This is TED (364)

I decided to take up my teacher’s offer for us to write blogs about TED talks. Before I start my blog conquest however, I decided to inform everyone of what TED is. According to the website, “TED is a nonprofit devoted to ideas Worth Spreading.” The acronym TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since the organization was started, its scope and view of the program has gotten a lot broader. The organization holds two annual conferences and has created the TED Open Translation Project and the TED prize, along of course with the TED Talks and TED fellows.

First I will introduce the TED talks I guess; TED talks are videos that are put up on line with the intention of spreading the ideas that are worth spreading. Now the company has transformed the videos to “give everyone on-demand access to the world’s most inspiring voices.” The videos are inspirational and fun and can be about a variety of topics such as technology, entertainment, design, business, science, and global issues.

TED hosts a variety of events, the two main ones being the TED Conference and TEDGlobal. The TED Conference is held every year in Palm Springs and lasts for four days. During those four days, there are fifty different speakers with eighteen minutes to broadcast their ideas to everyone else. The topics of their presentations can be about anything they want really business, arts, or even global issues. Even though the topics seem to have no connection to each other what so ever, they are held together by the realization that we are in “an intricately interconnected world.” The second main event that TED hosts is TEDGlobal. This is a conference that is held in the summer and has a more international theme. It is four days also but is held all around the world. This year it is being held in Edinburgh, Scotland on June 10^th. Speakers will discuss global change, political and environmental problems and social and cultural changes. While these might sound absolutely fantastic to go to, I think the minimum ticket price is two thousand five hundred dollars. That fact alone will probably keep me from ever attending a conference but don’t be discouraged because you are able to view all of the videos online! I definitely recommend it.