The TrueTalk Blog

Culture Is Everything

Four data points highlighted the importance of culture for me over the last few days.

Let's take a look at them.

1. BlogHer09 - I attended the fifth annual BlogHer conference in Chicago last Thursday through Saturday. It was fascinating to see roughly 1,200 women-who-blog gather to revel in the new-found power of feminine expression. Not only was I one of the few men at the conference (were there 10%?) but as a late registrant (representing a client who'd decided to participate at pretty much the last minute) I was unable to attend the full sessions, only the peripheral goings on known as LobbyCon (or, "LoserCon" to those of us relegated to this conferential nether-limbo.) As is true in any culture, BlogHer is governed by a powerful set of beliefs and norms, most of them seen but unexpressed. "Mommy blogger," "fitness bloggers," "Lesbian bloggers," "marketing bloggers" and others found ways to claim their respective territories, stratifying themselves according to audience reach, influence, advertiser attractiveness, and other characteristics indiscernible to relative newcomers/outsiders such as myself. I watched with Meadean fascination as women clustered with one another, performing subtle rituals of great evident significance, the true meaning of which I could only imagine. It was a unique experience.
2. York Beach, Maine - I departed Chicago to join Karen, my wife, and our daughter Kristin's family in this quintessential New England family beach community. (Kristin is actually my step-daughter but that term sounds so alienating, as if our relationship isn't every bit as parentally significant for us both as one originating from shared DNA.) York Beach is an authentic hoot. Karen and I had joined Kris, Jeremy and our then-only-grandson Benny here a couple of years ago (we've all since been blessed by Caleb's arrival). It's the kind of place that has the repetitive rhythm familiar to sought-after beach communities up and down the East Coast. Rise early. Depending on the tide, stake out a spot on the sand/rocks (this is Maine, after all) and hang out. A few people venture into the freezing Atlantic (this is Maine, after all) but most of us simply sit watching the children enjoy their youthful energy, oblivious as they are to the joys, sorrows, disappointments and compromises awaiting them in much too short a time. Everyone knows the drill. No one decides to bathe nude. No one blasts rap. We're here for the York Beach experience.
3. Zo-e Tribe, Amazon rain forest - OK, this is where things start to get a little meta. Yesterday, after a day on York Beach, Karen and I retired to our room and started channel surfing (Internet access? what's that?). Geeks that we are, we were instantly transfixed by an offering on The Travel Channel chronicling the story of the Zo-e tribe. The Zo-e are our planet's mostly recently discovered civilization. A missionary aircraft accidentally came across them in northern Brazil in 1983. 1983. Imagine. Zo-e wear long hardwood plugs, called "poturu" that extend through holes in their lower lips. No one knows why. Their tribe is known as "the marrying tribe." Their marital customs are mysterious to outsiders. Sometimes a woman will have several husbands, some of whom fulfill a role that we would call "apprentice," learning the husbandly craft of providing for their wives' needs. When asked about these customs on camera, one young woman simply giggled coyly. It was as if she were saying, "You wouldn't get it; it's a Zo-e thing."
4. Amazon/Zappos purchase - You've probably heard that Amazon.com decided to acquire Zappos.com last week for about $887 million. Big deal. Amazon.com Founder/CEO Jeff Bezos decided to make a video explaining his rationale for the purchase. The key? Zappo's culture of "customer obsession," "invention" and...well, watch the video...it's definitely worth the 8 minutes. Point is, Jeff wants Tony Hsieh and his management team to stay in place and keep this culture growing.

OK, so here we have four examples of distinctive cultures: BlogHer, York Beach, Zo-e and Zappos. The commonality? We seek them out. We'll go a long way to experience them; be a part of them. They are unique examples of ways people relate to one another. You are unlikely to come upon anything exactly like them elsewhere, which is what makes them distinctive and valuable. In Zappos's case, that value is almost $1 billion. In BlogHer's, over time, maybe more.

The point is, does your organization's culture has nothing to distinguish it from any other? Does your store feel like just another store; your firm, just another accounting firm; your motel, just another respite?

Why? 

Why aren't you using your most powerful asset, your culture, to make yourself extraordinary?

TED Salon

It's Friday. Here's today's foto:

I know. Not the best shot I ever took. But, I'm using it anyway to make a point. That's Dan Dubno, at last night's TED Salon in New York. Dan, a technologist/newsman for CBS, reported on new developments in graphics presentations at TED2006. He also presented the remarkable Jeff Han's work to TED. Last evening, Jeff did a reprise of his Monterey demo, but Dan impressed me with this little thingy right here. You'll notice a selection of avatars on the screen behind Dan. One of those was a representation of himself. He demo'd an application that animated the avatars, making their gaze follow a darting cursor, deliver funny lines (the Ricky avatar was Yiddishly funny) and generally wow us. But, the best bit involved the thing Dan's holding in his hand. That's a...let's call it a doll...that was produced by a fabricating laser device. The device took the avatar, 3D'd it, and produced this remarkable little fellow.

Now, I've been wowed by the fabricating revolution ever since seeing Neil Gershenfeld at Pop!Tech. Last evening, Dubno showed a bunch of us just how close we are to being able to turn computer images into physical things, albeit simple ones, on demand, in our own homes. Very cool.

Thanks to Chris Anderson and the TED team for a terrific evening.

Tags: TED2006 Dan Dubno Featured Foto Friday

TED2006 - Day Four - Session 12

Let's wrap up the TED2006 summaries with Session 12: The Future We Will Create.

Jamais Cascio, co-founder (with Alex Steffen) of worldchanging.com got us started with a portrait of "a future we can be proud of." What would that look like? Environmental responsibility, to begin with. Pessimism, Cascio said, is a "luxury of good times; in difficult times it is a self-fulfilling death sentence." Translation: don't fret about environmental damage, do something about it. Start with transparency: making the invisible, visible. Bring each of us face-to-face with the environmental consequences of our actions; watt counters in homes, speedometers that show mileage. Cascio believes collaborative action is the key to solving environmental problems and recommends developing cell phones with built-in sensors and GPS locators to continually monitor and report local conditions. Big idea: we can't wait for others to solve environmental problems.

Bernard Khosla followed with a three-minute blockbuster. We need neither oil nor a new energy source to solve our present automobile fuel crisis, Khosla says. Ethanol is the solution. Did you know that almost 70% of Brazil's cars run on ethanol? By 2007 that may be 100%. VW will phase out all gasoline-fueled cars in Brazil by the end of this year. There are currently 5 million ethanol-burning FFVs (flex-fuel vehicles) in the US, most in California (as many as there are deisels). Why don't we hear more about these developments? Is ethanol a realistic alternative to gasoline? Take a look at this report on bio-fuels and see what you think.

There is no better example of the big idea I took from Jamais Cascio than Majora Carter. Here's a fellow Bronxite (and MacArthur fellow) who's taken responsibility for reversing decades of horrible environmental damage and creating a, "sustainable South Bronx." I grew up not far from Carter's neighborhood and watched in horror from afar as the borough became a synonym for urban decay, drug abuse, gangs and corruption. Carter made powerful connections between economic, environmental and social degradation. Determined to reverse these trends, Carter formed several organizations, including "Green The Ghetto," and the "Bronx Eco-Stewardship Training Program," to prepare young people for "green collar jobs." She told the story of creating the Hunts Point Riverside Park, a remarkable accomplishment by a coalition of developers, community groups and government. Other cities, notably Bogata have recovered, why can't the Bronx? Big idea: one passionate person can still have a dramatic impact.

After Jill Sobule sang "Manhattan in January," her tongue-in-cheek "celebration" of the benefits of global warming, Al Gore presented his list of things each of us can do to impact the climate crisis. Here's his list:

1. Reduce energy usage at home (via design and insulation)
2. Reduce car omissions (drive a hybrid)
3. Be a green consumer
4. Live a "carbon neutral life"
5. Monitor/minimize our "carbon footprint" by using a carbon calculator to monitor our emissions
6. Make our businesses carbon neutral
7. Intregrate carbon neutrality into every aspect of our work
8. Invest with sustainability in mind
9. Become a catalyst of change
10. Promote the film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which will be released this May
11. Send someone to Nashville to be trained to deliver the slide show Gore presented on TED's opening night
12. Become politically active...speak up about the climate crisis
13. Support US participation in capping carbon emissions
14. Help with the mass persuasion campaign about the climate crisis which will begin this Spring
15. Re-brand "global warming" to reflect the seriousness of the crisis

Finally, Gore made a quasi-TED wish: place a satellite in orbit a the L-1 point between the earth and the sun, so that we can continually monitor energy in and energy out of our atmosphere. Then, using the same "biofeedback" principles Gore's daughter used to control migraines, we could, "make the energy emissions bar go down." Look, I live anything but a "green life." Gore's two presentations at TED (and many, many others) force me to decide what I'm going to do about that.

Another great talk by someone I now respect even more than I did before.

Tags: TED2006 Jamais Cascio Majora Carter Al Gore

TED2006 - Day Four - Session 11

Still summarizing TED2006, we've finally reached Saturday, Day Four.

Session 11 was entitled, Transformation, and the highly original, witty, Ursus Wehrli was up first. Wehrli is the author of Tidying Up Art, an exploration of one of those wonderfully simple ideas that just makes you smile. Wehrli's a stand-up comic and began with a deadpan statement, "We Swiss are only happy when things are neat." That premise is the foundation of his book, which takes the work of artists from Van Gogh to Keith Haring and "tidies them up" by deconstructing the works and re-presenting their components sorted by size, shape, color, frequency, and so on. He also cleans up Van Gogh's bedroom, getting all those messy clothes off the floor, and Brughel's square, moving all the people to a separate page. More than entertaining, thought provoking. Big idea: everything can be looked at differently.

TED2006 Bonus: Here's Wehrli's "before" and "after" treatment of a Haring painting:

I'd seen the next speaker, Aubrey DeGrey at TEDGlobal, and said then that while I found him "slightly mad" and extraordinarily provocative, my problems with the feasibility of his work on longevity had less to do with the soundness of his reasoning than with the limits of my imagination. Since then, he's appeared on 60 Minutes, an experience he told me (in a cocktail party conversation) he enjoyed more than he'd expected, mostly because Morley Safer was a thoughtful and respectful interviewer. His talk was essentially the same as that he gave in Oxford, describing his belief that "humanity's worst problem," aging, can be "fixed" through addressing "seven deadly things": cellular level junk inside and outside cells, too few or too many cells, mutations in chromosomes and mitochondria, and protein crosslinks. Fix these, all of which DeGrey says we know how to fix, and, voilà, eliminate aging. The Mathuselah Mouse Prize,which currently stands at $3,337,021, is DeGrey's vehicle for attracting researchers. Again, this is a highly original thinker who's ideas may some day turn out to be as visionary as Galileo's. Big idea: as Peter Diamondis says, prizes continue to be a significant factor in funding private research.

Sir Ken Robinson then gave what may have been my favorite talk of the conference on "innovation and education." He began by citing three themes he'd heard over the past several days: 1) there is substantial evidence of human creativity; 2) we have no idea what's going to happen in the future; 3) we have a great deal of faith in children, all of whom have a great deal of talent which we squander. Robinson's belief: teaching kids to take advantage of their own creativity is as crucial as teaching literacy. Because kids aren't afraid to be wrong, they will, "give it a go" (love those British phrases!) and learn new things. Over time, however, we, "grow out of our creativity." (Reminds me of a story I heard a while ago about an university art teacher talking with his seven year old daughter. She asked him what he did for a living and he said, "I teach people to draw." To which, she said, "you mean they forget?") Robinson's goal: to reverse the industrial-age-based educational priorities and recognize the diverse/dynamic intelligence needed to succeed today. Big idea: providing education for creativity now falls on corporations because it's been ignored by academics.

Finally, Gregory Colbert presented a 10 minute clip from his amazing film, Ashes and Snow. The film captures images from Colbert's project capturing people from around the world interacting with animals in incredibly intimate sequences. Elephants playing with children, divers swimming with whales, eagles mingling with sleepers. Breathtakingly beautiful. But then Colbert hit us with his blockbuster idea: the Animal Copyright Organization. Under this proposal, all animals used in commercials or films would be payed 1% of proceeds (is that right? I'm not sure), which Colbert estimates at $600 million/year. The proceeds from these payments would go to conservation/environmental organizations.  I don't know how practical this idea is, but it certainly is appealing. Big idea: we take more from nature than we pay back and the check is now due.

Tags: TED Conference TED2006 Ursus Wehrli Aubrey DeGrey  Sir Ken Robinson Gregory Colbert

TED2006 - Day Three - Session 10

More TED2006 summaries on a dreary Connecticut morning.

Session 10 was entitled "War, Religion, Sex, Race, Beauty" and was held in the newly-renovated 1,000 seat Golden State Theatre, for the first time permitting all Main Hall and Simulcast attendees to be in the same room for a session. Didn't really work for me, but it was a worthy experiment.

Jim Crupi began with a talk on the future of war. Something was off in this presentation. War became a TED topic in Tom Barnett's brilliant segment here last year. Barnett was intellectually challenging and entertaining. Crupi's talk felt like a Fox News special, for some reason. His points: warfare is changing, demanding new rules, relationships and competencies. Because it is becoming less remote, more intimate and protracted, new non-lethal weapons will be developed, including low frequency sound, dazzle devices, electronic pulse generators and microwaves. Biological/nuclear devices will be used, Crupi says, in the battle that is now for the hearts and minds of the world. Warfare's objectives have moved from the physical to the ideological sphere. Because of widespread visual communication technology, the revolution will be televised, immediately, with staged events inevitable. The future of war is belief/issue based, an "anyone can play"/no one is spared endeavor with blurred distinctions between criminal activity and warfare, civilians and combatants; leaders will increasingly be prosecuted as criminals (Hussein, Milosevic). Our objective in these conflicts is not necessarily to "win" but to protect ideas and freedoms, but the pain will be difficult to tolerate. What can we do about all this? Like Barnett, Crupi suggests integrating cultures. Big idea: matter-of-fact recitation of horrific possibilities is creepy.

Next up, actress Julia Sweeney, forever emblazoned in our consciousness as Saturday Night Live's  androgynous, "Pat." Sweeney did 18 terrifically entertaining and thought-provoking minutes from her full-length monologue, Letting Go of God, including a wonderful riff on attaining age 7, the Catholic Church's designated "age of reason." Big idea: the "scorecard" aspect of early religious training never completely fades.

Anthropologist and sex researcher Helen Fisher followed. Her talk focused on three interrelated but distinct dimensions of "love": sexual attraction, romantic love, and attachment. As we all know from experience and from stories going back to classical literature, these three dimensions are often out of alignment. We are attracted to people for whom romantic love and/or attachment are out of the question, and vice-versa-versa-versa.  Fisher outlined two powerful social trends likely to significantly affect sexual relationships through this century: 1) women moving (back) into the workforce (a reversion to a hundreds of thousand year trend now prevalent in 129/130 countries Fisher studied), and 2) aging. Because women start having sex sooner, have more partners and take on greater sexual expression than men, the tendency toward the rise of romantic love will take on greater consequence as women now refuse to marry someone they do not love, despite that person possessing attractive qualities. This is particularly consequential in traditional societies, where unmarried women seeking sexual fulfillment outside marriage will challenge foundational cultural beliefs. Meanwhile, as we become older the incidence of divorce declines, leading to greater possibilities for relationships in all three love categories: lust, romance and attachment. Big idea: the widespread use of anti-depressants is leading to diminished sex drives and reduced potential for orgasm, both of which will significantly affect the way our species treats sex in the future.

Nat Irvin followed with a full-length presentation of the "Thrivals" idea he introduced at TEDGlobal. I spent a good deal of time speaking with him in Oxford and was really looking forward to his talk here. Unfortunately, Nat got off to a bad start due to technical glitches and never seemed to really hit his stride. His message: a new generation of young people with a global identity will transform race relationships in America and elsewhere as victimization becomes a thing of the past. I spoke with several people afterward who simply didn't get Irvin's talk, which is a pity. I hope they read the document cited above, because this really is powerful. Big idea:  America's future is multi-cultural, and most of us haven't the first idea of what that will mean.

Speaking of which, a fellow Connecticut resident, 11 year-old violinist Sirena Huang, closed out the session. It's impossible for most of us to imagine possessing talent of his magnitude. Here's this delightful youngster with her father. We chatted about being almost-neighbors, Sirena's trip out to California, the reception she's received, and so on. Meanwhile, beneath these exterior niceties lives a musical genius who not only plays with great technical proficiency, but with emotional expressiveness well beyond her years. Big idea: genius befuddles us.

Tags: TED Conference TED 2006 Jim Crupi Julia Sweeney Helen Fisher Nat Irvin Sirena Huang

 

TED2006 - Day Three - Session 9

Continuing with a leisurely synopsis of TED2006, this time focusing on Session 9: New Lens.

The extremely quirky Cliff Stoll was first. Sometimes the odd-looking person isn't odd at all. Not this time. Stoll is, indeed, odd-looking (see photo here) and his behavior perfectly fit the look. Racing around the TED stage, snapping Chris Anderson's beverage away from him, jumping in place to make a point; Stoll's demeanor was, indeed, odd. His messages ("computers shouldn't be in our schools," "think locally, act locally," "things are the future, society is," "look at these cool Klein bottles I sell online") were also somewhat disjointed until he described his current experiences teaching 8th grade science one day per week. He spoke passionately about his commitment to teaching and connected this to Robert Moog's passing last August. Stoll showed photos of himself with Moog and told stories of Moog's kindness in teaching him to use an oscilloscope. Stoll ended with a commentary on the science/religion meme: "...science and religion endeavor in the evolution of mankind from prejudice to tolerance." Big idea: until his last line, I probably didn't get one.

Next up, Design Within Reach founder, Rob Forbes. Forbes is a man after my own heart. He calls himself a "design streetwalker," and takes upwards of 5,000 photos a year. He showed a nice sampling of them in his 18 minutes, demonstrating the power of observation in the everyday world. He made several points that stuck: 1) it's getting harder all the time to find design uniqueness in design stores; the global "monoculture" has taken over; the place to look is on the street, especially in cities with lots of bicycles; 2) the first job of design is to serve a social purpose; 3) accidental design vignettes (like the woman/scaffold image pictured here, courtesy of Steve Portigal's Flickr page) are everywhere; 4) pattern is one of the most powerful elements in our visual lives. Forbes also showed images of one of my favorite cities, Chicago, as a demonstration of the power of design in public spaces. Big idea: no matter how long I look at things, there will always be more to discover. I was reminded of the old Zen saying: "if something is boring for ten minutes, do it for twenty."

The extraordinary photographer Phil Borges was next. Wow. I'd met Phil earlier in the conference and we'd had lunch as part of a small group. I had not yet seen his work, but I already knew I liked him. He spoke of his work with great dignity and grace. Seeing the work showed me why. Borges was a dentist for 18 years before deciding that photography was his calling. He now spends his days photographing kids in indigenous and urban cultures all over the world. Remarkable work. His Bridges Foundation enables kids to connect with one another through the medium of digital storytelling. Many of the indigenous cultures he's photographing are disappearing: of the 6,000 languages spoken on Earth, only 3,000 are spoken by children. Big idea: Phil's quote from the Dalai Lama: "treat your enemies as if they were precious jewels, because it is your enemies who build your patience and tolerance on the way to enlightenment."

What veteran TEDster wasn't a teeny bit apprehensive seeing the name, "Tony Robbins" on this year's program? I confess, I was. TV pitchman, motivational speaker, infomercial regular. Didn't bode well, snob that I am. Well, count me converted. Robbins was terrific. You'd certainly expect him to be a great speaker; duh! But I was really impressed that he quickly found a way to win over this tough room.  Why am I here?, he asked. Not to motivate, but to ask a question: what makes the difference in the quality of people's lives? His answer, not the science of achievement ("making the invisible visible"; hey, guys like this can turn a phrase, no?), but the art of fulfillment (based on appreciation and contribution). Rather than believing ourselves to be the products of our past, Robbins believes in the power of decision. He started to get on a roll..."The key is foregoing blame for our fate on the past. We need to let go of the past, quit blaming anything or anyone else for our conditions. No excuses. In fact, if we harbor any excuses for our current circumstances, we need to let them go...now. Think about it: Who do you blame for your current fate?"

Suddenly, from the front row, Al Gore shouted out, "the Supreme Court"!

A second of shock...then, an uproar!

Robbins, showing he'd spent some time on his feet before getting here, rushed over to Gore, pointed at him and said, "No, if you'd spoken to the country the way you spoke to us the other night, you'd be President of the United States today!"

A nanosecond of shock, then another uproar!!

Robbins jumps off the stage, hugs Gore, crowd goes wild.

Quite a TED moment.

I could go on...but let's leave it at that.

Tags: TED2006 Cliff Stoll Rob Forbes Phil Borges Tony Robbins Steve Portigal

TED2006 - Day Three - Session 8

More TED2006 summaries, this time, Session 8, "The Magic To Come."

Saul Griffith, MIT-trained inventor, kicked off his presentation by pointing out that we still make things today in much the same way as we did in the early days of the Industrial Revolution: "heat and beat." Horribly inefficient/expensive. His point: we soon will be able to take advantage of information-bearing capabilities which materials possess. Using proteins as an example, Griffith demonstrated exploration into the self-replication of 3D structures: "a protein builds computation into the way it builds things." This was pretty deep water for me, but seeing web sites like this one gives a glimpse of the future to even us remotely involved folks. Griffith cited work on a machine for making inexpensive eyeglasses as an example of a way to, "build on other people's source code." Combine Griffith's work with that of Neil Gershenfeld and you begin to see that "manufacturing" will very soon mean something very different than it does today. Griffith predicts the toy industry will be one of the first to use these ideas broadly (think: Legos), making toy parts that can be assembled in different sequences, now a bunny, now a puppy. Bruce Sterling's ideas about "spimes" is very relevant here. Big idea: creating things with open source plans and materials continues to be enormously popular (see Make magazine), with serious business implications.

Next up: David Perry. Perry's a videogame producer who popped the stereotypical "pre-adolescent boy in his basement" image of gamers with the following statistics:

• 2005 game sales: $29 billion
• Projected 2010 sales: $42 billion
• 43% of gamers are female
• average gamer age: 30
• game developer target gamer age: 33
• 83% of games do not involve violence
• 5.5 million World of Warcraft players paid $275 million to enter the game
• 2005 market for "virtual goods" (weapons, "real estate," character identities) which only exist within game worlds: $800 million
• 350: colleges currently offering courses in video games

As games mature, they move up a scale of engagement from graphics to action to authenticity to purpose to meaning and feeling. Perry said, "Imagine a game that teaches us to respect each other." Much like Ivan Marovic at Pop!Tech 2005, Perry is pointing to a time when the game experience will be transformed into something more tightly integrated into everyday life. While some games will undoubtedly continue to be used entirely for recreational purposes, others will take on more serious functions. Big idea: we need to find another noun besides "game" to identify experiences geared to other purposes.

David Pogue followed.  Pogue's one of the most popular figures in the technology world, because of his weekly NY Times column and regular appearances on CBS Sunday Morning. His "Missing Manual" series has been a great hit. Turns out he'a also a former Broadway piano accompanist, and he regaled the audience with parody numbers like, "I Am Bill Gates, and I Write The Code" and "Don't Cry For Me Cupertino" (as sung by Steve Jobs).  Funny stuff. In between songs, Pogue pleaded for simplicity by demo'ing some maddening tech glitches which we all recognize. Interestingly, Pogue used to be a North Stamford neighbor, and his wife Jennifer, formerly a plastic surgeon, once removed a small mole from the back of my mother's neck. Big idea: people like to surround themselves with unnecessary power, which makes technology ungainly and overly complex.

We wrapped the morning with Dynamo, an English hip-hop magician who wowed us all. I loved the story about his grandfather teaching him tricks in a pub. Tom Riley's send-up of Dynamo's performance, focusing on his almost impenetrable accent, really captured the spirit of the moment.

Tags: TED2006 Saul Griffith David Perry David Pogue Dynamo

TED2006 - Day Three - Session 7

Let's try to get the TED2006 summaries finished, shall we?

Burt Rutan kicked off Session 7, entitled, "Tales of Invention." Rutan is the aerospace engineer who won the X-Prize for private space flight in 2004. The first line of his talk, "Houston, we have a problem" has become a cliché for all sorts of speakers, but Rutan meant it literally: Houston (home of the NASA space program) we have a problem (we've made no progress in human space flight for two decades.) I know people who consider space research a waste of money. "Fix the problems here," they say. I don't agree. Rutan captured the spirit of my disagreement in his talk: we are losing the ability to inspire our young people, and space exploration has always been a source of inspiration. Rutan traced three significant 20th century innovation cycles (cars, prop airplanes and jets) and showed the inspirational impact of each on future innovators, including himself. Using computers as his example, Rutan also demonstrated that despite governments spending billions of dollars, private companies, not government agencies, produce innovation. This pattern will continue in space exploration, where he sees the beginnings of a "capitalist space race."  To date, approximately $1.5 billion has been invested woldwide, with successful commercial space flight becoming a reality by 2020. This is half of what NASA will spend, with an efficiency of 10-15x  NASA's.  Not bad. Big idea: finding ways to engage our children in our dreams is harder than we think.

The quirky, talented, Jill Sobule  (accompanied by Ethel) then sang a wonderful little song called, "Like There Is No Tomorrow." Great to see Jill again.

Many of us come to TED to see the big name speakers and get wowed by someone we'd never heard of before. That happened to me again this year when Amy Smith spoke. I'd done some pre-conference "due diligence,"  so I knew Smith was a MacArthur fellow and, therefore, had to be a heavy hitter. But I was taken back by wonderful presentation: her unassuming demeanor and passionate description of her research was a truly winning combination. Smith began by asking a simple question: what's the number one casue of death among children worldwide? We all mumbled something, but very few of us came up with the correct answer: over 2 million children die each year due to respiratory problems caused by breathing the smoke of indoor cooking fires. Smith told of the work she and her MIT colleagues are doing in Haiti, a country that has been 98% deforested for charcoal (with grave consequences). The trick to finding a substituted is to create a fuel that cooks hot enough and lasts long enough to replace heavy carborn-producers. Early experiments with paper briquettes led to work with sugar cane waste in the Caribbean, cow dung in India and corn cobs in Ghana. Not only will the corn cobs (which she passed around) address the main problem, but people will also be able to earn money selling them in local markets. Smith believes her group's work could save up to 1 million lives a year, a figure she could barely utter because of being choked up with emotion. Big idea: right this minute, dedicated people are working on "hidden" problems everywhere.

Peter Skillman next made a three-minute presentation, describing a task he'd assigned to many different groups: take 20 pieces of spaghetti and build  a structure than can support a marshmallow. Know who did the best? Kindergarteners. Worst? Business school students. Here's what the winners did best:

• learn by doing
• work in parallel (b-school students didn't do too well in this one; they wasted time seeking personal power instead!)
• 1st to market is bad; learn from others
• conduct multiple iterations
• all projects have resource constraints, but you don't get more unless you ask
• kids don't accept rules; adult do

Best lesson for innovation: prototype, test and repeat until you're forced to stop.

After a short film that dramatically demonstrated that shaking hands spreads more germs than kissing, Joshua Prince-Ramus took the stage. Prince-Ramus is a member of Rem Koolhaas's architectural firm and led the team that built the new Seattle Public Library. He described the "hyperrational" process that was used to come up with a structure that, "challenges the modernist notion of flexibility" by devoting specific locations to specific functions (e.g., reading, book storage, research). Prince-Ramus said his team did not follow the "master architect" model, but I would have liked to have heard more about the mindset, culture and processes they used to produce this remarkable building. Big idea: use constraints to energize.

Charles Fleischer finished off the session with another of his amazing "humorous" presentations.  I place humorous in quotes because there is a kernel of deep wisdom in Fleischer's work that is easy to overlook. He showed and commented on scores of images of oddball performers (reminiscent of Ricky Jay's work) illustrating the following point: every moment the past gets bigger and so too does the future because there are more possibilities than there were a minute ago. Excellent. Big idea: all design inadvertently creates radiating possibilities.

Tags: TED2006 Burt Rutan Amy Smith Joshua Prince-Ramus Charles Fleischer

TED2006 - Day Two - Session 6 - TED Prize Session

A week after returning home from TED2006, I find myself returning to ideas, experiences and people more than any past year. I don't know why. Maybe because I haven't yet completed my summaries. Here's the next in line, Dreams: the TED Prize Session.

The session began with a recap of the wishes made by last year's winners, Bono, Ed Burtynsky and Robert Fischell. The vast majority of these received the "Wish Granted" stamp (which came across a tad overly self-congratulatory?) Maybe I experienced it this way because each recipient was granted three wishes last year...a lot. This year's winners received one each. Focus is a good thing.

Cameron Sinclair received his Prize first. Sinclair is the founder of Architecture for Humanity, "a 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in 1999 to promote architectural and design solutions to global, social and humanitarian crises." Their motto: "design like you give a damn." I saw him speak movingly at Pop!Tech 2005, where he earned the dubious distinction of being called a "motherfucker" by Pop!Tech founder, Bob Metcalf (it was a political thing). Sinclair is a strong advocate for "open source architecture," a radically inclusive approach to problem-solving, so his wish was not surprise:

I wish to create a community that actively embraces open source design to generate innovative and sustainable living standards for all.

He showed a dizzying array of work done to solve a wide range of catastrophic problems for people from Sri Lanka to New Orleans. I'm sure the Prize will enable his group to do even more this coming year.

Next up, documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim. Noujaim directed, "Control Room," the widely-acclaimed behind-the-scenes look at Al Jazeera's coverage of the run-up and initial stages of the Iraq War. Noujaim spoke passionately today about her desire to connect people through film. Her wish:

I wish to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film.

"Pangea Cinema Day" would be an occasion for presenting films that, "nudge the world" in the direction of world peace. Cynics scoff; visionaries imagine.

Finally, Larry Brilliant, recently-named head of Google's philanthropic foundation, and tireless worker for the eradication of infectious diseases. I posted a photo of him receiving his Prize on Friday. His wish:

I wish that you would help build a powerful new early warning system to protect our world from some of its worst nightmares.

In particular, Brilliant is very concerned about avian flu. The key to preventing a pandemic is early detection and rapid early response. Brilliant said this worked in the case of SARS and can work again. His wish focuses on the development of a bottom-up network of early reporters, using cell phones, and continual monitors, using specialized search technology. At lunch the following day, Brilliant described this network in greater detail, giving the 200 or so attendees a glimpse of what will almost certainly be a model-breaking approach to detection and response to infection.

All in all, the TED Prize session left me humbled by the work of these three remarkable individuals and proud to be a part of a community that is supporting their work. As the years go by, the TED Prize will undoubtedly become a powerful factor in global philanthropy.

Tags: TED2006 TED Prize Cameron Sinclair Jehane Noujaim Larry Brilliant

Prized Brilliance

How can it be Friday already? Well, no matter, here's this week's Foto:

That's Peter Gabriel presenting one of this year's TED Prizes to Dr. Larry Brilliant. Brilliant is a remarkable man. Besides being recently named to head Google's philanthropic foundation, Brilliant was highly instrumental in WHO's smallpox campaign, which led to the eradication of that disease in 1977.

The TED Prize is granted to up to three individuals, "who have shown that they can, in some way, positively impact life on this planet." Prize winners are granted $100,000 and a wish. The wish is a kind of challenge to the TED community, a call to mobilize around an issue for which the prize winner has great passion.

Brilliant's wish is to establish a system for the early detection of, and early response to global public heath threats. Bird flu is currently his gravest concern. After listening to Brilliant's acceptance address and attending a special luncheon the following day, I'm excited about the prospects for the development of a non-profit, non-governmental early warning/response system.

The TED Prize is a great platform for launching that system.

Tags: TED2006 TED Prize Larry Brilliant Featured Foto Friday