Transcriber: Akinori Oyama Reviewer: Kelwalin Dhanasarnsombut
It is an incredible privilege to be able to attend TEDxTokyo for the third time.
I really wanted to be here to support Japan,
support Todd and Patrick, and their amazing TEDxTokyo team.
This TEDx event marks the first third generation TEDx event.
It was 2 years ago we launched TEDx as a little experiment
and TEDxTokyo was only the second event to happen on a global basis.
We've now had almost 2,000 TEDx events around the world.
And so recently, TEDx organizers have been coming up to me and asking me
if I'd tell the TEDx story, if I'd tell how this became "a movement".
Well, what they are calling a movement.
I've sort of been reluctant to do so because I wasn't convinced
this amazing that is TEDx was ready to be called a movement.
And more importantly, I wasn't sure there is really my story to tell,
but these amazing organizers around the world, and the teams of volunteers
who spent hundreds of thousands of hours organizing these TEDx events,
and we at TED are, quite honestly, incredibly in awe of.
It's Masarat's story.
Masarat who against all odds hosted TEDxShekhavati
in a rural village in India
where the elders of the village went to every means to prevent this event from happening
because they felt threatened by a conference about ideas.
It's Areej's story.
Areej hosted the first co-ed event on her all-woman's campus in Pakistan.
It's Liat and Hanan's story,
a Palestinian and a Jew who hosted TEDxHolyLand.
It's Rodrigo and Helder's story who hosted TEDxAmazonia
for 600 people on a floating hotel in the middle of amazon rainforest
that was themed the better life for all beings.
And it's Jim's story.
And it's Walter's story.
And it's Thomas's story.
and it's Patrick and Todd's story.
And so, by the time I'd been asked the 9th or 10th time to tell the story,
I decided there was a story that did need to get told, and I needed to decide
if I could tell it or if I had the right to tell it,
And if I was gonna tell the story, I wanted to find a word to describe
this incredible group of people around the world that were motivated by nothing but ideas.
And so I start off by going to the dictionary looking up the word "movement":
"a trend in various fields or social categories, a group of people with a common ideology
who try together to achieve general goals.
I guess this could somewhat describe what I was seeing on the ground.
I was hoping that what we were creating was a little deeper than a trend.
Tamagotchi is a trend. Baggy pants are a trend.
Platform shoes are a trend.
And so I'd inadvertently been calling this group of people a tribe
which is a social division of people, a family, or a group of something in common.
And this was definitely a little closer.
I traveled to a lot of TEDx events,
and there is a sort of common ideology or philosophy
that binds both the organizers and the people who attend these TEDx events.
They are a tribe of sorts.
They are people who believe that great ideas can change the world.
But I still needed the word, but in the absence of the word,
the process of trying to figure out a way to describe TEDx community
had made me more comfortable talking about it.
So, when Patrick asked me, I said "Yes."
And so, now, the challenge really began.
How do you tell the TEDx story?
How do you describe this amazing, extraordinary, passionate, committed community around the world?
This is story of diversity. It's a story of openness.
It's a story of risk taking.
It's a story of trust.
It's a story of the power of a brand.
It's a story of inspiration and aspiration.
And so, I worked for many companies, both big and small.
And the underlying philosophy of most of these companies throughout my career
has been that of control.
And it takes a really extraordinary leader to let go of control,
to trust in the power of people to give away a brand,
and trust in a global community to maintain its integrity.
And at the backbone of all of this is Chris Anderson
and his underlying philosophy of radical openness.
And radical openness really informs a lot of what we do every day at TED,
a lot of decisions that get made.
And I think about this often and it's usually when one of three things happen.
Either I get an amazing email from a TEDx organizer;
I get an email from somebody in the community, or someone who attended TEDx event, or a speaker –
I have some major compliance issue:
As you can see here, they are using the TED logo, instead of the TEDx logo –
or I get an email from somebody who attended a TEDx event
whose expectations have not been met.
Generally, when I get one of these types of emails,
I try to remind myself that TEDx is a movement,
a tribe, a global community of almost 2,000 events
that was launched without a legal document.
Yes, we do have a 20 page tool-kit, and 30 pages of branding guidelines.
But it's a community that's a volunteer community,
that's not being paid.
It's community that is self-policing.
It's our movement that is built on trust.
And these people believe in the power of the TED brand and the TED brand alone.
This brings me to my next point.
I recently wrote a grant proposal.
And in addition to an org chart, a completely normal request, which they wanted,
they also asked me for a five-year plan.
So I went back to when Chris and I were first discussing the idea of TEDx.
And at the time we knew three things.
We knew that people were connecting
in this amazingly powerful way to the TED talks online.
We would get emails like this one here.
We also knew that more and more people were coming together
in groups, in communities and schools, watching TED talks,
and having a conversation around them.
And then, more and more people are coming to us at TED and saying,
"Can you please hold an official TED conference in our city or country?"
And for the small TED team, that idea was very hard concept to scale.
And we had 5 core questions.
How could we capture the passion for TED around the world?
How could we capture this passion that we are seeing for TED talks online?
And how could we infuse whatever we were creating
with a local authenticity, sensibility and sense of integrity?
And how could we tap into these local voices in an authentic way?
And, most importantly,
how could we give away the TED brand while still protecting it in some way?
And so this is really where I started in 2008 with Chris Anderson's blessing
and the philosophy of a moral compass and radical openness.
And the questions were really endless.
How much do you give away?
How much do you protect?
How much do we need to support the system?
At the time I created a one-year plan, it went something like this.
Version 1, we launch.
And maybe, there would be 20 to 30 small events that happened over the course of the first year.
And Version 2, I damage the TED brand,
I get fired,
I possibly have a lot of frequent flyer miles, and you can fill in the rest.
But, actually, I didn't dwell on the latter
for a number of reasons, I truly believed in Chris and his underlying vision.
My passion for the TED brand: In the 90's, I'd write into my job contract
that I would only take a job if they sent me to TED.
My commitment to my personal philosophy, that being "May you live an interesting life."
And in a moment in time where everything from course-ware to curriculum
has being open-sourced, why not a community around the great brand?
And finally, I had always tried to find jobs that were somewhat on the cutting-edge.
whether it's running around South Africa as a journalist
with one of the first high-band aid cameras,
or, working for Microsoft in the 90's
when we were trying to create a broad-band entertainment network
that connected through a 14.4 modem – not possible.
But as this concept developed and the ideas emerged,
the most crucial and significant thing I learned, and again, I learned this from Chris Anderson,
is listen to the community, listen to the voices on the ground, and no one else.
There were definitely the naysayers.
There were [courses of] cons.
Those who thought what we were doing was completely mad, and we were risking the brand.
And there were those that thought we may even completely destroy the brand.
And so, what I tried to do is
checking consistently, continuously with the voices on the ground,
really pay attention to the cultural differences and be sensitive to the cultural differences.
And I presumed I knew nothing
of what they were going through, and their challenges, and their needs.
And we created this feedback loop which informed the guidelines
that were ever evolving and eventually became what are now the TEDx rules for a TEDx license.
And so, while it's clear how TEDx now came about,
I am still humbled with the challenge of adequately describing
the complexities and achievements of this incredible global tribe.
And my team of four's daily obsessions have more from how do we create systems,
and infrastructures, and backend systems, and naming guidelines,
to manage this amazing, growing community,
to how do we paint the real story
of this electric, passionate, and gloriously mad global tribe.
The 100 plus YouthDay events, TEDx events that are for and by young people.
The TEDx in a box program which is a TEDx program
that goes into developing communities and under-privileged communities.
TEDxChange, which is a strategic relationship with the Gates foundation.
TEDxUniversityDay in China that happened in the course of 6 weeks
where we had almost 80 TEDx events happening in one day on universities across China.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
And so, while the numbers and statistics do tell part of the story,
we have a lot of numbers and a lot to analyze,
and a huge amount of lessons learned –
I could spend an entire presentation on the lessons learned –
I've become increasingly obsessed
with what I believe are the real stories, the real TEDx story
and that is the amazing human connections,
the projects, like Patrick just mentioned,
and the ideas that are emerging from these TEDx events.
The memes, the themes and the common ideologies,
the local voices that are emerging through the different TEDx events.
Voices we may never have heard from, had it not been for TEDx.
And the cross-cultural exchange of ideas,
for example, TEDx today is streaming,
TEDxTaipei is streaming to a series of events on mainland China.
And then, finally this global ecosystem of ideas,
and how it's really affecting the local communities.
And so, what I want to do with my remaining few minutes
is just read a couple of these stories in the voice of the community themselves,
and a couple of quotes,
with the understanding that this is just a mere slither of the TEDx stories.
This is an email I received from Masarat Daud who is the host of TEDxShekhavati
This email I received after she had done the second event, the second year.
It says, "The usual villains are still there,
but their voices were much lower compared to last year.
The most beautiful outcome was that our venue was a low-cost school,
which is around 80 years old, there are no toilets in the school.
But because of TEDxShekhavati, the school finally got toilets built by the community members.
And it's finally getting a coat of paint too.
And the best part's that one of the local politicians who represents Fatehpur
has also attended the event.
He has donated money which was used towards building two new classrooms at the school."
And this is an attendee quote from TEDxSkopje.
"As a small, impoverished country, I think Macedonia needs more of TEDx.
This event bolstered our confidence, our belief in human potential.
We need more shining eyes, as Ben Zander put it.
And then finally, I am just gonna read an email from one of my favorite TED speakers –
I've got this email very recently. It said,
"I am sitting at the end of the world, the nearest small town over 600 km away,
huge oil field surrounded by massive dunes, nothing else.
With the head of the world largest oil company and his hot-shot team,
a lot of very smart, young kids, co-ed,
what has most impacted the young Sauds in the past few weeks,
not the turmoil next door, but TEDxRiyadh and TEDxJeddah.
It's what everyone is talking about.
It's a lead topic on Twitter and Facebook."
And so, there are hundreds of these stories.
Please go to our TEDx blog that captures a few of these stories.
If you have a story of your own,
please contribute it to the global community of stories.
And so while TEDx was launched as little experiment two years ago here,
it's creating an amazing ecosystem of ideas across the planet.
It's a unique network of voices, ideas and passions.
It's connecting this amazing global community.
And TEDxTokyo is key to this community.
You are one of the founding members of this amazing global community.
And so my challenge to you today is let's find a way to really leverage
this community to help rebuild Japan.
And please help us continue to contribute
to the continuous global conversation about our shared future.
Thank you.
(Applause)