Session One: Reboot- Juan Enriquez

Juan Enriquez is a hard act to follow, but it was smart to kick-off with him. A rocket to start the trip. And though I was listening, I still took these notes. Good thing about the typing skills because I was literally looking at the screen above as I wrote. Hope it makes sense. As ever, will fill in more later:

Of course the economy is a hard topic right now. Juan laid out a plan for the economy to save the American dollar. Yes, Juan does stuff like that. I'm not an economist so I can't say "yes that's correct" but I am able to say "that's like a good start". He made a good point, that we all understand economics because we've all had to balance a budget: income, rent, food, etc. There are basic rules, and when the rules are broken, we get a broken economy. Of course he didn't stick to the economy purely. (Remember he's multi-disciplinary.)

So he reports on stem cells and programmable cells and the progress of robotics. Oh and the evolution of Hominids, (aka people): we'll evolve at our own conscientiousness. We'll call the next times. "And that's the ultimate reboot."

*after TED, found this excellent summation of his talk by someone who took more than 18 minutes to write about it. check it.


For a little about Juan, here's a cv. For a little more interesting view of Juan, watch his talks.

Session One: Reboot (intro by Chris, and a little Juan)

Intros from Chris Anderson, TED Curator. No wait, into by a Mac from 1984. It talked to us until it ran out of memory, which was very quickly.

Check it out- 25 years into this event we have:
1300 people in the room from
200 outside
400 in palm springs

The theme this year is The Great Unveiling.

"Banish the mundane- open the mind to wonderment." -Chris

First up:
Juan Enriquez. Sorry I'm going to stop writing right now because I HEART Juan. He's going to talk to the economy and I would still want to have his babies. Well, he's the Genomics guy, and a guy at that, so it we'd get test-tube-y and he could hand pick the best ones for me? I saw a talk he gave online about the econony a while back, will get the link up in a bit. For the moment, bye!

Post-TED post:
I found the Enriquez talk I mentioned earlier. It was from PopTech! and is about 30 minutes long... thirty very worthy minutes. Some of his slides and ideas there showed up at TED, but any good idea is worth repeating. He boils it down to 10 commandments and at the end emphasizes this: no matter who is in office, we have to use those first 30 days as best we can to avoid disaster. TED was during that period, this update is after that period. So now what?


Juan Enriquez (2008) Pop!Tech Pop!Cast from PopTech on Vimeo.

Let's get this party started right, get this started quickly

I'm blogging live from TED DIY, which is a part of TED that is Palm Springs only. Rives and Kelly invented it to make Palm Springs different, to make it our own. So a few speakers/presenters already are doing things like--

Mathemagic. Look it up. Tell your friends. Use it to seduce a geek.

Also, a very very short talk entitled "How to Explain Science and Technology So That People Don't Want To Strangle You." The rules are:

• Tell it as a story
• Tell it to me like I'm a friend
• "I cannot emphasis this enough, so write this one down" : tell me the PICTURES. To make a story pop, "make pictures that are jewels-- dazzlingly bright, crystal clearpictures" that tell us that you "love the world and can be trusted to hold it gently." Help me discover the pattern (because we look for them)- it doesn't have to be right or true but it has to make sense.

And now begins 'the microphone section,' where we of the audience are invited to tell something of ourselves. Last year's question was "How did you get that scar? (in 6 words or less)." This year: "I once got caught dot-dot-dot"

SO I once got caught... well, I was in line to tell my story and missed by one person... Now you'll never know. Don't worry, it wasn't bad, it was just embarrassing. I can find an embarrassing this to do pretty much any day. Hang out with me, it's bound to happen again, soon enough.

I know there were more than a dozen people willing to tell some of their most scandalous moments to the hundreds in the room, but I've got to say... it was a blur. Lots of accidental (or semi-purposeful) nudity. There was one guy who as a child thought it would be fun to sell homemade explosives to the neighborhood kids (like fireworks! but more dangerous! i mean fun! i mean dangerous!) but he got busted by his older sister who apparently had no entrepreneurial spirit.

We got cut off from our exercise by the Triumphal March from Aida (unofficially, I'm gonna recommend you listen to it in another window on your browser if you're reading exciting things) which is the official commencement music of TED. It means get in your seat! It means: Let's get this party started right, get this started quickly...

The more I know, the more the to-do list grows...

I'm going to have to find a way to link back to the interesting people I keep meeting. Also I have for a while now (ever since the introduction of the Crackberry into my life) kept lists called "Read me" "Listen to me" and "Watch me" to keep track of recommendations of authors, artists, films, etc.

I now have a list called "TED" for any of the above, as recommended by TEDsters.

I tend to fear public acknowledgment and thank yous because there will ALWAYS be important people I'll miss, but that shouldn't stop me from calling out when I can, right? Right.

Paolo Malabuyo, bi-lingual blogger Cristina Marques Da Silva & Joao Brazao said to check these out: 6 Thinking Hats, Now Discover Your Strength & Strengths Finder 2.0. [Cristina is a Master Trainer in Six Hats and Certified Trainer in Lateral Thinking, DATT (direct attention thinking tools), Focus on Facilitation and Six Value Medals... which all relate to those books above.]

For now let's say Tracy Prentiss & Dominique Jaurola kept my brain humming during that walk about in the wind fields. And Kelly (Stoetzel, but from now on she's just Kelly- she and Rives are running this show, ya know?) introduced me to Evan Schwartz, who had me with these two little words: Finding Oz.

The TED bookstore must be avoided if I am to pay rent ever again!

bittersweetly (but mostly sweetly),
bookish chel

I call dibs on the wind!

Just came back from the Wind Farm tour. Firstly, "wind owner" is a weird term. Secondly, this trip was far more about economics than I'd've guessed, which is both a good and a bad thing. If you're into business economics, score one for you. If you're not, welcome to a little thing I like to call "necessary education." Just learn it. It'll be good for you.

I could give some stats on the expenses of building the turbines, maintaining them and what amount of power they generate (though trying to put that number into human terms "this will power x houses for x length of time" was not really possible to pry from the conversation). Instead I will tell you this:

The sweet spot where the wind is generated is a valley between two 11,000 ft mountains, gathering winds from the west, and their season is about 4 months long, when 75% of their power is generated. The many (and interestingly different) variety of wind turbines are not owned by Walmart. They are owned by many different groups which I suppose is a rah-rah for the independent spirit but has the draw back of not organizing in a master plan. One can literally "steal" wind from someone downwind of them. It's good to know you can't actually get away with it, it is wrong and there will be consequences! In Arizona, there is an issue about rivers and who steals all the power upstream so water rights law can be a pretty lucrative career. I wonder if wind rights could ever be a thing. I guess if you can own it, you can litigate it?

Dammit

Bonus points to whomever can site the original source of this quote:

"Forgive me for writing a long letter, I haven't the time to write a short one."

We'll shoe-horn reports into shorter posts, I swear!


-chelloquacious

Tempus Fugit (cause we're having fun)

This is when the blogs are gonna get shorter... and also where I'm going to have to edit at later points to create some important links, so if you're staying on top of this, I recommend reading back to a prior post to glance through for newly-added hyperlinks.

Alrighty, here we go: just checked in. Goodie bag: insane. I'm not all that big on swag as a general rule (New York City apts are too small for free random stuff) but this is different. There are reasons for why we're getting certain things. TED is about ideas worth spreading and they're taking every opportunity to do so- even in the freebies. I'll have to give some details on these better, because there are a few documentaries worth mentioning etc, but the Wind Farm tour is leaving soon, so... time is short.

Lara Stein has commandeered me into taking pictures of the Wind Farm tour. And by "commandeered", I mean, she asked me if I had a camera for the tour and I said "mine is on its way here" and she said "I'll loan you one" and I said "Heck yeah."

Hopefully I will not prove incompetent with that and we'll have some pics posted on flickr- we're trying to get all the TEDsters to put up their good stuff. Look out for the tags TED2009 and TEDPALMSPRINGS.

Everyone here is so excited and introducing themselves at every chance. Luckily we're wearing name tags with pictures, front and center (also, the size of a car license plate). This is uber-helpful. And so very not like NYC.

Oh, and in the gift bag, there included a small set of towels labeled "his & hers". Insert joke here.

More after the windy adventure of the afternoon--

chel

Expect the Unexpected, Please Do Argue (Nicely), and The A Word.

At breakfast this morning Kelly introduced me to Matthew, who is blogging for TED.

And as promised, some from my notes from the pre-blogging:

First, the arguments.  So many ideas here are idealistic and forward thinking, in the many conversation I’ve had with others about TED talks there haven’t been a lot of contrarians.   Of course I’m not in the academic position to take to task Patricia Burchat but I can ask probing questions, right? If we’re to truly understand ideas bigger than our own knowledge it’s going to take a little more probing I think. I’m not looking for a fight, but I’m looking for a challenge. From this remote location, I won’t have a chance to ask Nate Silver * directly about what he meant when he made point X, but I’d like too. Or I’d like someone else here @PalmSprings to dig in with me. That’s my hope.

The wildcard of who we might meet on this adventure is thrilling to me, but I cannot speak to that much yet. TED hasn’t shot the start gun, though last night was a great time to talk with great people. What does make me happy is that TED moments happen even outside TED sometimes. Sometimes you just get to meet an interesting person with an interesting role in the world and have an interesting conversation. The other night I had the pleasure of meeting the executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I’ve made a Venn diagram (proportions may not be to scale) to explain the joy of that.

What makes that random run-in particularly applicable to TED is the conversation (argument?) we had about the role of atheism in today’s world.  We were just passionately interested people with divergent backgrounds digging into a different subject than our professions.  

Outspoken TEDster Richard Dawkins has a lot to say about it. The big (bad?) A-word has been given little face time (until recently) and whether or not one thinks it is necessary or even right, there is a need for conversation. Just as we need to get the faiths speaking to each other instead of, say, bombing each other, there is a portion of the population who finds morality without a higher being and shared morals are paramount for the survival of our species. I don’t know that I even have a stance on the issue, but I know I need to have the conversations, and I think here’s a good place for such things.  

That’s enough for now.

As always, more later-
chel

PS Apologies that if you follow this blog and find it changes a little on you, I tend to post, then edit (or re-edit). Goal number one it to get the ideas worth spreading out there, goal number two is to double check that my hyperlinks work and punctuation is correct, etc. Example: this PS wasn't here the last time your read this entry. ;)

Everything I know about TED I learned from being obsessively interested in it for a few years.

I’m in surreal land still. Time zone issues, etc. Getting up too early to go for my run. Emailing the office already. Talked to Jim Elms who is bringing me a much-needed camera, so I dub him “Rock Star Of My Day” for solving that problem for me.

Been thinking about the people I’m about to hear speak. Actually been thinking about them for a while, taking notes on them and pre-blogging old-school style (pen and paper) so I’m going to copy some notes I want to share here when I get back from the run in a few hours. There are outlines of the speakers the TED website, which I highly recommend reading because they do a nice job summarizing things about each of the speakers, but I’m going to try add a little bit more about them and/or their topics because I’m either already obsessed with some of the speakers or their fields of study. I really do think that TED is all about obsession. Excuse me, passions. That’s the word they use, isn’t it? And we can be contagiously passionate together.

More soon,
chel

Arrival

If sitting at the computer talking to oneself counts as a blog entry, then I just did six. Alas, no.

Today I arrived in Palm Springs, a little ahead of the game just to get settled in and take in the scope of all things TED@PalmSprings. Tossed my things in my room at the Riviera (where the conference is taking place) and sat down in a public area alone with my computer hoping I would not remain as such.

Enter Kelly Stoetzel and Dan Mitchell (TED Wish Manager), who were headed to the fire pit out by the pool. They invited me to tag along. They, as well as Rives (who has a thing for windchimes and a way with words), Lara Stein, a TED fellow named Joy, an artist named Jason, Leigh & Jennifer*.


a few other people on the team that make TED happen, were brainstorming for the week ahead. I really don’t want to spill the beans but I laughed a lot tonight. Also, there are gay people here it turns out. Who knew?

I talked to Rives before I headed off to my room, he said I should hang with the gang some tomorrow, or toss in any ideas to make TED@PalmSprings awesome-r. I think the biggest idea is no sleep, which I’m already working on. As far as hangin' with the crew, there's an 8am run in the morning. Joy!

Tomorrow’s an open book. More later.

-chel

*Leigh, Dan & Jennifer = crazy enough to run first thing in the morning