RE-UNI-TED
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RE-UNI-TED
I just got back from TED week in Vancouver, Canada. Per usual after coming back from a TED conference, I am exhausted, exhilarated, elated, and yes, certainly elevated.
The TED conference started way back in 1998 by the wonderful architect and graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman. I have had the great privilege of attending many conferences, and as many of you know, my wife, Jessica, has been a TEDx organizer in Chicago for the past 5 years. So, needless to say, we are big fans and supporters of the value, power, and joy of “ideas worth spreading”.
I typically summarize my own TED conference experience in a post and have done so for many years. Here is one example. Since I now write a weekly newsletter, I thought I’d do it here instead.
But let me first reflect a bit on the RE, and the UNI, before I head to the TED.
On the RE…..
For most TEDsters (as people who are attending the conference typically are called), this was the first big gathering since the pandemic began. And in all likelihood, it was, for many, the first time we got together in a very large group, inside a theatre, reuniting with friends we haven’t seen for years.
TED prepared thoughtfully and executed a stringent safety protocol very effectively in an effort to ensure that people felt safe. I believe there were over 3,000 tests made on-site, as one example. My guess is that certainly helped many people re-enter “conferencing” with less trepidation and fear. Obviously, people have very different risk tolerances, personal experiences, and health conditions, so I witnessed many different approaches during the week. Some wore masks. Some didn’t. Some hugged and kissed. Some didn’t. But the heartening and wonderful thing was that all preferences seemed to be respected, embraced, celebrated, and not judged.
Personally, I felt the conference started with a bit of hesitation in the air. I first wondered whether that was in my own soul, in all others, or in the programming itself. I can’t know for sure, but I did feel that as the week went on things felt more and more normal. And perhaps that is what the RE stands for. Because of the pandemic, we are all rookies again. We get to experience new types of firsts. While they are not entirely new experiences, they do carry with them those feelings of uncertainty, anticipation, and slight discomfort that new experiences often bring. While we never get a second chance to make a first impression, we certainly have been given a unique chance to re-frame, re-imagine, and re-think how we best re-enter old experiences. Hopefully, we can keep what we loved with them before and change what we didn’t. I am hopeful that this is happening across meetings, office habits, education, and health care.
ON the UNI…
Obviously, the overwhelming feeling I bring home is how wonderful it was to be TOGETHER again. There is just nothing that can quite take the place of shared experiences. Whether it is the satisfaction of hearing an idea and feeling and seeing the reactions from others, and how those reactions actually impact my own or realizing how much I have forgotten the true value of facial expressions, eye contact, warm embraces, full bodies, multisensory communication, etc.
Our world is so divided and polarized, and the pandemic has most likely widened, worsened, and exacerbated the distance between people. The question is whether it is possible to come together without coming together. I doubt it. My favorite way of coming together as a way to break loneliness, silence, or even conflicts is by breaking bread. The mealtimes we shared together this week were always moments of new insights, new connections, and the sharing of both dreams and vulnerabilities.
And then...TED
It is impossible, at least for me, to summarize a week at TED. The wonderful poet Sarah Kay did a masterful job at the end of the week to do just that. Look out for that when it is posted. You can also read their blog if you are interested in learning more. Talks will be posted on TED.com over the next few months (there are already a few up there now).
I spent quality time with well over fifty people, met another few hundred, and listened intently to seventy-nine talks, plus a few in-depth interviews. They are, by design, also ideas that are divergent, diverse, interdisciplinary, and purposefully wide-ranging. I believe the true power of real curiosity is that it works in a compounding way. If you are open to one idea, you will discover many others. The exact timing, nature, and value of those ideas isn’t always apparent at the moment you are exposed to them. That’s why curiosity is more relational and attitudinal than transactional. Or, as Victor Frankl so persistently reminded us: “success, like happiness, cannot be pursued, it must ensue.” In a world with so much change, so many challenges, and yet so many opportunities, having a truly open mind is a necessity if we are to find the solutions we all want. And TED is a fantastic community that truly is helping me to widen my aperture, appetite, and aspirations.
Sometimes I try to cluster talks and ideas into themes, and sometimes I simply want to highlight the ones that moved me the most. This year, I have actually listed 30 talks that I found important, inspiring, and worth sharing more broadly. Let me just say that this does NOT mean that all other talks were uninteresting or in any other way less valuable. But I just felt that the ones that made my list, at least at this moment, were worth highlighting. Obviously, only a few are released so far, so you might want to bookmark the website version of this newsletter, which you can find here, as I will try to insert hotlinks to each of these as they become available over time. Finally, they are not in order of impact or value, but rather in the order they appeared at the conference.
Gary Kasparov – former World Chess Champion and current human rights advocate wrote a book about Putin called Winter is Coming. He felt the world didn’t listen then and isn’t sure we are listening now. Hard to argue with.
Allyson Felix is the most decorated track and field Olympian in history. She gave a very personal and important talk about the immense challenges women face in combining a career with becoming mothers. She is right. Sadly.
Zoya Lytvyn – is the founder of Osvitoria, a non-profit based in Kyiv. She gave a passionate plea for help in this moment of crisis for her nation.
Alison Killing is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who uses satellite imagery and data visualization to investigate urgent social issues. I found her talk smart and inspiring.
Melissa Moore is the Chief Scientific Officer of Moderna. She explained how mRNA technologies truly work and why they are incredibly promising in our fight against future viruses as well as other diseases.
Platon Antoniou is a world-renowned photographer who has photographed world leaders and has 30 TIME covers to show for it. He gave an inspiring talk about what he has learned and what we can tell from people’s eyes.
Katherine Mangu-Ward started off an important conversation around capitalism by giving the “pro” arguments around libertarianism, as she is the editor-in-chief of Reason. It’s easy to point to problems in the world, but it is just as important (or perhaps, even more important) to point to what is working well.
Aaron Bastani gave the “counter” to this argument as a UK-based socialist. While I typically don’t agree much with socialism, I did find his position of “Universal Basic Services” (rather than income) to be compelling and something I would support directionally. In his mind, he believes there are 4 key services that all citizens should have access to: housing, transportation, health care, and education.
Manish Bhardwaj gave a passionate talk about the importance of moral clarity and the fact that things are actually a bit simpler than we make them. And yet, we often rather talk about what we can do rather than what we should do.
Tom Oxley gave one of these WOW talks about innovations in brain science that are truly out there. He talked about new implantable brain-computer interfaces that can help patients with debilitating diseases to communicate. It was truly fascinating.
Dan Harris is a veteran journalist who gave an absolutely fantastic talk about “the geopolitical case for getting your shit together,” that self-love is not selfish, and why meditation can change the world. One human at a time. Loved it!
Audacious Project – this is where the TED community goes deeper and further. Each year, TED selects projects that have been tested at a small scale, but that they believe can have a huge impact. This year several incredible organizations were recognized, and so far, over $900m has been raised to help them and others have a greater impact. Quite astonishing. You can read more about the Audacious Project here.
Adam Mosseri was head of Instagram. At least, he was when he gave this talk. He gave a thoughtful and interesting talk about the future of the creative economy, a future that hopefully is good news for creators and bad news for the monopolized monetization by large platforms. As I am writing this, it seems he is leaving Instagram, but can’t really find sources that confirm that is the case. Stay tuned on that, I guess.
Georgette Bennett – wow. What an impressive leader who brought together an unlikely coalition to help Syrian refugees. Graceful, creative, passionate, and inspiring.
Bill Gates – was on TED 2015 and said we weren’t sufficiently prepared for a pandemic. Duh. He also said a lot of people have actually watched that TED talk. But only when it was too late! He gave a compelling case for why we need to invest billions to save trillions.
Shankar Vendantam – if I had to pick one talk as my favorite, this would probably be the one. Shankar, the host of the popular Hidden Brain podcast, gave a fantastic talk about the “illusion of continuity”. The notion that we don’t appreciate how much we actually change all the time. He inspired us to consider that among the people who might disagree with us is actually our future self. Be curious, be humble, and be brave. That talk rocked me!
Catherine Price is a science journalist who has researched and has written a new book about the power of fun. She gave an inspiring talk about the importance of committing to having more fun by making sure you devote time to playfulness, connection, and flow.
Al Gore – did a short interview that was incredibly powerful. He was on fire because the world literally is. That’s the kind of leadership tough challenges calls for.
Isabelle Boemeke gave a talk about nuclear power in a modern and interesting way. She has used an influencer strategy and created the Isodope character that was clever and quite compelling.
Ralph Chami is an IMF economist that gave a super clear talk about a more regenerative economy and how we can put a value on our ecological system that would help us transition faster to a regenerative and sustainable future. It’s irrefutable and it was a compelling talk.
Martin Rees is the Mayor of Bristol and was a refreshing voice of reason and display of leadership. Cities play a significant role, and when they work together, they can often accomplish more together than many nations can.
Thomas Heatherwick is a celebrated designer who gave a great talk about how cities are boring and lack emotion and what we can do about them. The value of common spaces cannot be underestimated, and we need to use our built environments to foster community, collaboration, and emotion. He also showed some truly awesome examples.
Pardis Parker – unusual at TED to have a comedian give a stand-up comedy talk. Risky, perhaps. But both necessary and in this case, worked wonders. He was truly funny and it reminded me how important humor is for humanity.
JR is a French artist who shows the world its “true face”. He was the recipient of the TED Prize over 10 years ago. This year, he shared a project in a US prison that made all of us rise up in true awe. The power of art and humanity in full display. You can read more about the project here and about JR here. But do not miss this TED talk.
Bryce Dallas Howard is the daughter of Ron Howard and gave a talk about growing up in the public eye and how the quality of our private life is paramount. This is obviously relevant to all of us when, thanks to the hyper-transparent world of technology, all of us are living a public life. I also am dying to get to know her "no-coddling" mother, Cheryl. She did remind me a lot of Jessica! You will get it when you listen to the talk.
Shreya Joshi. A 17-year-old from our local Naperville gave an inspiring talk about the importance of bridging gaps between people. You can find more about her at Redefy where she is the executive director and at Project TEAL. What an inspired leader!
Michael Schur is a Hollywood comedy writer. But at TED, he gave a talk about moral philosophy and ethics and why it matters so much more than we often recognize. Couldn’t agree more. I particularly value how he made it approachable and inspired morality without moralizing. If you want to read more, here is his book.
Elon Musk. Say no more. Certainly, the most visionary of all our business leaders today. It was a wide-ranging conversation, from the Twitter offer that came out that same morning, to living with Asperger’s Syndrome, to the pursuit of truth, and a whole lot more. I am a big fan. The longer pre-recorded conversation is coming out later today and the live conversation from Thursday you can find here.
Sara Lomelin gave an important talk about localizing, and perhaps democratizing, philanthropy. She talked about her giving circles and what happens when you engage locally with issues your local community cares about. You can read more about her organization here.
Sarah Kay is my favorite spoken word poet. She gave a riveting talk in 2011 and one in 2019. She was asked to “summarize” the entire week and she did an incredible job that I personally can't wait to watch again.
That's it. As I wrote above, new connections, ideas, and outputs from all these inputs are for sure going to emerge in the days, weeks, and years to come. I am truly grateful to have TED in my life. The world is surely better because TED is in it. And beyond the talks, they are also doing so many other invaluable things like governing the global TEDx community, TED-Ed, TED@Work, TED partnerships, and much more. If you want to learn more about those programs, you can go here.
Have a great week!
