TEDGlobal 2013: Think Again - What's Going On Around the Talks?
I am here at the TEDextravaganza which is TEDGlobal,
featuring a week of over 80 TEDTalks on the main stage, including musicians,
and 16 shorter talks at TED University, which is when the audience takes the
TED stage. But that’s not all (if that
wasn’t enough!) BTW, the TED Blog is a great place to get descriptions of the great talks we are hearing.
Around the fantastic TED talks that are delivered is an
interesting set of activities, demonstrations and thoughtful details that make
for a full week of fascinating, if a bit extreme, sensory input for TED participants.
I wanted to take a little pause here in the action to note some of the great
ideas on the event design aspect that I think are interesting and might be
inspiration of other’s learning events. This is taking a heroic effort at self
discipline to write this as there is not a nanosecond of down time for
reflection programmed into the schedule.
For learning event organizers, it is very tempting to focus
all energy on the content of a workshop or conference- and primarily on what
happens on the stage. But learning and interaction can happen everywhere, and
although participants might spend some 20+ hours sitting in the audience, as we
are this week, another 2-4 hours per day find them in the venue at breaks,
meals, waiting for sessions to start and chatting about them once they are over,
etc. That can add another 20 hours of programmable time to your agenda, which
you could either ignore and leave to serendipity, or cleverly use to integrate
more learning activities and opportunities. And to be noted - with these latter
you don’t have the design constraints of seated participants all sitting
side-by-side looking forward in a dark room.
What has TEDGlobal come up with this year to help people
deepen their experience with the topics of the talks, get to know one another
better, and feed their brains and bodies? Here are a few things I am doing:
Play
Pong with Drones: I spent a break with an impromptu team holding a green panel
and coordinating directional messages to our drone (a quadrirotor, or Quad) to
win a game of Pong. This game was being played by three flying drones from the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (introduced to us by speaker RaffaelloD’Andrea). We had a whole session on “those flying things” which featured
speakers exploring the use of electric autonomous flying vehicles for
everything from environmental monitoring (Lian Pin Koh), delivering medicines
to hard to reach villages (Andreas Raptopoulos) to the real possibility from
lethal autonomy of these flying machines of a robot war (Daniel Suarez). You clearly get the good with the bad with
this technology.
Take
a Ride in an Electric Car: I booked at the TEDDrive desk a pick-up in an
electric car to go to a TEDx dinner last night. All week, TED offers rides in
electric city cars to participants with a little lesson on how they work (fast
charge- 30 minutes, or overnight, and these five passenger cars can make it up
to 70 miles on one charge in good conditions – cold weather uses the battery
faster, so do various features like aircon, heater, windshield wipers etc.) I
didn’t know the display was so easy to understand and helpful regarding how
long you have left to drive on your existing charge. Tempting…
Start
a Fortune Cookie Conversation: At the breaks and lunch, brightly wrapped
packets of fortune cookies are temptingly set out on all the tables. In each
cookie is not a fortune, but a good conversation starter question to get things
going with the new people you are perching with at the table.
Go
Talk to An Author: I spent another break at the TED Bookstore with Sandra Aamodt, neuroscientist, TEDGlobal speaker and author of “Welcome to your Brain”,
feebly and rather desperately trying to inquire if her years of conclusive
research on the tenacity of weight set points might possibly be wrong
(unsuccessfully as you can imagine). I wanted to speak to her because I have
been feeling very smug at recent weight loss and was rather distraught at her talk’s
message that I would simply gain it back to my body’s set point unless I was
prepared to stay on the diet for the rest of my life. Apparently weight set
points can go up, but rarely go down (I can still hope I am one of those rare
cases). She is advocating mindful eating as an alternative to dieting, which
sounds like another year of learning and effort. She also encouraged me at the
end of our chat to get a standing desk, as new research is showing that sitting
down is also killing us.
Eat
Sensibly: Well I had to put this next. TEDGlobal is great at providing
interesting and healthy snacks and meals. Little signs tell you that, with this
snack, you are getting IRON or VITAMIN D, etc. No doubt so you can practice
more mindful eating. We even got a “map” of the Grand Opening Party food
offerings with titles of food stations such as Convey (Sharpes Express 1900
Sweet Potato Cakes) , Explode (Exploding bitter dark chocolate with granite
shots), Honeycomb (Lapsong Souchong Tea
Smoked chicken) and Distinguished Doughnut (Savory rocket pesto doughnuts).
Print
an Iconic Image: Getty Images is here with their digital archive and you can
spend as long as you want to find a photo you like, after which the team prints
it in A3 and you pick it up at the end of the day. I found a terrific BW photo
of the terrifying, highest-roller-coaster-in-the-world, which is at Cedar Point
in Ohio, which I faintly think I have been on but must have blocked it out. Or
maybe not - we did learn from speaker Elizabeth Loftus that there is no
evidence that we repress memories and banish them from our memory. We are
however susceptible to false memories which can be introduced and adopted; so
maybe I didn’t go on it, but my parents wanted me to think I did and was too scared
to repeat, so they didn’t have to queue up for it.
Talk
to Unusual People: With the help of the largest name tag imaginable, which
includes: photo, name in 44 font, your title and location, and a line that says
“Talk to me about:” followed by three words of your choice, you see lots of
people standing in line for the designer coffees and teas holding up their name
tags for people to read, or to photograph in order to get back to them on
something or other they were discussing. This keeps happening even on Day 4 –
600+ people from over 66 countries, and you continually meet new people even up
to the last day. The TEDConnect app is also very helpful to find and talk to
people and, in addition to the daily schedule, includes your TED Top 10 – ten
participants generated by the “secret” TED algorithm which should be of
particular interest to you.
There
is no opportunity to be bored, and even very little opportunity to reflect in
between the tsunami of ideas and conversation that wash over your brain at any
given moment. Whether you seek it - like when I went to join a little chat with
American photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who is showing her photos from a recent
project in a Kenyan hospital ward - or if it comes to you - like the fascinating discussion I found
myself in with a quiet Taiwanese dancer who explores cultural identity with her
body - the TEDGlobal experience is not just sitting in those comfy seats in
a dark room for many hours over five days.
Hmmm,
maybe in the future we could have the healthy option of standing in the auditorium too. I might
suggest that - the TEDGlobal organizers seem to be delightfully open to everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment