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.

Watching TED Talks: Reframe

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

REFRAME

Tom O'Reilly - What's in the Gift Bags

All of us are completely envious about the gift bag.

Associate members gift box

• Shows the "ideas worth spreading" diary book - I thought quite funny that they have a physical book
• Poster, Flash cards
• "When I am on my deathbed, I want to feel like I made a difference in people's lives. It may sound selfish, but it is the way I was brought up." - Richard Branson

Actual gift bags

• Coke bottle bags
• Stuffed Panda from WWF
• Metal bottle for drinking
• Everfy - teach high school kids how to understand finance
• iForest - plant a tree somewhere - shake the phone to water the tree and such
• SCALE - new DVD
• Darius Goes West - documentary film about Darius Weams - road movie
• Merino Wool Garment from IceBreaker
• ActionMethod by Behance
• Hint Mints
• One for One - Tom Shoes
• Show of Hands book

Tim Berners-Lee - New Reframing

Imagine 20 years ago that a link could go to any server in the world - not just the CD (as in hyperlinking). Want to get people to put data on the web.

What's the difference between documents versus data? Showing data in visual representations - data is in the brown-box, and puts it together in a visual representation. Think of a world where all of the data is available on the web.

He calls it "Linked Data":

• use URIs for people. places, products, pages and such
• use the HTTP protocol to fetch the info - get information back
• when I get the information, it also has the relationships included (e.g. hyperlinking the data contents like X is in Y, Y has other companies)

Linked Data Standards - allows for connectivity to the applications via a standardized interface. Showing the tool dbpedia.com

Discusses gov't data and how Obama has promised making data transparent. He hopes Obama uses Linked Data concepts.

RAW DATA NOW!

Science: problem is that the data is LOCKED UP - and the scientists need to free the data.
Discusses the social networking site - and how the walls of data are difficult. Funny part - Power.com enables it pretty well.

OpenStreetMap.org

People doing their bit to improve the data - everyone else does their bit to improve the data and give it meaning (sounds like crowdsourcing).

Make the demand for RAW DATA!

Cindy Gallup - Hardcore Pornography is Becoming Sex Education

Too many people think that you see in hard-core pornography is "supposedly" the way to have sex - especially with our challenge of poor schooling, bad situations with parents feeling awkward - not providing guidance.

Annonuncing the Make Love Not Porn website - to show that there is more to sex than just PORN. (TED Blog post on Cindy)

Yair Landau

Using wiki tools to generate glocal creativity - Mass Animation. Built a solution using the CGI animation process to the world via Facebook and exposed an animation tool. Working to make desktop animation viable.

Demos a short created by 12 animators in 5 countries - excellent work.

Nandan Nilekani - How to handle India

Why is India such a wide variation? The rise and fall of India.
Can discuss in terms of people, ideas is much more effective.

• Ideas that have arrived
• Ideas in progress
• Ideas in conflict
• Ideas in anticipation

There are six Ideas that have Arrived in India:

• People: from being a burden to becoming engines of growth - moving to "human capital" linked to the fact that there is a demographic shift. Demographic dividend can also be a demographic disaster.
• Entrepreneurs: from villains to role models - shifted in the past 60 years. Contributed to the white collar
• English: from language of colonizers to the languages of jobs - language of aspiration
• Technology: from man versus machine to man AND machine. India has 8M phones (with 1.1B people???). Pre-pay phones primary - empowering.
• Globalization: from Bombay Plan to Bombay House - as the companies go abroad - comapnies are gaining confidence. Only "young" country in the Asian world.
• Deepening of democracy: from one party rule to 13 party rule - bottom-up process - benefits of having a voice - democracy has become embedded.
  

Ideas in Progress (accepted, but not implemented)

• Education: universal access to primary schools - never given the attention it required. More than 50% of urban kids going to private schools.
• Infrastructure: connecting the nation - roads need work, telecoms, etc. 20 years ago: food clothing and shelters. Now: electricity, water and roads - focus on infrastructure
  
• Cities/Urbanization: engines of growth - long time, neglected the Indian cities.
  
• Single Market: smooth, seamless flow of goods across states. [Really???]

Ideas in Conflict

• Conflicting political ideologies: policy making gridlock - due to the caste system - needs to be resolved
• Labor preforms: job protection hampering job creation - 93% in the unstructured/informal job force. need new set of labor laws.
  
• Higher education: state control or private funding

Ideas in Anticipation

• eGovernance: democracy, technology, efficiency and tranparency
• Health: avoiding diseases of prosperity (highest of heart attacks, diabetes, etc)
  
• Pensions and entitlements: taking care of the future - chance to put into place a model pension system
• Environment: can India's growth be clean?
• Energy: driving growth around a new energy model

Why care? More than a Billion people, it is a democracy. Growth and democracy is not incompatable. If you can solve these problems, can solve the poverty/enviroment problems around the world. Will ensure the solutions have the scale, cost, reach to accomplish the goals in a short amount time.

Situation of Rapid Growth - need a clear strategy for India which can be applied to the world.

Pattie Maes - the Sixth Sense

From the MIT Media Lab - use the five senses to ascertain the world. We normally do not have easy access to all the data, information or knowledge made over the years. Recently, it has become available online. What is the missing "sense" to access to this meta-information (the sixth sense).

Built a device to create the "sixth sense". Camera, portable battery projector, mirror, colored caps - all of these things communicate with the cell phone. Great gesture system - tracks iconic gestures, can mange the content on any surfaces.

• Video annotations from newspaper articles
  
• Tag cloud associated with the person projected on the preson
• Best pricing and preferences for physical products
  
• Commentary on books (due to product recognition), rankings, annotations on pages
• Recognizing a ticket and getting delays and changes to bookings
  

[Ed Note: INCREDIBLE!!!]

Al Gore - State of the Earth

Global Ice Cap - beating heart of the Earth. Release of carbon becoming methane.
Clean Coal - the new Joe Camel?
Discussing RepowerAmerica - wind, sun - new investments into building the energy infrastructure.

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We need to go far - quickly.

Watching the TED Talks: Reboot

This afternoon, I am enjoying the live stream from Long Beach watching a number of fantastic speakers and performers. I will live-blog over the event.

REBOOT

Hanson Robotics - demonstrating expression-based robots - androids, expression engines. Reminds me of the concept that are coming out of the Willow Garage efforts. Character Engine robotics - could make machines empathetic (but would the military want it?)

Naturally 7 - The award-winning gospel, rhythm and blues, jazz and soul septet from New York City. Site: www.n7house.de
Great videos here: Naturally 7 in Paris Subway Naturally 7 "Feel It In The Air Tonight"

Bill Gates - speaking on philanthropy.
Life expectancy gone up, and child mortality went down.
Measles has been reduced - can we do the same with malaria?

How do you stop a disease spread by mosquitoes?

Today - malaria is now based in the poor countries (200M people at any one time suffering)
He releases a jar of mosquitoes in the audience (nervous giggle by audience)
Tools get evolved around - the disease can figure out where to go next...
Gates discusses the challenges on how to address the problem of malaria - and how to solve the problems found within the system of governments, tools, drugs and such.

How do you make a teacher great?

In the US, we have built great 20% of the students - and they have done amazing things. Need to find a way to allow for the rest of the country to benefit - in science, maths and such.
Over 30% of kids do not finish high school - in the US, for minority kids - over 50%.
If you are lower income, you have less than 30% of graduating with a four-year degree! Easier to go to jail than getting a college education.
What are the characteristics of the top quartile teachers?

• Masters has little effect on a "good teacher"
• After a teacher gets "good", time does little to "improve over
  
• Slightly better teachers leave the system.

KIPP is doing it. In a normal school, metrics are not captured - teacher unions are keeping the measurements out (e.g. principal not able to come in except with permission). In NY, the Teacher Improvement Data is not allowed to be used outside of the teachers use alone.
How to overcome the challenges?

• Video the good teachers and make the courses available over the 'net

Book: "Work Hard, Be Nice" shows the KIPP program. Can make a difference in millions of lives.

Q/A: "Bill Gates Releases More Bugs"

• Economy: next four years are going to be tough, but he wants to make sure that the poorest are not ignored.
• BGFoundation - $3.8B spent in global health care issues - need diversity of ideas and more money [head shake here - did Bill Gates just say "diversity of ideas"?]
• Key thing to reduce population growth is to improve health - problem has been that when the disease burden is HIGH, the population creates more to overcome the disease burden.
• How can we keep the "dotty" teachers without making them "vanilla"? We need to objectively look at how they do "well". It should be a meritocracy - allowing for eccentricity.
• BG got good because luck and skill occurred - and then he got "nurtured" by other people - sort of the journeyman/apprentice program.
• What will be on BG's tombstone?

Ben Zander - Wishing TED their 25th Birthday
In human responses, there are : Resignation, Anger or Possibility - and TED has always chosen possibility