After 11 incredible years at TED -- for which I'll always be grateful -- I’ve moved on to pursue several creative, entrepreneurial opportunities at the frontier of media. I’m in the midst of launching a media start-up, along with my partner Deron Triff (Former Head of Media Partners for TED, e.g., TED Radio Hour, TED Books, TED on Netflix, etc.). We consider ourselves a content incubator, focused on launching formula-defying media properties that can thrive across platforms. We’re at work on a VR series with Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin, an audio series with TED and Audible (featuring anonymous TED talks), and several other series that haven’t been announced.
The world lost one of its literary giants today. Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has died at the age 82. For Nigerians, Achebe was a national treasure. He was the first African writer to attract international acclaim, and an outspoken leader with far-reaching influence on both politics and culture. Emeka Okafor, who produced the TEDGlobal conference in […]
“I have the feeling that, by making it more and more ubiquitous, It’s going to be pretty hard to shut it down.” Vint Cerf helped design the Internet 40 years ago. Does he think it’s in danger now? A conversation onstage at TED.
Everyone loves a good quote. They challenge us. They change us. They make us think and make us laugh. They are — in their most compressed and contagious form — ideas. So today, we’re launching TED Quotes, a new initiative that collects memorable quotes from TEDTalks, groups them by category, and makes them as easy […]
On June 27, 2006, we flipped the switch on TED Talks, bringing talks from TED to the world for the first time. It was early days for online video — YouTube was just a year old; the video iPod had been around for six months — so we launched with six talks and modest goals, […]
Our announcement last week of TEDWomen has touched off some really vibrant conversations online. Some have embraced the idea; others have reservations. At TED, we’ve been reading with interest and weighing in on occasion. After reading a number of blog posts and articles, I thought I’d take a moment to weigh in here, and clarify […]
At TED2010, Chef Dan Barber drew a standing ovation with his unlikely love story about fish: sustainably farmed, outrageously delicious fish, which offers a model for the future of food production. A key figure in the farm-to-table movement, Dan occupies an unusual space as chef-scholar: His op/eds appear regularly in The New York Times and […]
In the weeks before TED — amid frenetic preparations for the conference — I always steal a few calm moments, surrounded by stacks of books by this year’s speakers. It’s one of my favorite pre-TED rituals. Of course, there’s no hope of finishing them all. But I like to immerse myself in at least a […]
At TED2009, Stanford Professor and virus hunter Nathan Wolfe explained that most human diseases — AIDS, SARS, swine flu — originally came from animals. Today, Wolfe and his team announced an intriguing discovery that throws new light on an ancient disease, and provides new hope for its cure: Malaria, long believed to have evolved with […]
“Imagine if we could combine the power of a global ethic with our new power to communicate and organize globally.” – UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown “Next time you see someone in a Ferrari, don’t think: ‘They’re greedy.” Think: “This is someone incredibly vulnerable and in need of love.” – Alain De Botton, on the […]
The second year of the World Science Festival got off to a spectacular start last night at New York’s Lincoln Center, with a program star-studded from both science and the arts. We loved it here at TED, not just because it featured so many of our TED favorites — physicist Brian Greene (who co-founded the […]
Swine flu has made this a busy week for virus hunter Nathan Wolfe, who spoke at TED2009 about preventing the next pandemic. His groundbreaking Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (supported by grants from Google.org, the Skoll Foundation and others) monitors people in close contact with animals (such as subsistence hunters in central Africa) to catch new […]
Last week at TED2009, we unveiled the next phase of TED.com, which will bring TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world. The new features — slated to launch next month — will bring subtitles and interactive transcripts to all the talks, and will allow anyone, anywhere, to translate any talk into any language. Rather than simply translate […]
The winner receives $1, and more important — a wish to change something in the office. They were encouraged to think big (but cheap). Our amazing video team took time out from the Big Re-Upload to snag the prize with Joe the Encoder (left). We didn’t catch their wish, actually. Maybe next year.
If you’ve seen Wade Davis’s unforgettable 2004 TED Talk — where he evokes the magic of the world’s cultural diversity, and speaks so eloquently about the alarming rate with which cultures and languages are dying — then you might find this photo as heart-stopping as I did. It’s so surreal, I thought at first it […]
Today we’re throwing open the door to our back archive, beginning with Nicholas Negroponte’s talk from TED 1. Yes, TED 1. 1984. TED’s co-founders, Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks, had the foresight to record every conference he held. And I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to see the full archive for the first […]
Photos: Andrew Heavens “Imagine Martin Luther King saying, ‘I have a dream … But I don’t know if the others will buy it.’” – Boston Philharmonic conductor Ben Zander, on the importance of persuasive leadership “Human progress depends on unreasonable people. Reasonable people accept the world as they meet it; unreasonable people persist in trying […]