TED have been putting their talks online for a while now and there are over 350 of them available to watch, download and distribute. And they’re all really really good. So good it’s taken me ages to write this post as I keep watching another one, and another one, and never getting around to doing what I intended, which is to ask you which TED talk you consider the most important one to you personally.
I put in those qualifiers because I’m not so much interested in figuring out which one is “the best”. I’m more interested in the ones which made you think, not just when you watched them but that months down the line informed your thinking on something quite unrelated.
To kick things off mine is Dave Eggers making his TED Prize wish where he talks about the 826 Valencia centre.
I’d known about 826 Valencia for years, mainly due to the Chris Ware mural getting a load of attention in the art-comix world, but how Eggars and his chums came up with and then developed the notion, through accident as much as design, I find very inspirational. Indirectly this has informed and backed up a lot of my ideas about how things should be, particularly this thing I’m trying to develop in Birmingham of taking lessons learned about social interaction online and applying them to social interaction offline. It’s a tricky thing to figure out the details of and seeing how 826 Valencia took a simple notion and just went and did it in the community, and then expanded it nationally, is both reassuring and inspiring.
So that’s mine. What’s yours?
Leave a link in the comments (with an explanation if you want, but it’s not necessary) and I’ll start collating them in another post.
Pete,
Two of my favorites:
J.J. Abrams “Mystery Box”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html
Sir Ken Robinson “Schools Kill Creativity”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Great post, looking forward to the wrapup of everyone’s favorites. I love watching TED talks.
Another vote for Sir Ken:
http://www.npugh.co.uk/blog/the_demolition_of_dreams/
Sir Ken was one of the six TED talks I picked when I created my TED Taster DVD (which is still available for download if anyone’s interested)
Dan Gilbert’s “Why are we happy” was a good one too.
Hey! Its my fave too, read my post about it I wrote back in May:
http://wearecolour.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/brooklyn-superhero-supply-co/
J.J’s Mystery box also a favorite, I have been meaning to make a mystery box for a friend of mine so thanks for the reminder Alex.
Also, Jonathan Harris: The Web’s secret stories:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_harris_tells_the_web_s_secret_stories.html
My favourite one from this year was Johnny Lee’s Wii remote hacks stuff. Amazing how games companies hadn’t picked up the head cam stuff earlier!
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html
Also, the photosynth demo is an oldie but goodie!
My fave is definitely Zefrank’s Nerdcore Comedy.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ze_frank_s_nerdcore_comedy.html
Kooky theremin player Pamelia Kurstin (for obvious reasons)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pamelia_kurstin_plays_the_theremin.html
There’s also a great one about a guy talking about training intelligent crows I saw once.
I’m going with Crow man, Captain Spore, Head-mounted Wii dude and the Species-pedia guy.
Think I’ve only seen one (so far, but will try and watch more now you’ve reminded me) and it was something about letting kids do dangerous things. It was great.