Tagged: TED RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:49 am on November 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Blogger Reactions, , TED, TED Fellow,   

    Bloggers Remember TEDIndia: The Good, the Bad and the Quirky 

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    TEDIndia

    When the legendary TED conference came down to India, Indian bloggers were expectedly excited.

    In the run up to TEDIndia, a few Indian bloggers got together to interview TEDIndia fellows and Geetha Krishnan put together a compilation of the TEDIndia fellow interviews.

    During the conference, the TED blog fed the excitement by posting session-wise roundups (session 1, session 2, session 3, session 4, session 5, session 6, session 7, session 8, session 9) and reactions to the most popular talks (Hans Rosling, Devdutt Pattanaik, Tony Hsieh, Scott Cook, Pranav Mistry, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Shukla Bose, Anil Gupta, Kavita Ramdas, Sunitha Krishnan, Sidi Goma, Ramachandra Budihal, Ananda Shankar Jayant, Kiran Sethi, Eve Ensler, His Holiness the Karmapa, Shashi Tharoor) and even did a roundup of reactions to the conference.

    Several bloggers wrote posts about how TED touched them in unexpected ways.

    Rajiv Dingra was one of them –

    In my last 3 years and more of blogging experience Ive attended over 50 events (atleast) and each of them have left me richer in knowledge or in insight. But none of them have ever moved me to tears or made me go in deep thought or made me proud to be Indian all in the matter of days. TEDIndia infact was more a reflection of what are the grave issues in India and the brilliance and the fallacy of India rather than being specific to Technology, Entertainment and Design.

    Peter Elst summarized TEDIndia in ten quotes.

    While the overall reaction to TEDIndia was overwhelmingly positive, several attendees were left a little underwhelmed.

    TEDIndia fellow Amit Varma complained that TEDIndia catered to Western stereotypes of India –

    There was much exotica, and much mysticism served up that says nothing at all about the country we are today. The average foreign attendee would have gone away with his stereotypes about India reinforced, not shattered. That’s an opportunity missed.

    Amit also shared an interesting sociological observation –

    The pharmacy at the Infosys campus in Mysore does not sell condoms. I want you to think about that for a moment. This is a campus where thousands of young men and women stay and work together. The official Infosys position on this matter, thus, seems to be that either a) Infosys employees do not have sex or b) Infosys employees have sex, but it should not be safe sex. Isn’t this interesting?

    Aditi Machado was surprised by TEDIndia’s strong focus on India –

    In retrospect the India-focus at TED was too strong. When TED is held in the UK or the US, does the conference become all about those countries and those countries’ contributions to the world? I don’t think so. The running theme at TEDIndia, beginning with the first talk by Hans Rosling, seemed to be: ‘India will become the next superpower. Oh, and China too. But we’re in India and India is a democracy and we hate Commies, so we like India better.’ I’m sure many Indians were flattered, and I’m as patriotic as the next person, but it was disturbing to see that almost every speaker, especially the non-Indians, felt obligated to give us a big pat on the back.

    Manjeet Kripalani at Financial Express also complained about TEDIndia’s uni-directional programming –

    The title was promising: “TEDIndia: the Future Beckons”. On the Mysore campus, India’s future had already arrived. It did not reflect in the programming of TEDIndia. The idea of TED is unique. Brilliant new minds who expound their futuristic ideas in 18 minutes to a sophisticated celebrity audience, interspersed with entertainment, music and some socially responsible talk. This TED conference was more “Bono Saves the World” than either Technology or Entertainment or Design. No soft or hard power, but powerlessness.

    TED attendee Our Woman in Havana rounded off her series of posts about TEDIndia (day one, day two, day three, day four) by deciding that the real genius of TED lies in its ability to gather together people who are hugely talented and successful in a diverse range of fields –

    Some of my best TED moments were little breaks when a randomly struck conversation brought nuggets of new thought –talking literature with A who worked in microfinance with the Acumen Fund and discovering our common heritage; discussing whether Urdu should be written in Hindi script in order to preserve the language in India with T; clashing head-on with J over Cuban politics at lunch; understanding from A why someone would want to put a boutique hotel in Ahmedabad; learning from B how designers can source organic materials; always always bumping into T and talking football, Punjabi and why lawyers are perceived as emptying rather than filling; dancing with a stranger; drinking coffee with an artist; discussing with C how to put Shashi Tharoor on the spot with a question about Indian state accountability over genocide. The genius in TED lay in those moments where nobody knew what would come next, and could then be blown away by what did come next. At times, those were the speakers, and often, those moments came in the all too brief meetings we had with people who already seem to have become friends.

    For me, TEDIndia was about a rediscovery of the power of storytelling –

    These stories reminded me that the most powerful stories we can tell about ourselves are, in fact, stories about other people. These stories reminded me that by telling stories about ideas that are bigger than us, we become bigger than ourselves. These stories reminded me that we are shaped by the stories we tell others, but even more so by the stories we tell ourselves.

    The TEDIndia talks will soon be up on the TED website, so do look out for them.

     

    • Endy Daniyanto 5:47 am on November 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, I'm starting to think that if we're not careful, then we can start to overrate TED itself.

      Interestingly, TEDxJakarta (where I'm from) is coming up this weekend. So, I'll get a chance to interact with the TED community inside the country.

      Cheers,

    • nahrungsergänzung 12:28 am on November 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      I have read the article which tells about the good and bad things about the TEDindia.Brilliant new minds who expound their futuristic ideas in 18 minutes to a sophisticated celebrity audience, interspersed with entertainment, music and some socially responsible talk.I like the working spirit of the TEDIndia and their fabulous contribution.I want other to say something about the TEDindia.

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:25 am on September 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Mysore, TED,   

    I’m a TEDIndia 2009 Fellow 

    TED announced the list of its 103 TEDIndia 2009 Fellows yesterday and I'm on it. So are friends Dina Mehta (@dina), Amit Varma (@amitvarma), Sanjukta Basu (@sanjukta), Gautam John (@gkjohn) and Rose Shuman (@roseshuman).

    According to TED: "This diverse group of artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, musicians, activists, doctors, researchers, filmmakers and teachers provides a snapshot of the creativity and innovation emerging from South Asia."

    The TEDIndia conference will be held in Mysore from November 4 to 7, 2009 and feature a speaker lineup to die for. The event will include –

    – A fast-paced, highly curated three-day stage program featuring TED's famous 18-minute talks, plus short cultural and entertainment interludes;
    - TED University, the hugely popular pre-conference session where attendees share their areas of expertise;
    – Pre-conference activities, including carefully curated TED-exclusive tours of local historical sites and visits with regional NGOs; and
    - Immersive on-site and evening events.

    – apart from some exclusive events for the TEDIndia Fellows.

    Some TEDIndia Fellows will also get an opportunity to speak at TED University or the main stage.

    TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader to include the annual TED Conference and the TEDGlobal conference, the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

    More soon.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:04 pm on November 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Anthony D. Williams, , , Dennis Hancock, Don Tapscott, , TED, Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds   

    Crowdsourcing, Wikinomics and the Wisdom of Crowds 

    In 2004, James Surowiecki wrote his brilliant book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations and argued that a diverse collection (crowd) of independently-deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts.

    Specifically, he says that the wisdom of crowds is great at solving three types of problems — cognition problems which involve identifying a correct definitive answer, coordination problems which involve synchronizing our individual activities with others, and cooperation problems which involve acting together despite our self-interest.

    However, for the wisdom of crowds to work, four basic conditions need to be met — diversity of opinion to bring in different information, independence of members from one another to avoid the herd mentality, decentralization so that people’s errors balance each other out, and a good method for aggregating opinions to distill the wisdom from the crowds.

    Therefore, the wisdom of crowds fails when groups are too homogeneous, too centralized, too divided, too imitative or too emotional.

    Here’s a great video of James Surowiecki’s TED talk on how blogs often tend to suffer from all five of those failures and how the grassroots coverage of the Tsunami showed the true power of social media –

    Another seminal book on a similar idea is Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, written by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams in 2006.

    Yesterday, Dennis Hancock suggested on the Wikinomics blog that the power of crowd-sourcing lies not only in leveraging the wisdom of crowds, but also in finding uniquely qualified minds –

    If you work through all the examples of “wikinomics in action” in the book and on this blog, some of them are about harnessing the wisdom of crowds, and others are about attracting uniquely qualified minds. As one would expect, the strategies required for success on one side are very different from the strategies required for success on the other. This is a particularly interesting area to explore as the issue of incentives for collaboration become more important.

    So, crowdsourcing can mean taking decisions without experts (wisdom of crowds), but it can also mean finding hitherto invisible experts (wikinomics). Surowiecki says that the prominence of such experts leads to the failure of the wisdom of crowds, whereas Tapscott and Williams say that such experts (and prosumers) are at the core of wikinomics. I think both views are valid and, as long as you don’t mix the two in your head, you can benefit from both in powerful ways.

    Update: Dina Mehta, who ran the South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, has written a great post on this paradox of the wisdom of the crowds –

    So how do we resolve this – adopt the good from our networks and yet break away from the circular mill? Preoccupation with whuffie + easy answers = the circular mill of death?

     

    • kare anderson 4:05 pm on November 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      What a great, updated explanation of crowdsourcing
      for those who know about it or do not.

      I agree with Dennis + the Obama campaign was a good example of
      qualified people leading leading small groups (crowds)
      and connecting a varied mix to each crowd
      and connecting crowds http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/category/crowds...
      Also someone in my audience rec'd your site & the quality of the content convinced me to subscribe.

    • KareAnderson 9:05 pm on November 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      What a great, updated explanation of crowdsourcing
      for those who know about it or do not.

      I agree with Dennis + the Obama campaign was a good example of
      qualified people leading leading small groups (crowds)
      and connecting a varied mix to each crowd
      and connecting crowds http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/category/crowds...
      Also someone in my audience rec'd your site & the quality of the content convinced me to subscribe.

  • Gaurav Mishra 10:45 pm on October 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , California Gold Rush, , , , , James Governor, Jeff Bezos, TED, Web 2.0 Expo NY,   

    Jeff Bezos on the Internet Gold Rush at TED 2003 

    While browsing through TED videos, I stumbled across this amazing TED 2003 talk on the Internet Gold Rush by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos —

    Speaking in the context of the dotcom meltdown, Jeff Bezos says that while it’s tempting to see the Internet using the California Gold Rush analogy, it’s more useful to apply the electricity analogy.

    Both electricity and internet are thin horizontal enabling layers that go across multiple industries. The web applications we have seen so far are, in fact, similar to the first wave of electric appliances. For instance, just like web applications use the physical network infrastructure laid out for long distance telecommunications, the first wave of electrical appliances used the electric network laid out for the light bulb. So, it’s only to be expected that web applications, like the first electrical appliances, will include both life changing innovations and amusing failures.

    I believe that Jeff Bezos’ conclusion in 2003 — “there’s more innovation ahead of us than behind us” — is equally valid in 2008, and that’s true for both the protocol/ platform and the application/ user interface layers. Which is a good thing, especially for those of us who missed both the dotcom and the web 2.0 booms.

    By the way, since we are talking about the similarities between internet and electricity, I’m compelled to include a link to this Web 2.0 Expo NY talk by James Governor on Electricity as the New Internet.

     

    • Kanupriya 12:57 am on October 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for posting this, it was good to go through it esp. at the time when everybody is bogged down by downturn and web2.0 doom.

    • Kanupriya 4:57 am on October 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for posting this, it was good to go through it esp. at the time when everybody is bogged down by downturn and web2.0 doom.

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:52 pm on October 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Breakout Years, , Broadband, , , , , Gapminder, , , , , Logarithmic Scales, Personal Computer, , TED, Trendalyzer, ,   

    Breakout Years in Adoption of Communications Technologies in BRIC Countries 

    (Cross-posted on my fellowship blog – How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

    Here’s a brilliant TED presentation by Hans Rosling on how to look differently at development indicators across countries and continents, using Gapminder’s trend visualization tool Trendalyzer –

    I spent an hour playing around with Gapmindmer and discovered some interesting trends related to the diffusion of communications technologies in BRIC countries.

    In all these charts comparing Brazil, Russia, India, China and United States, the X axis represents the income per person (in fixed PPP$) on a logarithmic scale while the Y axis changes. By pressing the ‘play’ button, you can see how the variable changes for these five countries over years.

    Let’s start with the Y axis representing the number of cell phones users on a logarithmic scale. It’s fascinating how each country seems to stay close to the X axis until something happens and it rises vertically. It happens to the USA in 1980, China in 1986, Brazil in 1989, Russia in 1990 and India in 1994. As of now, these five countries have the biggest cell phone user bases across the world1 (China at #1 with 601 million, India at #2 with 305 million, USA at #3 with 260 million, Russia at #4 with 172 million and Brazil at #5 with 135 million).

    If you change the Y axis to represent the number of cell phones per 100 people on a logarithmic scale, you see a similar trend but the years are different — USA (1985), Brazil (1993), China (1994), Russia (1995) and India (1998). Do notice that the lag for China is 8 years but the lag for all other countries is around 4-5 years, indicating that China was almost weighed down by its high population.

    In both the charts for the number of personal computers and the number of personal computers per 100, there are no such break-out years and the growth is diagonal rather than vertical.

    We see these break-out years again in the chart for the number of internet users per 100 on a logarithmic scale — Russia (1994), Brazil (1995), China (1997) and India (1998) — but the vertical climb is slower than cell phone penetration.

    Finally the chart with the number of broadband subscribers has a different breakout sequence — Brazil (1997), China (1998), India (2000), Russia (2001) — a trend also seen in the chart with the number of broadband subscribers per 100 — Brazil (1997), China (2000), India (2001), Russia (2002).

    I’m not even sure if looking for breakout years on a logarithmic chart is a valid way of looking at technology adoption, but it does suggest some interesting stories. It will be fun to look beyond the data and string together these stories, but that’s another evening, another post.

    References

    - 1 Wikipedia: List of countries by number of mobile phones in use.

     

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