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    May 09, 2008

    Pangea Day In The Cosmos

    Well, one thing you can say for the TED community: we sure do know how to do a launch!

    What do I mean?

    Well, last night, I received an email from Carolyn Porco. Now, Carolyn is not someone who you'd think of as given to PR bullshit. This girl's a scientist. Get me?

    So, when the Subject: of the email is NASA'S COSMIC PERSPECTIVE KICKS OFF PANGEA DAY, MAY 10, I was very impressed. Carolyn, a terrific TED presenter (2007 presentation here, caution: autoplay), will be kicking off the worldwide Pangea Day activities.

    What's Pangea Day? Well, it's the 2006 TED Prize wish of Jehane Noujaim. That wish was at once simple and grand: what if the whole world could watch a films together and discuss their implications? Could such an event change the world?

    We'll see the results tomorrow, as millions around the world gather for four hours to watch 24 short films and share our reactions. Check out the Pangea Day site and find a location near you to gather with others and watch Jehane Noujaim's TED wish come true.

    November 21, 2007

    2008 TED Prize Winners Announced

    Every year, the TED Prize recognizes the world-changing work of three remarkable individuals. 2008's winners have just been announced. (Video)

    This year's recipients are three remarkable people.

    Neil Turok, mathematical physicist, striving to bring his discipline to Africa.

    Dave Eggers, writer and teacher.

    Karen Armstrong, religious historian.

    Congratulations to Chris Anderson and the entire TED team for choosing three people who embody the world-changing values that the TED Prize has come to symbolize.

    August 01, 2007

    TED Goes To Africa

    Do yourself a favor and watch the kickoff of TED Global II, which was held in Tanzania in June.  I guarantee that no matter what you think you know about Africa, you will have a very different picture of that enormously complex continent 20 minutes from now.

    Thanks to Chris Anderson and TED for making these talks available.

    June 21, 2007

    Oh, and speaking of TED...

    Here's the recently posted video of one of my favorite TED moments ever, Tom Barnett's crackling 2005 talk about global security.  Spend the next 23:53 watching this video and you'll learn more about what's going on in the world today, and tomorrow, than you have in the last year.

    Trust me.

    Eco-Shame Victim Seeks Eco-Shaman

    I had an extraordinary experience last night. Thanks to TED's Chris Anderson I had the opportunity to join a group of TEDsters at the New York opening of Jennifer Baichwal's documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. The film chronicles the work of Ed Burtynsky, naturalist photographer and 2005 TED Prize winner.

    Here's Burtynsky's TED Prize speech.

    Yesterday, the New York Times reviewed the film, calling it, "absorbing if unsettling." I'll vouch for that on both counts.

    Here's why.

    Picture yourself an already conflicted 21st century consumer. You settle into your seat and Manufactured Landscapes begins with a nine-minute uninterrupted dolly shot of the interior of a huge factory (one mile long, we TEDsters learned in '05) in China, appropriately named the "Factory of the World." As the dolly rolls the viewer sees hundreds, thousands maybe, of diligent workers at their stations wordlessly creating millions of components for unknowable objects.

    The effect is immediate: Nausea. Both kinds.

    The physical sensation of the camera rolling and panning does a job on your inner ear while the images of the products rolling off the line similarly effects your (Sartrean) inner soul. All this crap being produced in uncountably huge quantities, all over the world, every day. All of it being moved from place to place, used, used up, forgotten, disposed, reclaimed.

    Manufactured Landscapes compellingly brings its viewer face-to-face with every step of that journey at an unimaginable scale.

    In one typical scene, director Baichwal slowly zooms out on a shot of Burtynsky's still life of a mound of electronic waste, egarbage. At the shot's focal point, an incongruous small pink plastic smiling face. As the camera zooms out that pink spot becomes almost lost in an enormous sea of junk, but remains visible all the same, a poignant reminder of the particular in the general, of the realities of every single piece we're putting through the daily cycle of acquire, consume, dispose.

    In one of those moments a new word for this experience popped into my head: "ecoshame." We all know the feeling by now. We're likely to have it while viewing images of the consequences of our (mostly thoughtless) daily consumer lives, or maybe just walking through a Sam's Club. In the film, Burtynsky describes his own ecoshame epiphany while driving on a freeway, realizing the degree to which everything he is seeing and touching has been created by oil.

    At the end of the film, we hear Burtynsky describing in a voice over the enormous energy requirements of Chinese development as the country moves from its Mao era 90-10 rural-urban mix to a planned 30-70 split by mid-century. As we see blurry images of oil wells pumping furiously, Burtynsky says that it will take, "a new way of thinking" to enable our species to survive the consequences of those changes, not only in China, but throughout the so-called developing world.

    New ways of thinking, however, do not simply appear from nowhere; they are thought of by people. Visionaries. The same kinds of visionaries who imagined one-mile long factories. The same kinds of visionaries who imagined the Three Gorges Dam (the construction of which is briefly but powerfully depicted in the film). Visionaries. Shaman.

    We need "ecoshaman" to help us deal with our ecoshame, to help us get beyond the denial and paralysis. Manufactured Landscapes forcefully shows us the magnitude of the problem we face. Unlike Al Gore's film, it does not pretend to solutions. Instead, it leaves the viewer slightly nauseous in the knowledge that none of the current solutions, no matter how faithfully executed, are likely to be up to the task at hand.

    If all of this makes the film sound grim, it's not. In fact, one of the problems (cited by the Times and raised in last night's post-viewing Q&A) is the beauty of Burtynsky's images. He himself eschews the word, preferring the less culturally-defined "visually compelling" to "beautiful." Regardless, the film captures the artist's striking work and creates one of its own.

    By all means, see this film. Then figure out how you're going to deal with the ecoshame we've all brought on ourselves.

    April 17, 2007

    Spiffed Up TED

    People often ask me why I continue to attend the TED Conference year after year. As with so many wonderful experiences it's difficult to describe the whole package in ways the truly enable others to get it. For the last year or so, TED has been posting  TED Talks online, which has made my explanations considerably easier. Yesterday, after a couple of inaugural tech bugs, the newly revamped TED website was launched. There's plenty to see and more opportunities to interact.

    I challenge you to visit the site and NOT watch at least one talk. Nigh near impossible for me, and I've already seen them all at least once!

    Congrats to Chris Anderson, June Cohen and the rest of the TED team for a job really well done. (I'm already starting to regret not signing up for Tanzania in June!)

    February 27, 2007

    More Thoughts About YouTube and Businesses

    A few days ago I mentioned that I was getting ready to head to TED and was preparing a mini-seminar on YouTube vlogging. I posted a video in which I asked viewers to give me their ideas for the talk (utilizing the time-honored consultant technique of borrowing someone's watch in order to tell them them time.) To date I've received 40 comments and one thoughtful video response which I'm posting here, with the kind permission of its producer.


    Now, you may, or may not see the ideas in that video as relevant for your own business. Obviously, that's not the point. The point, as respondent nevik192 says below, is that you must take the issue of web video into account in some form or other if you do not want your current online presence to look very, oh, let's call it 2001.

    [Why use YouTube?] From a small business perspective it’s easy. I run a solar energy website and before we placed audio on the site the conversion rate was 3%, which was very good. But when we inserted an audio interview the conversion rate went up to 5%. We then added a video that showed how the product worked and the conversion rate went to 9%. If audio and video can do this then all business[es] now need to come to terms with this or get left...behind.

    I'm preparing for this mini-seminar now and enjoying the opportunity to step back and look at a few of the lessons I've learned in the 10 months I've been involved in YouTube.

    I'll let you now how the seminar goes and do my best to provide my usual TED round-ups from Monterey.

    June 27, 2006

    TED 2.0

    I've attended the extraordinary TED Conference for the past seven years and am considerably richer for the experience. The conference has undergone a metamorphosis under the curation of Chris Anderson and become a source of compassion as well as wonder.

    Starting today, those who've not been able to attend can finally get a taste of this wonderful event. TEDTalks are now available, thanks to a partnership with BMW. This from the TED site:

    Each year, TED hosts some of the world's most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. The talks they deliver have had had such a great impact, we thought they deserved a wider audience. So now, for the first time, we're sharing them with the world at large... Each week, we'll release a new talk to inspire, intrigue and awaken the imagination. For best effect, plan to listen to at least three, start to finish. (They have a cumulative effect.) If you have a curious soul and an open mind, we think you'll be hooked...

    I urge you to experience these incredible presentations. Don't miss Hans Rosling's amazing presentation, nor (fellow Bronxite!) Majora Carter's, nor Al Gore's, nor (biggest '06 surprise) Tony Robbins's, nor...hell, catch 'em all! It's a treat you really must give yourself.

    Congratulations and thanks to Chris and all the folks at TED for moving on to the next stage of the conversation.

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