TED: Ideas worth spreading

Once a year, around 1000 people come together in Monterey, California for a unique conference to present their ideas and how they affect the areas technology, entertainment and design. This exclusive event (invitation only and still 4000 USD entrance fee) creates a lot of positive buzz but it’s usefullness are also questioned since it is such a small group of people to attend.

However the argument that the group is too small to create momentum for the ideas presented there is from my point of view not valid. Many talks of this conference can be downloaded a few months after they have been presented at TED and believe me – some speeches will give you a completely new perspective in certain areas.

What I like about the TED conference is that even though it’s invitation only, you still have a chance to watch the speeches and to comment them (on your blog or webpage). Maybe with the right kind of online community you could move from the “Speech Style Presentation” at TED to an ongoing conversation about the topics presented there. Because for your ideas to gain momentum it is not just enough to be on stage 20 minutes at a major event, but to provide the possibilities to adopt, discuss and influence your idea in an ongoing process.

Anyway, the initial idea for writing this post was to share some of the videos that I liked most and here we go:

• Bjorn Lomborg: Arguing that we are worrying about the wrong problems and we should reconsider how we prioritize the world’s biggest problems. (Watch online)
• Richard St. John: A three minute slide show, why people succeed (Watch online)
• Malcom Gladwell: What every business can learn from spaghetti sauce. (Watch online)
• Steven Levitt: The organizational structure of drug gangs….is the same as in global corporations (Watch online)
• Jeff Han: Multi-touch displays and the things you can do with it (Watch online)

These are so far my favourites but new videos are uploaded in regular intervals. The full list of available videos can be found at http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/