TED 2018, day 5: One last session

We gathered for a last time this year in the TED theater for a morning session they called, "What matters."  It's a wistful time at TED, because you're both exhausted and overflowing with ideas and feelings, and also want to keep enjoying the beautiful experiences they've created for you. 

First up was some music from A Tribe Called Red, a DJ group that mixes urban and indigenous music and forms.  I enjoyed it well enough, but I am not likely to be the main audience for anything near house music. 

Famous venture capitalist John Doerr then talked about the management technique he learned from Andy Grove and swears by:  OKR, short for objectives and key results.  His enthusiasm for and belief in this system was strong and clear, and he argued persuasively that everyone should use it.  I see value in it, but I don't consider it the only answer or a perfect approach. 

Gary Liu, a former tech person who now is CEO of the South China Morning Post, basically told us how big China's internet business is and how it's coming for us all.  The stats certainly are compelling.  If you want to get a good sense of just how large China's online world is, check out this talk.

TED's Chris Anderson then interviewed Netflix CEO and philanthropist Reed Hastings.  Their talk unearthed very little new information, though Hastings' exact answers were at times interesting.  The funniest moment came when Anderson pointed out that Hastings was a billionaire, to which Hastings silently nodded assent, and that Hastings had donated hundreds of millions of dollars to education charities, to which Hastings again nodded assent, and then asked Hastings how many hundreds of millions he had donated.  Hastings' answer was that he didn't exactly know.  Wow. 

After a quick break, architect and designer Walter Hood talked about his work in creating urban spaces that serve social causes as well as being functional.  I look forward to seeing some of his work. 

Mark Pollock and Simone George then took the stage in what was one of the most emotional talks of the week.  A couple, they met when he was blind and an athlete, and a while later, he broke his back and became paralyzed from the waist down.  They discussed their ongoing struggles with his challenges and all they had done to help push for cures for paralysis.  Their efforts and their love touched everyone.

Designer Ingrid Fetell Lee talked about how design affects joy and the kinds of designs that elicit joy, as well as the difference between joy and happiness.  Her presentation started slow but picked up speed and interest.

In the final talk of the show, comedian Baratunde Thurston did a wonderful job of both wrapping it all up and poking fun at everyone and everything related to this year's TED.  We laughed a great deal, and then we headed upstairs for the indoor picnic and final meal of TED 2018.

Most people I talked with during that meal were both ready to be home and eager for next year's conference. 

I feel the same. 

TED 2018, day 4: another intense day

Once again, I'm not going to cover every speaker, but I will touch on the majority of them.

The first session, "Insanity. Humanity.", kicked off with a funny and occasionally creepy presentation from James Bridle.  He started with YouTube content, such as surprise egg videos, that targets small children, and expanded from there to talk about how advertising and automation are driving a great deal of basically useless content that nonetheless draws millions of views.  He ended his cautionary talk with the suggestion that we bring digital literacy to all, so everyone will understand what people and companies are doing with this kind of content. 

Yasmin Green, the director of R&D for Jigsaw, discussed her work in trying to stop the process of radicalization before people are deep into it.  Their "redirect method" involves ads that explain the dark side of the recruiting messages from radical groups.  Her team is also working on technology they call "Perspective," which can tell you how people are likely to perceive your comments.  Though I am all for stopping hate speech online, I am not at all comfortable with software editing my compositions in the cause of its agenda--even when I agree with that agenda. 

Emily Levine delivered a wise and funny talk that began with her telling us that she has stage four lung cancer.  Among my favorite comments of hers were, "Fantasies:  exactly like goals, but without the hard work," and "My cancer isn't that aggressive; it's kind of like the Democratic leadership."  We all stood after her presentation.  I could listen to her talk for hours. 

In one of the more unusual talks of this year, Elizabeth Streb, whose bio in the TED program said she was an "action and hardware architect," talked about helping people fly--but often only for a few seconds, until they hit the ground.  As odd as the talk was, I enjoyed it. 

Dylan Marron's talk on his podcasts and other work is one you definitely should not miss.  He mentioned only briefly his "Sitting in bathrooms with Trans People" podcast and focused instead on his show, "Conversations with People Who Hate Me."  In it, he calls people who have posted online nasty comments about him and just chats with them.  "Empathy is not endorsement," he commented, and I could not agree more.  Great stuff. 

The session closed with a smart and interesting presentation from Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei on repairing broken cultures.  She felt the key to fixing any culture--and she applied this at Uber as a consultant--was to repair trust, which you do, she said, by being authentic, rigorous in logic, and displaying empathy.  Another talk you should not miss, and one I'm still pondering.

After a short break, we filed again into the main theater for the ninth session, "Body electric." 

Inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur Mary Lou Jepsen demonstrated some amazing technology for being able to scan people with a device about the size of a belt that she said they could deploy at scale to replace much of the function of MRI machines.  Though you may already be tired of me saying this, yup, don't miss this talk. 

Floyd Romesberg showed us how his team has created synthetic life that possess two more DNA "letters."  This tech is exciting and terrifying, and I have to hope that not only his organization but also many others are working on making sure the tech comes with ample safeguards. 

In another DNA-related talk, Dan Gibson discussed how his team can print DNA from an emailed "recipe."  He also showed video of the devices involved in the process.  Also both exciting and terrifying. 

Sex educator Emily Nagoski explained the phenomenon of arousal non-concordance and why with any partner you must always trust the person's words, not their body.  Almost all people would benefit from watching this talk, and I tend to think all men should. 

The musical group Ladama entertained us with a couple of their songs.  I hope to pick up more of their music.

MIT professor and bionics designer Hugh Herr talked about the problems of bringing information back from prostheses to the brain and showed some solutions.  Much of the talk centered around a new lower leg and foot his team had created for a rock-climbing friend, and the friend even came out at the end.  Fascinating stuff.

At that point, Bill and I hustled over to a nearby hotel for a lunch for The Climate Reality Project.  Former Vice President Al Gore delivered a compelling presentation and answered a lot of questions.  I still feel that if this version of Gore had run for President, he would have won. 

We then went upstairs in the same hotel for a workshop on impromptu speaking.  I don't feel weak in this area, but I always want to do better, and the leader was TED's main speaker coach.  I learned multiple useful tips, and the workshop was generally fun. 

Back at the convention center, we hit the theater for the last session of the day, "Personally speaking."

Illustrator, artist, and author Christoph Niemann delivered a funny presentation on conveying ideas with images. 

Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu discussed what they learned by making Hill's apartment as smart as possible and them monitoring all of its network traffic.  The bottom line was that, yes, all those devices are sending a ton of data about you back to the companies that make them.  In a smart house, as on social media, you are the product.

Rebecca Hwang discussed the challenge of finding an identity when you come from a multicultural background.  Her conclusion was simple but one we should all heed:  you have to create your own identity.

Jason Rosenthal, husband of deceased author and TEDActive attendee Amy Krouse Rosenthal, discussed dealing with his wife's death and trying to cope with it a year later even as he struggles to find joy in life. 

Violinist Lili Haydn treated us to one beautiful song.  I would love to have heard more. 

Performer Tamekia MizLadi Smith delivered a funny but sometimes insightful talk on working with non-clinical staff in healthcare. 

In a talk I found very moving, Chetna Sinha told the story of how she came to start and grow a bank for poor women in India.  I loved the talk, which included the wonderful and smart line, "Never provide poor solutions to poor people." 

Singer Elise LeGrow sang three songs that were originally from the famous Chess Records.  She has a lovely voice and made me want to find her album.

The last talk of the session was in many ways its best.  Oskar Eustis, who directs New York's Public Theater, started with the history of theater and wound his way to a surprising and moving conclusion that earned him a standing ovation.  I'll be surprised if this talk doesn't appear right away, and when it does, you should not miss it.

The evening concluded with a big party in the community theater one level down from the main stage.  We stayed longer than normal and actually talked with a few strangers, but as the DJ was taking the stage, we headed out. 

Wow, are my brain and heart full.

TED 2018, day 3: spinning up and down and all around

My head, not the conference, is doing the spinning.  After a day full of sessions and a Jeffersonian dinner on spirituality, my brain is fairly full and I'm exhausted.  So, today I'm going to retreat even more deeply into the land of greatest hits and not even try to mention every speaker.

The first morning session, "Space to dream," delivered solid talks.  My favorite was from Nora Atkinson, a craft curator, who discussed and showed many images of the art from Burning Man.  Years ago, I yearned to go to Burning Man, and parts of me still think it would be great, but other parts think it might well suck.  This talk gave fuel to the former.  Either way, I admire the art she showed.  The talk in the session that I found a downer was physicist Stephen Webb's discussion of whether we were alone in the universe.  He concluded that we were, but that we should be thankful for that.  Fair enough:  we should be glad we exist.  I still hope he's wrong and we one day meet aliens.

The second morning session, "What on earth do we do?", was rich in scientific content and generally strong. 

Physicist Aaswath Raman talked about a new material that basically lets you wick heat to the upper atmosphere.  I won't tell you how it works; check out the talk when it comes online. 

Chemical engineer Jennifer Wilcox discussed ways to pull carbon dioxide out of our air.  Her analysis was strong and intriguing.

Environmental data scientist Angel Hsu talked about using richer data sets to truly understand the state of pollution in China. 

In a fun talk I want to believe will work but seriously doubt, Rodin Lyasoff showed video of and discussed a prototype, electrically powered, VTOL, autonomous personal aircraft.  Who wouldn't want your plane to fly you to work?

Penny Chisholm discussed Prochlorococcus, the smallest photosynthetic microbe.  This little rascal proved to be fascinating, and her enthusiasm for it and love of it was contagious. 

Marine ecologist Enric Sala brought the room to its feet with a compelling, data-driven argument for banning fishing on the high seas.  I am now all for this notion.  Do not miss this talk when it appears. 

After a food truck lunch, I headed to a different theater to catch "How dark is the future?", a 90-minute interview of Steven Pinker by Chris Anderson.  Pinker came across as completely prepared and unflappable.  I look forward to reading his book, but so far, he's sold me that on the whole, things are getting better. 

The sessions concluded with one they called, "Wow.  Just wow."  I very much enjoyed its first talk, a presentation from Chinese computer scientist and investor Kai-Fu Lee.  He argued that what we humans can do better than AIs are to love one another and to create.  I'm not sure the latter is true--ref. the next talk--but he was very entertaining.

Speaking of that talk, in it Pierre Barreau, a young entrepreneur, discussed his AI, AIVA, which he taught to compose and play music.  He played one of its original compositions, a piece he had it create around the conference's theme of amazement, and I have to admit that to me--and I confess here to massive ignorance of classical music--it sounded pretty good.

Luhan Yang reviewed the research that let her team breed pigs free of a retrovirus (named, amazingly enough, PERV) that makes pig-to-human organ transplants unsafe.  With pigs free of PERV (what a story title!), one big hurdle to such transplants is gone. 

Simona Francese, an analytical chemist, discussed some amazing work in extracting data from the molecules on fingerprints using mass spectrometry.  We're talking CSI stuff here that is actually ahead of the TV shows (I think; I confess to not watching any of them in years). 

Singer-songwriter Luke Sital-Singh performed two sad songs and explained why he wrote only sad songs.  I enjoyed them and will look for his music.

The sessions concluded with rock climber Alex Honnold's story about free-climbing El Capitan.  I have zero desire to go rock climbing, but I still very much enjoyed his talk.

Dinner this evening took place right after the sessions ended.  We all headed out to local restaurants for one of TED's Jeffersonian dinners.  Ours focused on the topic of the future of spirituality.  The food was decent, and the discussion lively. 

Wow, am I tired, but I am also very glad that I get to come to TED.  It is a great privilege, and one I treasure.

TED 2018, day 2, ends with a bang

I took no photos today, so I can offer only my brief text reports.

The first session of the day carried the title, "After the end of history..." and focused more or less on the state of the world.

The initial speaker was to have been historian Yuval Noah Harari, but he couldn't get from Tel Aviv to the show.  In classic TED style, he instead appeared live via hologram, a nifty effect indeed.  He talked a lot about the differences between nationalism and fascism.  He concluded with the point that control of our data is the most effective tool a fascist regime or dictatorship can wield today.

MIT professor Cesar Hidalgo began by saying that he was a bit disappointed in democracy and went on to cite low levels of participation in elections in many countries.  He argued that though direct democracy was unlikely to work, a blended democracy using agents that aggregate the opinions of groups of people might.  I left unconvinced but interested in his thinking.

Neuroscientist Poppy Crum, the chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories, showed us how much our devices can tell about us and some of the potential risks and benefits of that type of tech.

Economist Kate Raworth argued that we can make economies thrive and distribute wealth better without needing them to grow.  I am interested in reading more of her argument, but at the end of the talk, I was unconvinced.

Another MIT professor, Max Tegmark, talked about the future of AI and what we needed to do to make sure that when (not if) artificial general intelligences pass human intelligences, we can be as sure as possible that they will not hurt us.  Despite the way that sentence sounds, he was relentlessly upbeat and focused on encouraging us to steer toward a future we want.

After a short break, the next session, "Nerdish delight," for the most part took us in a different direction.

Yet another MIT professor, Dina Katabi, showed us the amazing work she and her team have done with using everyday Wi-Fi signals to track movements within buildings and, more importantly, provide a great deal of valuable health data.

Supasom Suwajanakorn discussed and demonstrated his work in sampling images and voices and using them to make video that appears to be people saying things that in fact they never said.  He began his research as part of a project to create interactive presences of Holocaust survivors, but what he can do now is both incredible and terrifying.  He also discussed some of the countermeasures he is creating to combat his own technology.

Giada Berboni walked us through some of her work with flexible robots, a field of study that shows great promise in, among other areas, robotic surgery.

Simone Giertz, who apparently is a YouTube star but whom I had never heard of, treated us to a fun and funny presentation on her hobby (and now job) of building useless machines.

Rajiv Laroia followed with what felt like basically an ad for a 16-lens camera from his company.  I found the talk and product very interesting, but I would have liked more tech and less product pitch.

The next talk, from Token CEO Melanie Shapiro, addressed a timely and fascinating topic, digital identity and its protection, but again felt like a product pitch.  The pitch raised a ton of interesting "how does this work" questions, but she answered none of them.

The session ended with a great interview of SpaceX COO Gwyne Shotwell by TED's Chris Anderson.  As someone who wants us to go to the stars, I predictably loved this one.  If you're into space exploration, check it out as soon as it comes online.

After a lunch break, I attended a breakout session on podcasting by Roman Mars, the creator of the podcast "99% Invisible" and co-founder of Radiotopia.  I learned a reasonable amount and came away more interested than ever in podcasting--but sure I would want audio production support.

The fourth session of the show and the day's final one was "The Audacious Project."  This set of talks made me glad I have already signed up for TED 2019.  You should go check out the project's site, but it's basically TED moving from the $1M TED Prize to trying to attack major problems at scale.  In this case, the first set of winners from the Audacious Project need over $600M to tackle their issues, and with the help of TED's program and the money of a lot of big donors, they're already raised over $400M of that amount.  Each of the causes deserve support, and I was at least intrigued and often moved by all the talks.  As soon as these are online, if you have the time, check them out.  I wouldn't do them any justice here.

I do, though, want to single out two.

Public defender Robin Steinberg's talk on the problems with our bail system and how her group, The Bail Project, was attacking them was a beautiful, frightening, and galvanizing presentation that brought the whole theater to its feet.  Do not miss this one when it's available.

It's late, and now I'm feeling guilty about not covering the others, so do check them out.  I must, though, mention one more.  T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison, co-founders of GirlTrek, talked about their plan to expand the GirlTrek walking for health and social good program to reach a million African American women.  Their passion and intelligence and, most of all, stories hit us all in the hearts and again brought the room to its feet.  Do not miss it when TED posts their talk.

Expect tomorrow's post to be short, because I am once again up way too late and planning to get up way too early.  My head and heart are full, which is exactly what I want from TED.

TED 2018 kicks off in style

I'm back in Vancouver, B.C. for this year's TED conference.  I look forward to each year's event, and each year I come away inspired and with a great deal to process.  I expect this TED to be no different.

Though Vancouver greeted me with its usual gray, rainy weather in the morning, by afternoon the views through the conference center's huge glass walls were amazing. 

Click an image to see a larger version.

The first two sessions of today were not on the main TED stage.  Instead, they were shorter talks from TED Fellows.  I'm trying to get at least a reasonable amount of sleep this trip, so rather than review every talk, I'm only going to hit a few of them.  In the two Fellows sessions, most of the presentations were basically introductions to the work each Fellow was doing.  I ended up wanting more depth from almost all of them. 

I was intrigued by Essam Daod's work trying to provide mental health care to refugees, to help people both cope with their PTSD and to limit its effects by working with them as quickly after arrival as possible.  Rola Hallam's work with hospitals in Syria was inspiring; she and her organization, candoaction.org, are doing a great deal of good with very limited resources.  Adam Kucharski's data-driven approach to infectious disease research and prediction struck me as a very sound and practical way to attack this issue. 

Paul Rucker's talk on systemic racism hit me hard.  We have so very much work to do here. 

DeAndrea Salvador, a North Carolinian, works on the inequities of energy costs for poor people, something I think we should all try to help with. 

I appreciated the way Kotchakorn Voraakhom attacked the flooding problem in Bangkok and her emphasis on urban design and planning as a way to help make us more climate resilient.  We're going to need that in the years ahead. 

We were treated to multiple musical moments, all of which I enjoyed.  My favorite was the one that began the first Fellows session, an absolutely lovely performance by cellist Joshua Roman. 

The main stage talks, the "real" TED talks, began at 5:00 p.m. today.  All the talks were interesting, though few seemed to me to contribute a great deal to the ongoing conversation surrounding their topics. 

That said, the topics were important enough that simply hearing about them is important.

Tracee Ellis Ross discussed the continuum of male aggression against women, noting that the existence of a range from seemingly innocuous to downright horrific is itself a problem.  I certainly agree that this is a male problem, and we men need to own it and address it. 

Diane Wolk-Rogers, a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, shared her experiences at the February 14 shooting tragedy and discussed options for preventing more such horrors.  As she noted, there are no easy answers, but I have to hope that we as a country are going to attack this problem.

Jaron Lanier's talk was as odd and yet as interesting as one would expect.  His perspective is always worth understanding, even if you don't agree with it.  In this case, I thought he raised many excellent points about the usage by big companies of our data, but I doubt his cures would actually work.

In a musical interlude that was all fun, The Soul Rebels, a New Orleans bass ensemble, played three long numbers that I very much enjoyed.

Zachary Wood discussed how important it is for us to hear viewpoints different from our own and to really talk with people who hold them.  Our country needs more discussion and less shouting. 

Kirsty Duncan, Canada's Minister of Science, discussed some of her country's attempts at suppressing science and what a bad idea that was.  The implications for the U.S.--and every other country--were obvious.

The session closed with Steven Pinker arguing, with masses of data that he used in his new book, that in fact we as a species are making progress and slowly improving all aspects of life on the whole.  He didn't try to say we didn't have huge problems or that the improvements are not unequally distributed--he's way, way, way too smart for that--but his case was persuasive and helped the day end on an upbeat note.

After the sessions, we had a dinner party with the usual TED foods, but then Chris Anderson and company treated us to two unusual shows. 

The first featured two dancers performing while hanging from ropes outside our windows. 

They're not easy to see in this shot, but look to the center.  The show was fun, though notable primarily for its setting.  

After that, at 9:00 sharp, a local fireworks team, as Chris Anderson put it, crammed a 15-minute show into one minute.  They launched from a small barge in the harbor, right outside the convention center, so the show was close and fun, but I had to shoot it through glass, so my pictures aren't great.  

Predictably, I loved the show.  I am a sucker for fireworks.

Well, here I've gone and written a small treatise when I promised myself I would not.  Don't count on me doing that again this week.  It's now late, and due to the early starts that TED seems to love, I have to get up in the sixes, something I hate.

A good day at TED.

A TED talk I quite liked

After poking fun at TED's brand expansion in last night's entry, today I learned that a TED Talk I quite liked just went live.  If you have the 18 minutes to spare, I recommend this presentation by Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group.

In other news, I'm home!  I'm quite happy to be done with planes for a while.

Now, to unpack!

TED Talks and my hotel door

I love TED and always feel privileged to be able to attend it.  I've learned a great deal from and been inspired by many TED Talks.  I've applauded the way TED Curator Chris Anderson and his team have spread the TED brand.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if they might be reaching a bit far.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Yes, this is the Do Not Disturb sign that adorns my hotel room door as I write this.

To be fair, the hotel does make it easy to watch TED Talks, and I suppose this is a fair way to cram more content into previously under-utilized space.

Still, I can't help but chuckle each time I see this.

One more TED 2017 takeaway: control screen time

Multiple sessions of this past TED focused on various aspects of our addiction to our screens, the smartphones, tablets, and PCs/Macs that dominate so much of our time. A lot of the data suggested bad, often seriously bad, effects from our need to constantly check in with our phones and other devices. The data is compelling, but even more compelling to me is that I definitely feel those urges and too often yield to them.

So, over the next year or so I hope to take more direct control of the time I spend staring at screens. Rather than check email at every opportunity, for example, I intend to relegate that task to scheduled times. I'm thinking of asking everyone at dinner parties to leave their phones in their pockets/purses/whatevers. And so on.

I'll let you know how it goes.

TED 2017 takeaways

Since the November elections, I have felt more determined than ever to stand up for what I believe in, to support the causes I cherish, and to refuse to be quiet ever again when someone makes a sexist, rascist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, or other hurtful comment around me. My time at TED only deepened that resolve.

I am going to think a lot about coaching and how it might improve my work and the work of my colleagues.

I am still gnawing at the edges of the creative process the OK Go folks described, but I'm convinced there's some goodness lurking for me there, goodness in both my writing and in my work at PT.

I'm definitely determined not to slow down, because there is so much for all of us to do, so much of interest and so much of aid to others.

This event also made clear to me an uncomfortable truth I routinely ignore: I need to find a way to carve time out of my life to lose weight, get in shape, sleep more, and generally take care of myself. This one will be the hardest to implement.

More resolutions will undoubtedly surface over the coming weeks, but a last one stands out still: now more than ever, we all have to take care of each other. We cannot rely on the government to protect us. We have to protect one another, hold tight to each other no matter the dark weights that threaten to oppress us, and we have to extend that love and respect to all. As a species, we need to learn once and for all that over the long haul, nobody wins unless everybody wins.

TED 2017 finishes in grand style

Today's extra-long single session began with a group of 13 attendees who had one minute each to critique, praise, or even rebut a previous talk. Quite a few of these folks made very good points. My favorite was the man who suggested that David Miliband should re-enter politics and stand for PM in the UK. I obviously can't vote there, but if I could, I would certainly think quite seriously about supporting Miliband.

The first talk of the day was an unannounced presentation by Tristan Harris on persuasive technologies and how the online "race to the bottom of the brain stem" was ultimately doing a lot of damage to us all. Harris delivered a powerful, persuasive, and rather disturbing talk. I definitely plan to investigate this area further, for I know way too little about it.

The next talk, though, was my favorite of the day. Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank Group, proved to be a charismatic speaker with a huge heart and an incredibly sharp mind. As he told his story, past and present, I found myself wishing I could work with him.

Jeremy Thal of the Found Sound Nation spoke briefly about that group's work and played a video showing some of the results of the pop-up music studio they had set up at TED.

Anne Lamott, a novelist and essayist, wandered over a lot of territory that ultimately converged on her list of true things, which included one I particularly liked: "Everyone is screwed up. Don't compare your insides to anyone's outsides."

In what Chris Anderson said might be the longest single presentation in TED history, he interviewed Elon Musk for a bit over half an hour. The conversation ranged over everything from The Boring Company to Tesla's new semi truck to SpaceX and its missions. Musk came across, as usual, as both intelligent and completely willing to dream and act on an extraordinarily large scale. My favorite line of his was, "I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad."

In the spirit of hopefulness, constitutional law scholar Noah Feldman argued that contrary to what many believe, America has been this divided before, and it'll all be fine, because the constitution will ultimately take care of us. I'm not sure I share his optimism, but I certainly welcomed it.

As has been customary for multiple years, Julia Sweeney wrapped up the conference with a bit in which she poked good-natured fun at the presenters and the show itself.

Lunch was a party that filled the floor above us, and then it was back to my room to work as I re-entered my regular world. As always after TED, I'm finding that difficult to do, because living in this pampered bubble of great talks and lively conversations and a huge staff taking care of feeding us and cleaning up after us is an amazing treat.

Tomorrow, I fly home. Perhaps along the way I will figure out what new things I want to implement as a result of this TED.

Yup, I'm definitely coming back next year.

TED 2017: Another beautiful day

Despite forecasts calling for rain all day every day, the weather here in Vancouver has been spectacular, with cool clear days and only occasional slight rains. Today was another such day, a lovely time to be here.

My first activity was a session on confronting your implicit bias, with a particular focus on attitudes toward Muslims. We all agreed to keep private what folks had to say, but I think it's fair for me to relate that I found the discussions interesting and occasionally enlightening.

The first group of presentations focused on Bugs and Bodies. Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky kicked us off with an interesting conversation on why we humans do what we do, especially at our best and worst times. I was intrigued enough that I'll be on the look-out for his upcoming book, Behave.

Other notable talks in this session included Ann Madden's fun presentation on the many microbes on our skin and in our homes, and David Brenner's proposal to use a special form of UV light to kill super-bugs without harming the host humans.

One of my two favorites of this session was photographer David Biss' presentation on his spectacular photographs of bugs, photographs he creates with amazing lighting and depth of field that he achieves by taking many, many almost identical shots. I hope one day he puts out a book of his bug photos.

The other was Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn's engaging and informative discussion of her research into the role of telomeres in aging. If you're interested in aging, check this one out when it hits TED.com.

We also had a chance today to hear a pitch from Richard Browning, founder of Gravity, for his personal flying device, which is about as close to the propulsive bits of an Iron Man suit as we're likely to see anytime soon. He later demoed the early stage tech in the adjoining plaza.

The ninth session, It's Personal, began after the lunch break.

Helen Pearson presented some data from the longest-running human development study around, an effort in Britain that spans many decades and multiple generations. One of its key findings is that being born into poverty will for most people have consequences that will disadvantage them for the rest of their lives. The pressing need to address poverty as a global issue is a clear theme of this conference, and one I applaud.

Susan Pinker's discussion of the importance of in-person social interactions intrigued me, but I really would like more data. In one study she found that the factor most likely to keep you alive longer was staying socially integrated, which means having regular contact and relationships with multiple people. Her research shows that digital interactions simply are not as good for us as real, human contact.

Adam Alter argued persuasively that our need to check our devices is in every sense an addiction--and not a good one. He suggested more time away from those devices, and that is something I'll be pondering a lot in the days ahead.

Chuck Nice did a reasonably funny comedy turn, something TED offers from time to time. His jokes fell flat fairly frequently, but he's a pro and recovered well each time.

My favorite talk of this session was Guy Winch's presentation on effective strategies for handling heartbreak. He noted that research has proven that dealing with the end of a romantic relationship is basically the same as withdrawing from an addiction. Interesting stuff.

Tony- and Grammy-winning performer Cynthia Erivo started the last session of the day with a couple of songs and a short discussion about performing. Her voice is incredible, and her rendition of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" was spectacular, a treat I'm glad I got to hear.

Indian film mega-star Shah Rukh Khan gave a humorous talk and then joined TED Curator Chris Anderson in a discussion of the upcoming Indian TV show of TED Talks, a show that will appear in Hindi. A testimony to Khan's popularity was the large crowd waiting outside the convention centre for hours in the hopes of seeing him and getting an autograph.

Ashton Applewhite's presentation on ageism and our need to combat it was both compelling and full of fun pull quotes, including "Everyone is old or future-old," and "Ageism is prejudice against our future selves."

Nigerian-born artist Laolu Senbanjo showed and discussed some of his intricate, interesting art, and even brought on stage two women whose bodies he had almost entirely painted.

Podcaster Manoush Zomorodi talked about the value of avoiding our devices and letting ourselves be bored so that our brains could switch into more creative modes.

Poet David Whyte closed out the day with some talk and performances of two of his poems. I found him engaging and the poetry lovely; I need to check out more of his work.

After dumping our packs back in our rooms, Bill and I joined the traditional large party on the last evening of the conference.

Tomorrow morning, we have an extra-long last session of TED 2017!

TED 2017: day 3, and already my brain hurts

I come to TED to make my brain hurt. After yesterday's sessions, I was well on my way to that state, and today definitely took me there at times.  It's quite late here, way, way later than the timestamp says, so I'm going to hit only some of the talks that particularly struck me.

The first session opened strong with a talk by Michael Patrick Lynch on our need to reconnect with the idea that we live in a common reality. In a time in which too many of us seem all too willing to accept the ridiculous notion of alternative facts, I found his talk refreshing and compelling. I particularly liked the way he noted that when the powerful get to define truth to their liking, we are in for big pain. "You can't speak truth to power," he said, "when power speaks truth by definition."

Dan Ariely and Mariano Sigman then conducted an experiment on the audience in which they posed two dilemmas, asked us to rate the proposed solutions from bad to good, and also asked us to rate our certainty. Then, we were paired with another person or two--one, in my case--to compare our answers, discuss them, and see if we persuaded each other to change. The woman with whom I was paired made good points on each dilemma, and apparently I did the same, because we each changed our opinions somewhat and landed on common answers.

Neuroscientist and novelist Lisa Genova presented a lot of information and some perspectives on Alzheimer's. I didn't learn much, but I care about this topic and so enjoyed the refresher.

The second session focused heavily on environmental issues and contained many compelling talks.

I know very little about the Greenland Ice Sheet, so I found Kristin Poinar's talk on it both informative and more than a bit scary.

Artist Daan Roosegaarde showed some very cool projects, including a smog-removal tower that his team installed in a park in Beijing. The tower extracts smog from the atmosphere and yields pollutants that Roosegaarde and his team then turned into parts of jewelry.

Peter Calthorpe railed against sprawl as part of his call for transit-based urban planning. Though I'm not at all sure I agree with many of his proposals, I enjoyed learning about them and will be considering them for some time.

Former Vice President Al Gore made a surprise brief appearance on stage. He plugged his upcoming second climate change movie and made the case that even this administration is likely to try to grapple with climate change.

In my favorite talk of the session, Republican and conservative Ted Halstead argued for a carbon dividends plan that would include a gradually rising carbon tax, carbon dividends for all, regulatory rollback, and a climate domino effect. I found his proposal compelling and look forward to learning more about it.

After lunch, Bill and I attended a session on augmented reality. I found it mildly interesting, but I didn't learn much new. This technology could one day be very useful, but the implementations, particularly the glasses, have a long way to go.

The last session of the day focused on connection and community. Given that focus, you'd expect it to be the most emotional of the day, and indeed it was.

Musician and artist Jacob Collier kicked it off with two songs that involved him playing every instrument, singing all parts, and controlling all of the live video. Interesting stuff, though I don't think I'd enjoy a steady diet of it.

Architect Anna Heringer showed her work using mud to build structures that are amazingly durable and attractive. As she noted, this material is available almost everywhere in even the poorest areas.

My two favorite talks of this session were both emotional pleas to our better selves on the subject of refugees. Former UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs David Milliband, both of whose parents were refugees who ended up in Britain, made the strong case that we must take care of the refugees simply because it is the right thing to do. "This is not just a crisis," he said, "it is a test, a test of us." I strongly agree, and I hope that we as a country rise to this test better in the future than we are doing now.

Luma Mufleh gave an even more personal take on the refugee crisis. As a gay Muslim woman who had to flee her home country and who now coaches and works with refugee kids, she related moving stories of her own experiences and her work. "When do we say, enough?" she asked.

I pray soon.

The evening took Bill and me to a Jeffersonian dinner on the topic of whether businesses might be able to do a better job of uniting us than government. The nine of us who chose that topic enjoyed several hours of lively conversation and companionship. Despite always feeling awkward in such situations, I had a good time and learned a lot of interesting perspectives.

TED always leaves me resolved to do more and to do better, and today certainly filled me with those desires.

TED 2017: A day that started well and ended wonderfully

The title for the morning sessions was Our Robotic Overlords. Marc Raibert of Boston Dynamics kicked it off by showing one of his company's robots and discussing his vision of robotics. The demo was fun, but as someone who follows AI and robotics, I didn't learn a lot from it.

Noriko Arai followed with a discussion of the AI she is building in the hopes of one day passing the entrance exam to the University of Tokyo. Like the first talk, this one was pleasant but not particularly informative.

Stuart Russell's talk was also not particularly new, but I found it more intriguing because it focused on how to align human and AI values and objectives, a topic that might well be vital in the future.

Joseph Redmond's discussion and demo of image and object recognition showed that this technology is improving rapidly enough that in no time we can expect it to be in all of our smartphones and to be operating there at a high level of capability.

Tom Gruber, one of the creators of Siri, provided the most optimistic viewpoint of the session as he argued for what he called humanistic AI, AI that makes us all smarter.  I didn't find his arguments particularly compelling, but he clearly is an AI optimist.

In a fun break, Todd Rejchert debuted the Kitty Hawk Flyer. The initial unit will be available, they hope, late this year, and will fly only over water. I don't have a use in the world for such a device, but I sure would like to try one.

Schooling and other collective behaviors are fun to watch and to study, so I quite enjoyed Radhika Nagpal's talk. She reviewed the basics of this topic and discussed how her Harvard lab team built a set of 1,024 mini robots that they programmed to exhibit such behaviors.

After a short break, we returned to the theater for a session on a very different topic, The Human Response.

Rutger Bregman, an historian and writer, gave the most moving talk of the day to that point by pointing out that despite the belief of many, poverty is not a character flaw, and by then arguing for a basic income guarantee. He provided a lot of supporting data and left me leaning heavily toward this concept, which he claimed we could implement in the U.S. with a negative income tax for $175B, a price worth paying to lift all Americans out of poverty. Definitely catch this talk when it hits TED online.

Martin Ford's talk started by asking if we were heading to a future without jobs but ended up with another, albeit less compelling, argument for a basic income guarantee.

I've followed Patreon for some time but still found it interesting to hear the story from its founder, Jack Conte. We have no way to know just how well the concept is playing out, but right now he said that they have over 50,000 creators earning money via Patreon. I hope the platform continues to link audiences and artists effectively.

Sarah DeWitt argued for the potential positive power of screens in the hands of kids.

I'm still quite torn between the vision of his company that Ray Dalio presented and what I've read about it in other places, but certainly the general goal of an idea meritocracy is one I support in principle. Implementation, though, is everything in this case.

I've been a member of the ACLU for most of my adult life, so I was interested to hear what its executive director, Anthony Romero, would have to say. Despite his topics, which I care very much about, and his use of the art of Italian masters, which I have studied a bit, I found his talk ultimately a bit flat. I'm still grateful for the good work he does, but I wanted more from this talk.

This session closed superbly, however, with a talk from Vanessa Garrison and T. Morgan Dixon, the founders of GirlTrek. This group focuses on African-American women and girls and encourages them to walk as a way to fight health issues. I teared up at this talk and gave it a standing ovation, as did most of the people in the hall.

After lunch, which for me was some tasty mac-and-cheese with pulled pork from a food truck, I joined the first TED en Espanol session. I have no Spanish, so I listened to the talks via headphones and live translation.

All of the talks were at least interesting, but it's late and I'm running out of steam, so I'm going to mention only a few.

I enjoyed Jorge Drexler's music, but the rest of his talk felt less engaging.

Journalist Jorge Ramos, on the other hand, showed a dedication to journalism and a willingness to stand up for his beliefs that touched me, and watching him be thrown out of a Trump press conference (when Trump was a candidate) was chilling. Ramos deserved his standing ovation.

His talk's intensity, though, understandably paled next to that of the presentation from Ingrid Betancourt, which was one of the most riveting of the day. A candidate for the presidency of Colombia in 2002, Betancourt was kidnapped by guerilla rebels and held captive for six years. Her story of her struggles and how she fought with fear, her own violent urges, and hopelessness moved me greatly, and I was impressed by how much she came to forgiveness and the divine. I stood and clapped long and hard for her.

After another short break, we headed into the day's final session, Health, Life, Love. It began with a pleasant but otherwise straightforward interview of Serena Williams by Gayle King.

Atul Gawande really touched me with his story of how employing a coach not only improved his performance as a surgeon but ultimately proved instrumental in greatly increasing the quality of care in birthing centers in low-income areas.

Anna Rosling Ronnlund showed us a great way to visualize the degree of poverty and wealth in people all over the world with a demo of her project, Dollar Street. This is a site you're going to want to allow some time to play with and to study.

In a surprise move, TED Curator Chris Anderson then came on stage to announce that we were going to see the debut of a talk recorded earlier for TED 2017 by Pope Francis. I was blown away by the degree to which the Pope focused on solidarity and inclusiveness. This talk is already live on TED.com, with the title Why the only future worth building includes everyone, and you should check it out.

Jon Boogz and Lil Buck debuted an original dance that was at times moving and at other times just not my thing. Overall, I'm glad I got to see it.

The day ended with the award of the $1M TED Prize to Raj Panjabi, whose dream is to bring health care to the one billion people in the world's most remote communities. His approach is pragmatic and proven to work, and I hope his new organization, communityhealth.org, succeeds.

I was once again more than happy to stand and applaud.

A great end to a strong TED day.

TED 2017, day 1: Wow

I'm not going to talk further about our announcement earlier today, because I want to focus on TED, but I will show you this picture of Bill and me wearing the shirts at the big photo-op TED sign.

Click an image to see a larger version.

Bill's smiling nicely, and I think I've managed to tone down my resting I-will-kill-you face to something only vaguely violent, but you be the judge.

TED kicked off with two sessions of presentations by over two dozen of the TED Fellows. All of the talks were interesting and informative, and I was glad to have been able to catch them. Because it's late here and I have to get up early, I won't run through them all, but a few struck me as particularly notable. (All really do deserve your attention; I'm just hitting ones that stayed strongly with me and are still on my mind.)

Karim Abouelnaga discussed how his Practice Makes Perfect organization is closing the education gap for students from low-income communities in the New York City area. Both practical and inspirational, his work deserves more attention and support.

Neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman gave an intriguing talk on the possibility of resilience drugs that could act basically as vaccines against PTSD and clinical depression. Both the possibility of such drugs and the ethical issues that preventative psychopharmacology raise are fascinating topics.

Artist and activist Damon Davis used art as both a defense against fear and a way to boost courage during protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Wanuri Kahiu, a Kenyan filmmaker and writer, argued persuasively for the importance of what she called "Afrobubblegum," escapist stories set in Africa. I found it refreshing to hear someone else espouse some positive values of science fiction.

Comedian, filmmaker, and social activist Negin Farsad again wrapped up the Fellows' presentations with a lot of funny and yet shrewd observations about how to deal with tyrants, even if they happen to occupy an elected office.

Honestly, I could say good things about all of the Fellows' presentations, but it really is quite late here, so on I go.

Each year at TED, I've shown the contents of my goodie bag, so I won't break the tradition.

I chose some of the items, while others were standard.

After a snack and conversation break--before the day ended, a couple of folks had indeed asked about our shirts, so we made a tiny bit of progress on that front--the TED main stage opened with the first session, One Move Ahead.

Wow.  Just wow. This was the strongest opening TED session in my memory. The weakest talk was good, and most were excellent.

We began with Huang Yi dancing with a robot he created, while cellist Joshua Roman played beautifully. The interplay between man and robot was both beautiful and frequently touching.

Futurist and designer Anab Jain discussed projects her studio creates to show people what possible futures would look, feel, and in one case even smell like. Mixing the predictive futurism of some SF with both artistic and practical design considerations, her work serves to give people a great way to consider what might be coming.

Chess great and human rights activist Garry Kasparov discussed not only his experience first beating and then losing to IBM's Deep Blue, but also deeper considerations of the relationship between people and increasingly smart artificially intelligent machines.

Cyber-security specialist Laura Galante argued persuasively and passionately that Russian state-sponsored hacking and information manipulation may have been the key element in the election of our current President. I do not have and probably never will have access to the data necessary to know if what she said is what indeed happened, but even if it did not, the strategies she outlined were enough to make clear that the battlefield of future cyber-warfare is vastly more complicated than most people ever imagine.

Next up, the band Ok Go first played live along with a video and then shared some insights into how they create their incredible videos. Singer Damian Kulash, Jr. explained that they do not so much create ideas as find them, a statement that does not do justice to the approach he then explained. I am still processing this approach to creativity and expect to be doing so for some time, but I believe I have a great deal to learn from it--both for myself and for my businesses. They received a well-deserved standing ovation, as did the next three speakers.

Tim Ferriss spoke about his approach to dealing with stress, an approach that he has used to help cope with being bi-polar and having suffered over fifty depressive episodes to date. Basically, he practices stoicism. He showed some particular tools he uses to manage the stress that can trigger his episodes, and like the notions of creativity Kulash discussed, I am still processing these. I will say that a lot of what he described is similar to techniques I've come to rely on during the past several years, so I'm certainly in his target audience.

In a deeply touching and disturbing talk, artist Titus Kaphar discussed his work to illuminate the real history that art frequently hides and how we can reclaim that history from art without getting rid of the art.

Last up was Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who in addition to having a great deal to say was also clearly an accomplished orator. He argued that futurists examining the evidence of today might well conclude that we worship the self, the I, and that instead we should put our energies into the us. I know that sounds crunchy, but it's not, because there is a real difference between focusing all of our energies on ourselves and directing them to the service of others. He argued for the us of relationships, of identity, and of responsibility. "It's the people not like us who make us grow," he said as part of his discussion of the importance of communicating with people who feel differently than you do.

I've not done justice to any of these talks, but fortunately, TED will ultimately put them all online, and then you can watch them for yourselves. I definitely recommend you do so.

Late in the evening, I've now caught up with personal email and so can try to sleep, but my mind and spirit are still trying to process all that I heard. That's why I come to TED, and it's a delight to be so full and so challenged so early in the week.

Oh, yeah: I've already signed up for next year.

Buy a shirt. Start a conversation. Change the world.

I’ve been teasing for a while now that today I would announce one of the odder things I’ve done. I’m happy to deliver on that promise by introducing you to Limit Your Greed (formally LYG, LLC), a new company that my business partner, Bill Catchings and I are starting. You can visit its site here.

As friends and long-time readers know, Bill and I are the founders and co-owners of Principled Technologies, Inc. PT is the leading fact-based marketing and learning services provider, but it is also — and always has been — a social experiment.  Bill and I started PT in part to see if it was possible to build a business that follows very different principles from traditional businesses and yet still does well and makes a profit.

With PT now in its 15th year, we’re happy to report that the experiment is a success. You can run a business very differently and still do well.

Now, we want to take that lesson to a broader audience—in fact, to everyone—and try to change the world. We want to do so by persuading business owners and executives to choose to do something both simple and radical: to take less so that others can have more. To limit their greed.

Our goal is not new government legislation; instead, we’re hoping to help start a movement in which folks choose to build different businesses and help make the world better for a lot of people.

One way in which we hope to do that is by selling a book, Limit Your Greed, which we’re still working on but should finish soon.

Another is today’s announcement.

As the site says, “Philosophically, LYG is a movement. Practically, it’s a clothing company.”

The idea is simple: Buy shirts that contain challenging and conversation-worthy slogans. The first is “Limit your greed.” Another is “Nobody wins unless everyone wins.” Each shirt comes with talking points. When someone asks what your shirt means, you have a chance to show them a better way for businesses large and small to behave.

I don’t want to repeat all of the material on the site, so let me instead point you to its Practice page for answers to the questions about how to make this happen.

Of course, you could just buy the shirts because they’re cool—and they are. They’re made in North Carolina, where we’re based, from cotton grown here, and they’re soft and lovely to the touch. The designs are nifty, both visually appealing and conversation-worthy.

You could also buy the shirts in the hopes LYG makes a profit, because if it does, half of all profits will go to charity.

What we most hope, though, is that you will buy the shirts—Get ‘em all! Collect the whole set!—and help us change the world.

I have to warn you that you can’t buy the shirts quite yet. That’s intentional. Bill and I will be wearing one of these shirts each day at TED, which we’re attending this week. To help make sure no one felt we were flogging products—a TED no-no we take seriously—we didn’t want them available for sale yet.

So no, we’re not wearing the shirts at TED to sell them. We’re wearing them to do what we hope you will join us in doing: start conversations, and change the world.

I promised odd, and I think that me going into the movement and clothing business is odd enough to make that promise real.

Odd or not, though, I hope you join us in this movement. Together, we can make the world better.

A few quick pics from my day

After a wonderful sleep that lasted over eleven hours, I worked for a bit and then walked into the food court that connects to my hotel.  The spicy bento box struck me as just the right choice for lunch.

Click an image to see a larger version. 

It was indeed delicious, though it could have been even spicier.

After strolling over to the Convention Centre and registering for TED, a process that is as easy and as luxurious and as tightly controlled as it could be, I found my way back to a wonderful local gelato shop, Bella Gelateria.

I tasted three flavors, and each one was superb.  This place deserves all the honors it's earned.

The view out of my room's huge window, which runs the width of the space and most of the height, is both attractive, industrial, and indicative of the prevailing weather I've experienced here.

Tomorrow morning, TED!

Oh, yeah:  Look for an early blog post from me tomorrow, round about noon Eastern time, for the odd thing I've been mentioning for a while now.  I think you'll find it at least interesting, and I hope it intrigues you.

Sometimes the perfect plan is a simple one

I'm now in Vancouver for TED, which starts Monday morning and for which registration opens tomorrow.  I've not seen much of this city, but it seems to be a cool place, and I know it has a strong food scene, so normally I'd be spending my Saturday night at a hot restaurant.

Instead, I'm eating room service and watching a movie in my room--because it's exactly what I want to be doing right now.

In unrelated news, my next band name may well be Chew the Sphincter.

Oh, yeah:  the new thing launches Monday.

The odd thing is still coming

and it's much closer now.  I wrote about it in an entry a few weeks back, and I was excited about it then.  I'm even more chuffed about it today, though I will again confess that it's one of the odder things I have done in a life that contains quite a few odd choices.

I will give one clue:  it'll make its public appearance about the same time as the start of this year's TED, which I am fortunate enough to be attending.

Is that a coincidence?

Hmmm.

TED 2016 closes strong

Despite what the timestamp on this entry says, I'm writing it late Saturday afternoon (local time) in the Admirals Club in Heathrow.  The sky is already darkening, and I am trying not to fall asleep.  I'm spending over four hours here on my way to Barcelona.  I am so exhausted I have trouble keeping my eyes open, but I want to put down these thoughts while they are still reasonably fresh.

The first speaker of the day was Tshering Tobgay, the Prime Minister of Bhutan.  Bhutan is a small country with around 700,000 people and a very unusual--and admirable--way of doing business.  It was the first country to be not just carbon-neutral but carbon-positive, something it pledged to be quite some time ago.  The government focuses as much on GNH--Gross National Happiness--as on GDP.  Tobgay's talk was thought-provoking and entertaining, enough so that I now very much want to visit Bhutan and learn more about it.

Sue Desmond-Hellman, the CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and thus one of the most powerful non-profit heads in the world, took the stage next.  She spoke a lot about Precision Public Health as a solution to dealing with issues such as the fact that 2.6 million babies die in the first year of life.  Her example of precision medicine--Herceptin targeting breast-cancer cells--was clear, but she was very short on details about what Precision Public Health would actually mean in practice.  I left wanting more information.

We switched from medicine to art when photographer Stephen Wilkes discussed with us some photos from his Day to Night photographic series.  In each of these works, he chooses a location, usually one suspended in the air over a target area, and shoots 1,500 to 2,500 shots over 18 to 30 hours.  From these, he assembles a single photo that shows what happened in that place from very early in the morning until evening.  I found the photos fascinating and compelling.  I hope he comes out with a book of them.

Surprise guest speaker Alexander Betts, an Oxford professor who specializes in refugee studies, argued convincingly for the EU to do a much better job of taking in refugees.  His arguments applied equally well, I believe, to the U.S.  Impassioned, deeply knowledegable, and completely committed, Betts was a whirlwind of energy determined to improve how we handle refugees.  I was one of the many who gave his talk a standing ovation, my second (after one for Tobgay) of the day.

Surprise followed surprise as Amanda Palmer came onstage.  Joining her were Jherek Bischoff, who conducted a string quartet, and Usman Riaz, who played the main melody on guitar.  They started into a slow and soulful rendition of "Major Tom," and the house exploded with applause.  When it came time for the countdown, a quarter-intensity spotlight revealed that Al Gore was up there with them, and he read the countdown.  After his amazing talk on climate change, Gore reading this countdown was somehow perfect.  At the end, David Bowie name and life span appeared on the screen.

I've expressed here before my mixed feelings about Amanda Palmer's work, but I must say that she and this group absolutely nailed this song.  They were splendid.  I and everyone else in the house stood and gave them a prolonged standing ovation.  It was a magic TED moment, and I feel privileged to have been in the audience to see it.

We changed to comedy as Erin McKean, TED's resident lexicologist, discussed some of the more interesting words, real and made-up, we've heard this week.  She's a quiet but effective humorist and clearly a word lover.

Courtney Martin pointed out that for the first time in American History, a majority of people today believe their children will lead lives with less than they have.  She argued, though, that this was less a failure of the American Dream than a sign that it's time to have a very different dream, one focused more on fulfillment and the ability to adapt to a constantly changing work world than one targeting material possessions.  Her presentation was interesting, and she certainly raised some valid points, but it was ultimately the weakest of the day's talks.

Casey Gerald, founder of MBAs Across America and a strong orator, chronicled a lot of his experiences along the road to finding himself a believer in the gospel of doubt.  He also announced the closing of his organization.  His talk was moving, and he received a standing ovation, but he had only his doubt to offer, no answers or even a path forward, and so in that way his talk ended disappointingly.  I still, though, found it compelling and enjoyed it.

As she has done at past TEDs, Julia Sweeney gave a humorous wrap-up of the week that was a nice, light way to end its final session.

In the course of the closing lunch, I made myself (Bill had already left) sit with different groups and thus actually spoke to over half a dozen folks.  I spent a lot of time talking with speaker Wanda Diaz Merced and TED Fellow Mitchell Jackson, and I quite enjoyed the conversations.

I left as one should depart from TED:  with my heart and head full to overflowing, happy that I had been able to attend, and already looking forward to next year's event.

Talks that ranged far and wide

This last full day of TED contained three sessions jammed with talks that covered a wide range of topics.

The conference's ninth session opened with conservative Arthur Brooks arguing convincingly that conservatives and liberals need each other to solve the world's biggest problems, including the one he was focused on:  the extreme poverty that two billion people around the world suffer.  I particularly liked his notion of "servant leadership."  To be a servant leader, he observed, you must fight both for people you don't need and those who don't like you.  As he also noted, this concept eludes the vast majority of today's politicians:  "We in this country are facing a lack of visionary servant leadership."

One of the stronger and more compelling talks came from Adam Foss, an assistant district attorney in the juvenile division of Suffolk County.  Foss had started out to be a defender, watched the power dynamics in the courtroom, and realized he could do more good for his people as a prosecutor.  He argued very persuasively that we need to train prosecutors in saving people and changing lives, not ruining them.  Rather than focus on jailing people, prosecutors should instead focus on helping them come back from mistakes in their lives.  I realize this may sound more than a bit unrealistic, but Foss and others have shown that it is very possible and that we can both help change lives and avoid adding to our broken and incredibly expensive incarceration system.

Music great John Legend joined Foss on stage and chatted with him a bit--the two had worked together on one of Legend's organizations, Free America, which works to help fix that very same broken system.  Legend then played a few songs on the piano and sang.  What a privilege it was to hear him perform!  He opened with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," a song that was even more poignant given Foss' talk.

I've never read anything by writer Lidia Yuknovitch, who spoke next, but I am certainly going to seek out her work.  She discussed what it was like to be a misfit with a life that made her feel for years and years that she never belonged in the room.  I found her talk personally relevant and moving.

Moran Cerf discussed his work in brain imaging from the inside, which he does by putting electrodes in the brains of people whose skulls are already open for brain surgery.  He also talked about some promising--and potentially frightening--work in manipulating dreams via external stimuli.  Interesting stuff.

The last presentation of the first session was an extremely cool demo of Microsoft's Hololens by Alex Kipman.  Kipman conducted a live holo conference with a colleague who was across the street.  The demo worked surprisingly well given all it was doing.  I'm ready to try a Hololens!

After lunch, the tenth session kicked off with a group of speakers who were all TEDx organizers.  The six talks were all entertaining enough, but none reached the heights of Foss or Yuknovitch.  The most fun was Linsey Pollak's demonstration of making musical instruments from odd objects, including a carrot.  Kang Lee's presentation on lying in children was interesting but did not contain enough data for my taste.

The most touching of the bunch was Angelica Dass' presentation of her Humanae project, in which she photographs people, samples pixels from parts of their faces (I think), and then shows the Pantone colors of their skin.  The many photos make abundantly clear what we should all already know:  that labels like "black" and "white" are stupid ways to categorize people, and that each of us falls on a continuum of human colors.

If someone reminds me, I'll write an entry sometime on how this applies to my Jon & Lobo books.

The day wrapped with a session on "fantasists and catalysts."  Chris Milk started it off with a bang by giving us an amazing demo of the Vrse virtual reality technology.  Each of us had previously downloaded a special TED app to our phones.  Using our phones, a Google Cardboard viewer that was on our seats, and earphones that were also on our seats--yes, we got to keep this swag--we all stood and experienced an amazing five minutes.  The whole time Milk talked, two musicians played for us, an addition that made the talk even more haunting.  During the demo, of course, sound relevant to what we were experiencing poured through our earphones.  Though I have felt and generally still believe that VR has a very long way to go, this demo was fantastic.

Neurologist Uri Hasson showed something amazing he's learned from his FMRI brain research: brains sync on meanings, with listeners and storytellers alike triggering the same sections of their brains as they hear/tell a story.  He also showed hard proof of something we all know from experience:  what you believe before you hear a story affects how you respond to the story.  The difference is that he actually showed that your brain physically responds differently based on what you bring to a story.  Very nifty stuff.

Design critic Alice Rawsthorn provided a few examples of how superior design can have huge real-world consequences.

Ameera Harouda makes her living in Gaza as a fixer for journalists, the only female fixer there and thus one who can get stories others can't.  What she's doing is very brave, but for many reasons she couldn't go into much detail.

Musical group El Vy played us a few songs, which I enjoyed well enough.  I say that because after listening to John Legend earlier, my expectations were rather high.

The day ended with a bit of science fiction storytelling theater from Monica Byrne, a Durham writer.  She delivered a fine performance of a short story with a very sad ending.

We all then bundled into buses to head to the last night of TED celebration.  The food was the usual TED hip concoctions, good but not great.  Bill and I actually spoke with a few new folks, which was good.  The big news of the party was that after a DJ had warmed up the crowd, Fitz and the Tantrums played for us.  I quite like this group, though the mix for this party made it almost impossible to understand most of the words they were singing.

Tomorrow, TED draws to a close with a single session that runs for more than two and a half hours!