Watching TED Talks: Reconnect

After another 75 minute break, TED starts again - again, I am live-blogging the event.

RECONNECT

Saul Griffith

Shows a high-powered hydrofoil on the SF Bay. Then begins to discuss about kites.
In the 1970's - how to use crosswind kite power.
In 2007 - now have an energy crisis and a climate crisis. In the next 30-40 years, need to make 10 Trillion Watts for the rest.

Energy can be found in the higher-level troposphere - and they can capture the wind power using a robotic control system to generate the energy. Kites fly around 2K feet - will arrive in time and/or money. If next funding round comes about, will have these running in 2 years.

Seth Godin

Intros us to large sports mascots group. Then intros us to the balloon animals - asks: do we know what we are doing?

Process of creating changes - telling us stories:

• Nathan and the founding of the SF ASPCA - set out to create a no-kill animal city. Nathan connected with the community (not the professionals) and created the first successful no-kill city. Then Nathan kept going to places and kept building no-kill cities.

Breaking a light-bulb - change from one state to another. Started with a factory idea, then to TV, then to "leadership"

Talking the stages:

• Factories - need ever cheaper labor, and ever faster machines
• TV - need push, push, push - tell enough people you can make people buy - requires the people on TV to act like the king. You are in charge - mass marketing. Requires average ideas and plenty of ADs.
• Tribes are what we are in now - people connect and leading. Tribes are everywhere. Created now silos of interests.

Pirate tribe - has logo, patches - tribes that can change our world - that can align large numbers of people - because they want to connect. Find something worth changing - spread it farther than ourselves. Created a movement - which empowered people to make something happen.

Shows us Steve Jobs and Bill Gates - both created a different way of navigating technology.

Beatles did not invent teenagers - they just connected with them. When the Meatrix came out - she was not inventing the idea of veganism, she helped organizing it. All of these people are heritics - see the status-quo and I do not agreed with it.

Telling a story, connecting a tribe, , making a change - ask yourself:

• Who are you upsetting? If you are not upsetting someone, you are not challenging the status quo.
  
• Who are you connecting? People want to connect.
  
• Who are you leading?

Focus on the part of the who - the leading part - this is where change comes.

You do not need permission to lead people - we are wating for YOU to lead.

• Challenge the status quo
• Create a culture
• Curiosity - have curiosity in people
• Connect people to others - they wnat to be missed when they are gone
• Charisma - being a leader gives you charisma
• They commit to the cause and the tribe

Ethan Zuckerman's blog post on Seth's presentation

Tom O'Reilly on the TED Fellows

Learned a new word - polymaths: a person whose knowledge is not restricted to one subject area. In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply refer to someone who is very knowledgeable. Most ancient scientists were polymaths by today’s standards.

Jake Eberts on "Oceans"

Insanely amazing video presentation - when it comes out as a documentary - this will impact us as much as "The Inconvenient Truth".

Hitting my threshold
Very tired from the blogging all afternoon - taking a break and enjoying listening and watching.

If you have any questions - please check with the TED Blog.