“Ideas worth spreading”: no tag line could be more appropriate for the TED event. The 2012 edition, which took place last week, at the Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, California, proved it once more.
50 speakers presented their projects and experiences in front of an audience of about 1500 people, during the four day event, which looked like a theatre show rather than a conference. TED’s mission is to spread ideas, reaching the widest possible audience, this is why effective communication is everything. Besides being world class scientists, artists and activists, TED speakers can talk to their audience like no one else. Thanks to them, not only TED is one of the main stages dedicated to innovation, but it has also become one of the most important public speaking events in the world.
John Hockenberry and Bryan Stevenson’s talks are among the most meaningful moments of the latest edition.
American journalist and commentator John Hockenberry brought on stage his personal experience as a disabled, in order to explain the pivotal importance of design in his life. According to Hockenberry, design helped him transform his own experience. Just by adding some sparkly lights to his wheelchair in fact, he changed the way people looked at him, changing his life forever. Now, “instead of blank stares and awkwardness, people say ‘those are awesome!’ Kids ask for a ride”. Thanks to those lights he stopped being a victim, he changed the situation.
Lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who is also the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, talked about the need to reform the criminal justice system in the US, which is distorted around race and poverty. Mass incarceration in the US is at an extraordinary level: 50-60% of young men of color are now in jail, prison or on parole. The audience’ s response to Stevenson’s call for a justice system reform and for death penalty removal was overwhelming: an ovation that strong had never happened at TED before.
Created in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from Technology, Entertainment and Design (that’s why the acronym), over the years TED has included different fields, such as, the arts, science, economy and global issues.
If you think you have some ideas worth spreading, check out the audition dates for TED 2013. Auditions will take place from April to June 2012 in 14 cities on six continents. The entire TED community will have a chance to vote on the most promising presenters. And many of these will be invited to join us as speakers at TED2013.
