TED Talks are a guiltless pleasure. Fifty 18 minute talks comprise an invitation only conference over four days yearly; a companion international conference is held biennially, last in Arusha, Tanzania. The talks span loosely technology, entertainment and design. In practice, there is a world changing vibe, but the entertainment can be weak. The world changing aspect is real, owing the mix of world thought leaders and an entrepreneurial audience who network at the event.
Many of the talks are professionally archived at the website TED.com where you can watch them free. The conference has made explicitly concrete one of its missions by selecting a few individuals each year for the TED Prize. It comes with a substantial honorarium but also the opportunity to propose a dream world changing project to an audience which can make it happen. That includes you. The TED Foundation is providing an additional one million dollars for the projects this year. In past years' projects, one prizewinner proposed the Once Upon a School project, an open source contribution website to share personal stories of public school successes. Another project is focused on advanced science education in Africa. Other big projects have been taken up by Google.org.
In the spirit of expanding the network of involvement in realizing these dreams, the TED Prize talks will be webcast live this evening, free. Connect to http://www.ted.com/webcast/watch/event/tedprize no earlier than 30 minutes to 5PM PST
There is much more to be said of TED and our Portland conference of an evening inspired by it but not as weighty. In the meantime, tune to the TED archive, it is a great source of good news of which there is plenty about in the world, notwithstanding the short sighted focus of local to international news editors on the negative and sensational.
TED Prize webcast. www.ted.com Webcast at Link. 5PM Pacific Free
