Loading...Started in 1987 as a one-time conference, TED (standing for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is now – 19 years later – a world-renowned conference series that takes place regularly all over the world. In each conference, interesting speakers and performers give a 10-20 minute talk on their area of expertise, whether it’s marine biology, molecular engineering, juggling, spoken word poetry, or anything else; as long as it makes for a good talk. Not only has TED run conferences all over the world, but they have also spawned TEDx conferences, independently run TED conferences, usually just as interesting but without as high-profile speakers as the main TED events. I’ve been to a TEDx conference, (TEDx Stanford) and every talk was very interesting, well put together, and very entertaining. And by high-profile speakers, I mean people like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, Bono, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Bono, and many Nobel Prize Winners. The ticket price for TED conferences reflects TED’s popularity as well, $7,500 being the price per ticket for previous conferences.
With 4 million subscribers and 500 million views, (1.4 billion across all 12 of their affiliate channels) TED is also wildly popular online, their talks viewed by tons of people all over the world. The whole idea of TED is to spread “Ideas Worth Spreading” (as their tagline goes), and the fact that these talks are viewed by so many people show how is a great success for the conference series. The talks really are very interesting, thought-provoking, entertaining, and captivating, and there are so many you couldn’t never watch them all, with an astonishing, 71 videos across all 12 channels.
So, to give you an example of one of the great talks given at TED conferences, the video above is one of my absolute favorite TED talks ever, given by the spoken word artist/storyteller Rives. Rives gave the talk way back in 2007, but the talk still holds its ground as a very funny and fun to watch lecture. Titled “The 4am Mystery“, Rives talks about an apparent “Giacometti Code” that he has discovered, a culture-wide “bad press”, as he puts it, for the hour of 4am in the morning. Although the hour of 4am seems like a slightly boring lecture topic, Rives spins an incredibly entertaining story, involving figures like Judi Dench and Bill Clinton, along with a plethora of surprising connections and “coincidences”.
Although the talk above is geared more towards the “e” in TED, standing for entertainment, technology and design are in no way left out. A large part of TED talks that make it to the mainstage are educational/informative, on topics, that range from astronomy to robotics to animal behavior. TED has, over the years, become a very well respected and beloved conference series, the talks gaining millions and millions of views online as well as in person. TED talks have a reputation for being very high-quality, well delivered, and overall great lectures, which when filmed and uploaded to YouTube make for a great YouTube channel.