Marketing with Technology and More

TED Prize winners

A few years ago, TED launched the TED prize.  Three talented individuals are selected each year to receive the prize which consists of $100,000 in cash PLUS (and this is the really valuable part) one wish.  The concept is that the TED community will rally around the wish and help make it come true.

This year's three winners are

The first winner is David Eggers.  He saw a need to He developed a program to get writers to help tutor kids in troubled school areas.  The tutoring center behind a Pirate Supply store in California, and a SuperHero supply store in Brooklyn and a Space Travel Supply Company in Seattle, and a Spy Supply store in Chicago.  The brilliance of this project is that they create a wonderful environment where kids want to go, and once they get in there, they get one-on-one attention to help them with their writing.  Dave's wish is to get 1000 creative individuals working with students in different ways.  The web site onceuponaschool.org will document different ways that you can get involved.

The second  winner is  Neil Turok, a theoretical physics professor from Cambridge who has put forward the concept of the Endless Universe. Neil is originally from Africa.  He started an organization to help educate students in Africa and to help them get the high level of education they need there, aqs opposed to going abroad.  The organization he developed is called the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS).  His wish is to create a network of AIM"s centers across Africa designed to help achieve his educational objective.  His dream is that the next Einstien will come from Africa.

The third winner is Karen Armstrong.  She is one of the foremost students of world religions and traditions.  Her wish is based on a beautiful premise.  According to her, the underpinning of all three of the Abrahamic religions is The Golden Rule. As such, she wants to establish an organization with a charter of compassion that will bring together leaders of the Christian, Judaic and Muslim faiths to work together to build on the concepts of universal justice and respect that is core to all three religions.

A Different View of The World

I heard about a great website here at TED.  If you want to look at data spread across the world, check out Worldmapper.  This site spreads nearly 400 data elements across global maps but represents the data by changing the size of the countries on the map.  The example here shows  ownership of personal computers.

Powerful Pangea Day Promo

Pangea Day is one of the wishes that came out of the TED prize program.  Two years ago, film maker Jehane Noujaim stated "I wish to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film."  On May 10th, 2008 that her wish will be granted.  There is not much to say about this video promoting the event other than - watch.

A Stroke of Genius

Breathtaking is about the only adjective I can think of to describe yesterday’sa first session today at TED.  But then would you expect anything less from the likes of Paleoanthropologist Louise Leaky, Professor Stephen Hawking, Anthropologist Wade Davis, Artist Chris Jordan, and Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor.

The last presentation of the session was incredibly moving.  Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who suffered a stroke.  She started the talk with perhaps the best audience attention-getter I have ever seen.  She brought a human brain with her, and showed the audience the different parts in graphic detail.

Her story however was about the details she gathered as she experienced the stroke.  She was able to make sense of what was happening to her, as her functions shut down, and looked at the experience from her perspective as a researcher.  Her understanding was profound and beautiful.  She shared that as a researcher she understood what was happening to the left hand side of her brain (what she called the serial processor) , and how her right brain (parallel processor)was taking over, and she was able to see “the we inside of me.”  She described the state as Nirvana-like, as all of the components of her brain that create stress (recollection of the past, anticipation of the future) shut off.

Her point was that  we can choose the consciousness of the two hemisphere’s, and that if we take the time to spend more time in the peace of our right brain, that perhaps there will be more peace.  Her presentation was one of the most moving I have ever seen.

Tidbits from TED

It is really difficult to blog from here because my brain is filling, and tracking with all of the great ideas, and then trying to write about them is becoming increasingly difficult.  If you would like more depth on any of the talks here, make sure you visit the play-by-play blogs that are so well assembled by Bruno Giussani on both his LunchoverIP site, as well as on the TED.com blog and Ethan Zuckerman on his My Heart’s In Accra blog.

My plan is to provide tidbits of information and knowledge that I pick up.

The Face of Leonardo Da Vinci - Revealed

I never cease to be amazed when some of the speakers take to the stage to present.  Today, we had an artist present to us about Leonardo Da Vinci. Dutch artist Sigfried Woldhek  pointed out that there has never been any agreement on what Leonardo Da Vinci looked like.  So this artist,  who knows quite a bit about faces as a result of the number of portraits he has created did scientific analysis to figure it out.  He presented his findings here, and after analyzing all of DaVinci's work and came to the conclusion that there are three self-portraits that DaVinci had done in his lifetime.  Based on his work, here are DaVinci's self portraits.

Microsoft Reveals What Made Scoble Cry - The World Wide Telescope

Earlier this month, Robert Scoble posted on his blog that Microsoft Researchers (his former employer) had shared a new invention with him that “made me cry.”  However, he could not tell his readers about it. At TED, today, Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay, two Microsoft Researchers announced the World Wide Telescope. 

This new tool takes the best images from all of the world’s best telescopes and weaves them together seamlessly to create a dynamic image of the Universe.  It will change forever the human perspective of what is around us, and is amazing in terms of what it does, and the quality of the images it provide.

It can best be described as Google Earth for the Universe, however words can not do justice to this, you will just have to see it.

Class with the Ultimate Class Clown

TED University started the day off right. I participated in a class on
the digital entertainment world sponsored by Dell. All of the class
participants left with a new Dell Red computer and a set of wireless speakers from Creative Labs.

Discussion revolved around how large the digital space is. I found it interesting that 6 hours of video I'd being added to YouTube every
single minute. Currently the web consists of 3 million times more
information than on all the books ever written (161 exabytes to be exact) .

The discussion was excellent, but I ended up sitting next to the class
clown. In most situations this would gave been a major distraction,
but in this case,  the class clown was none other than actor Robin
Williams.  He turned a great discussion into one that was interesting
and very funny.

TED Bloggers

There will be quite a few Bloggers here at TED giving a variety of perspectives.  Here is a list of some of them.

Two TEDsters are well known for their play-by-play live blogs about what is happening on stage.  Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Glusanni are thr two Bloggers to turn to if you want live coverage of TED talks.

Thomas Dolby, TED's music director will post about the tunes.

Don of Fifth Culture has started Kings of Simulcast blog focusing on TED, which features an awesome TED poster definitely worth checking out.

Learn about what is happeing at TED@Aspen with posts on Eman's Views.

Video posts on Tom Guarriello's site.

Additional bloggers include:

• Josh Spear
• M.A. Greenstein
• Megabyte Mike
• Michael Parkekh
• Sherry Strong
• Josh LaGrou

If you are Blogging, drop me a comment and I will add your link.

It's in the Bag (The TED 08 Gift Bag that is)

As usual, this year’s TED bag was filled with a variety of great, useful and unique items.  It is great to see the mix of organizations that support TED with products.   Here’s a summary of some of the items in the mix:

• From company called 23andMe, a discount on a DNA home analysis kit that will provide you details about your ancestors and family - very cool.  Some lucky TEDsters took the "spit test" before coming to Monterey and will see their results here for the first time.
• The very cool Jawbone headest designed by one of this year's speakers Yves Behar.
• The folks at Microsoft (perhaps jealous that we all received IPods last year) provided TED inscribed Zune players, filled with TED talks on video and music from TED musicians (as this seems to be a very Applecentric crowd, this is a bold move).
• A boxed set of the great Discovery Program Planet Earth.
• One of the gifts is online and is from Ideo. It is called The Big Question, and creates a widget where you can view what questions people are asking.
• Keen Shoes provided a coupon that let's us all go online and get a free pair of their eco-friendly sneakers.
• In celebration of their line of green hybrid's Lexus provided a box of Pangea Organic Soaps and a coupon for $1000 off one of their cars.
• A year's worth of training from Lynda.com.  They offer over 25,000 training programs.
• The official TED T shirt from Remo (see earlier post about this company).
• A very neat mimobot USB Flash drive from the Mozilla Foundation.
• From Shouti Factory, a CD titled In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2.  Twelve original U2 songs are interpreted by artists from 10 African nations.
• Surf's Up on Blu-ray from Sony, along with a 30 percent discount on a Blu-ray player and 52 inch or 70 inch Big Screen.
• A great pen from the people at TheLadders.
• A discount on Steelcase's new chair by Jock Jakus, along with a mediapocket (to store our Zune in).
• A electronic tire gauge from BMW.

Now I'm off to TED University.