It seems that the frame for discussion and debate for TED 2009 has been set:
We are facing an economic crisis and the environmental crisis, with technology as the possible answer.
Talks in the first two session, especially the ones by Juan Enriquez, Al Gore, Bill Gates, Ray Anderson, Pattie Maes and Tim Berners-Lee have set the tone for this year’s TED. Each of them has talked about the current economic crisis, the environmental crisis or the future promises that technology offers.
Afdhel Aziz from Nokia is here to talk to us about what’s been happening at Nokia and why they’re so excited about TED. Their partnership first started with the extraordinary Pangea Day project. Nokia is going to be TED’s Global Communications Partner, sponsoring TED Fellows, TED Translated and future TED conferences.
If TED is about “ideas worth spreading“, then Nokia’s role is “spreading worthy ideas“
Nokia gave us all an E71, which really is one of the best phones on the market for doing a lot of work anywhere you go in the world. It’s a smart phone without all the difficult settings and small keyboard of some of the other higher end smart phone. Best of all, the one they gave us is unlocked, which means it’s very easy to travel and use it with local SIM cards (Plus, we’re getting 8Gb memory cards for them and 1000 minutes/month).
Afdhel then showed us the “6 billion people, 6 billion connections” video:
Nokia E71 launch / 6 Billion People, 6 Billion Colours from Universal Everything on Vimeo.
[TED 2009 Fellows pictures on Flickr.]
Even better pictures by Josh Wanyama in this Flickr set.
This morning is a whirlwind of TED Fellows giving short, 3-minute TED Talks to each other. Each of them is being recorded, and it looks like many will make it to the TED.com site one of these days. The best part about these sessions are that it’s an incredibly eclectic group, mixing environmental engineers with musicians and anthropologists.
(These are 3-minute lightning talks, so I can only get a couple of the fabulous speakers in here.)
Pragnya has told us that, generally, the poorer we are the happier we are. That’s the reverse of the correlation that most of us think about regarding wealth. Being an engineer, she gives us a great graph to illustrate it.
Sean Gourley talks about how we can use math to predict and understand violence in the world around us. He came up with equations that helped describe what was happening – scanning the news and using an algorithm to better see the future. He asked a hard question of himself at one stage: “how can I describe this human suffering with numbers?”
Sean talks of meeting the real-life people who were part of his algorithm in Iraq. How it shook him, realizing that there were people behind the numbers.
“If you want to change the world, you need to begin at your home.” – Yatin Sethi
Darius, from “Darius Goes West“, comes on stage with Logan to give us a small taste of their amazing story of how they are raising money to fight Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Daniela Candillari and opera coach, sings a haunting song dedicated to the rest of the TED Fellows.
Dr. Awa Marie Coll Seck, Professor and Doctor at the University of Dakar in Senegal, is taking the fight against Malaria to a new level. After being the Minister of Health in Senegal, she decided to start an awareness and fund raising campaign against Malaria. “We can be in a poor country, and we can do a lot of things by ourselves.”
Film maker, Taghi Amirani, tells a funny, captivating, and ultimately heartbreaking story of his grandmother finding love in Iran. And tragically, how the husband was swapped out at the last minute…
(sidenote: GAH, running out of power and no extension cords…!)
Kyra Gaunt, the captivating and energetic anthropologist/musician talks to us about race, prejudice and the brand that has been created around racism. “It takes a lot to change something that doesn’t actually exist in the physical universe.”
“Racism as a resource… think opposable thumbs. What if we need to embrace racism to reach the next level of our humanity? It’s what I call, ‘agreeing to be offended’.”
Joshua Wanyama of Pamoja Media and African Path, gives a talk on how accessing the internet for the first time back in 1998 completely changed his life and set his path for the future. Now he thinks of how the internet frees communication, and people, away from a government controlled monopoly all over Africa.
Sara Mayhew talks about her new Manga book: Ztarr
Bright Simons of Mpedigree reminds us that solutions for Africa are complicated, it’s not just bad governance, that most of Africa isn’t resource rich, and that cultural legacies aren’t always the problem.
TED 2009 starts this week, and I’m heading to California early as part of the new TED Fellows program. As expected, there is an amazing line-up of speakers, but what I’m really excited about is the other attendees and the other TED Fellows. (A quick warning as well, there will be an inordinate number of posts here this week during TED, then back to normal.)
Interestingly enough, this whole program started in Africa – with the fellows at TED Global 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania:
“Because TEDAfrica’s success in 2007 was due in no small part to the boundless energy and remarkable ideas of our fellows, we decided to create a permanent program to bring more amazing leaders into the TED Community. TED will help them communicate their ‘ideas worth spreading’ to a much larger audience,†said Tom Rielly, TED Community Director, who is responsible for the program.
This is true. Anyone who was there will agree that there was an electricity in the air that was palpable. Talks from Andrew Mwenda, Chris Abani and George Ayittey set the tone. Conversations were started, lasting relationships built and future leaders inspired. It helped remind us that Africa can be greater, and that we need look no further than ourselves to catalyze that change.
As testament to this, 4 of the 5 full-time members of Ushahidi were TED Fellows in Arusha: Henry Addo, Juliana Rotich, Ory Okolloh and myself.
Each year TED plans to bring on 50 Fellows to attend TED and TED Global (this year there are more, as there will be another 100 Fellows at TED India). An international selection committee representing the target regions will then choose 20 Senior Fellows, who can take part in the next 3 years of TED conferences, at which point they become TED Alumni.
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