be used in war. Jody Williams, who gave the talk “A realistic vision for world peace” at TEDWomen, recently launched a campaign against robot warfare. She tells the TED Blog, “While we in the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots follow work on drones, we are not addressing them in the Campaign. We are seeking a pre-emptive ban on lethal robotic weapons on the land, in the sea and in the air that would be able to target and kill human beings on their own. With no human involvement. Terrifying.”

We’re thrilled to announce: TED is one of the 2013 winners of the National Design Awards, given by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. The National Design Awards celebrate design “as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world” — which is how we feel about it too. Great design, like great writing and great speaking, is a vital tool for helping ideas spread.

TED wins for Corporate & Institutional Achievement — a category that honors the way great design weaves into everything TED does, from stage sets to mobile apps, from program guides to our world-spanning open initiatives like TEDx and the Open Translation Project.

And we’re in wonderful company. Other winners include Paula Scher (watch her TED Talk), fashion designer Behnaz Sarafpour, and the urbanist and critic Michael Sorkin. Browse the full list »

Among the designers, photographers and volunteers who contributed to our in-house team’s work — and are a key part of this award:

Photographers: James Duncan Davidson, Ryan Lash, Robert Leslie, Michael Brands, Marla Aufmuth and kris krüg.

Mobile designers: Brian Wilson and Rusty Mitchell.

Video designers: Psyop, Oliver Jeffers and Mac Premo.

Print, online and event designers: WORKSHOP, Hybrid Design, Albertson Design, Paper Plane Studio, Laura Morris, Robert Horansky, Plunkett + Kuhr, Paul Soulellis, Always With Honor, Phi-Hong Ha — and of course the founder of TED, Richard Saul Wurman …

When illustrator/storyteller Oliver Jeffers and animator/woodworker Mac Premo get together, sketchbooks travel 60,000 miles, suitcases wander the streets of Brooklyn and sandwiches are skewered with bows and arrows.

Jeffers and Premo created the opening video for TED2013 — and its star,  the TED Machine. The TED Machine works like a schedule board in an old train station — with panels that reveal, with each new flip, the names of the 72 speakers and performers at TED2013 in squiggly handwriting. In the video above, the machine comes to life in stop-motion animation, revealing a magical world filled with ukelele strumming and changing backdrops. At TED2013, the video — which has a homespun charm a bit different from TED’s regular polished punch — elicited the kind of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ normally reserved for fireworks displays.

On Monday, New York creative types crowded the workshop space of Manhattan’s 14th Street Apple Store for an evening with Jeffers, Premo, and TED’s  Design Director Mike Femia, for a conversation about building the machine and where to find the best trash in the city. During the event, Jeffers and Premo revealed how they met (at summer camp); what they do when they’re not making art (they make hot dogs text); and how they pitched their idea for the TED machine.

Being asked to create the TED2013 opening sequence was nerve-wracking, Premo told the crowd, but he and Jeffers knew it would be a great opportunity to stretch their creative muscles. “TED is the most intellectually-stimulating blitzkrieg in the world,” he said. “And we had to make a film that encapsulates it.”

So they set out to build the TED Machine by doing what they do best: Premo taking on the woodwork and Jeffers creating a collage — something they had to physically attach to the 72 rotating “name bumpers” on the machine, because as Premo said, “We needed the things to turn.”

In the end, filming took five days (note: this is a 72-second long video!) and even included a trip to Coney Island in 7 degree weather.

Femia explained what drew the design team at TED to Premo and Jeffers in the first place — they were impressed by the hand-painted wooden map that the two had created for TED Prize winner JR to track his Inside Out project. The piece eventually became a landmark of the design for the 14-city TED Worldwide Talent Search.

“The moment before talks start at a TED conference is very dramatic,” Femia explained. “People are settling into their chairs; the lights are getting dim. We asked ourselves, ‘How could we make it special?’”

Femia said he knew Premo and Jeffers were right for the job because of their ability to tell a story with their art. “What I like about their work,” Femia said, “is that it’s explanatory — it celebrates the process, the messiness, the dirtiness.”