TED 2013 (day 1)

Nearly all the TED talks were amazing in one way or another. The guidebook, with a page for each speaker, had these rating at the top: jaw-dropping, persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring, beautiful, funny, informative, ok, unconvincing, confusing, longwinded, obnoxious. I found that most of the talks fit into the earlier categories. I took notes of my favorites. Right now, I mostly have links to the TED blog, which gives a short summary of the talk. I hope eventually to have links to the actual talks.



For the engineers in my life, and those interested in robotics, Rodney Brooks had an interesting take on the role of robots in our future.

Bono was inspiring as he talked about eradicating extreme poverty.

Stuart Firestein was funny, and he presented some interesting ideas about what makes good science.

I was fascinated by Saskia Sassen, who talked about high tech cities and the complexity of cities. Just like my favorite wines, I loved this talk and Craig had an opposite view.

Beardyman performed - that guy can make some incredibly odd noises. I thought he was incredible. The equipment he showed us though, was less inspiring.

I loved Phil Hansen's "embrace the shake" talk. His theory that our limitations are the force behind our creativity resonated with me. A bit like procrastination can inspire incredible feats in short amounts of time, any other limitation forces us to a more creative, and often better, solution. (Craig missed this talk. And I blame this talk for missing one session the next day, but more about that later.)

Freeman Hrabowski presented an interesting talk about innovative teaching. I wanted to share this talk with Ann and JB, in particular.

Meg Jay was quite inspiring, even if she did make me wonder if I had wasted my 20's. Certainly something to share with any young person in your life.

This 13-year-old boy, Richard Turere, was one of the young presenters I enjoyed. (His talk made me cry, what can I say?)

The first day ended with the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys. These kids were pretty fantastic!