Transcriber: Vivian Polikar Reviewer: mariana vergnano
There are over 1500 talks on TED.com and there are over 25,000 TEDx talks online.
And you know, people can watch these at home,
in their pyjamas, at their leisure, whenever they feel like it.
So you kind of wonder:
why would anyone come to any of our events?
I think that the answer to that is: Experience.
I think the experience we provide is really important.
You know, people connecting around the power of ideas
and so what this says, to me and to all of us,
is that we really need to put as much time and effort
into thinking about what that experience is
as we do into curating the speaker program.
For me, it's always been a key piece of TED - experience planning,
but it really hit home when,
in 2008, we decided to do what ultimately became TEDActive.
It was a simulcast event that we had in Aspen.
And so, you know, we really had to look at it and think
what do you do so that we are not just...
- It was 300 people at that time - what do we do so we're not
300 people sitting in a room watching television together?
And these people paid a few thousand bucks to be there by the way, right?!
So, we really thought about, you know, putting some great exhibits in,
and thinking about ways that people can connect to the event.
Well, the plan was great and then... we got there.
And we had a little... mirror disaster.
Someone on the AV team hung a projector really close to a sprinkler head
and the fire alarm went off.
What you are looking at here is our disaster,
you know, is raining down on all of our equipment.
This is less then 48 hours before the event started.
You see our couches and our plush chairs and blankets and our equipment,
and all of our electrical stuff - that's all there,
it's all getting rained on.
And so... it was amazing, so, also (Laughter)
we had some kind of...
didn't really think the whole thing through quite well enough.
We had 3 staffers! 3 TED staffers at TEDActive in 2008,
for 300 attendees.
So, attendees were showing up.
The registration was right outside of where you are seeing all this water.
They were showing up to register and it was super loud, fire alarm was going off
and they were like: "OK, how can we help?"
And we said: "You know what?
Can you run to the gym and grab all the towells you can find?"
"Can you get some hair dryers? Can you pick up this mop and help us?"
And it kind of set the tone for the week. And what we found then
was that all the people that had helped out, and pitched in,
kind of wanted to do that the rest of the week.
And that inspired others to pitch in.
And then, the truly amazing thing was that everyone who did pitch in
had a fantastic time! They loved it! We got help! It was amazing!
And it created this incredible sense of community.
And that's when I realized, you know,
that community was the most important asset that we have.
And we all have that asset, every person in here.
And it's free and it's
I think really fun to think about all the things we can do with that.
And we learn so much from you all
and all things that you do with your communities.
It's, really cool. And I think that's something,
everytime we have a TED event, we really, really think about
where can we connect with people and how can we connect them with each other.
And that's from the e-mails that go out after you register.
This is an e-mail that we sent leading up to TEDActive, every week.
This is one where we introduced everybody to the people
who were like the host of the event.
You'll see people here at TEDGlobal with a tag on their name badge.
They are here to help people, first timers, find their way around.
It's fun to get them connecting online.
There is a TEDGlobal 2013 Facebook group.
We do that at TEDActive, too.
So, later on, in this newsletter that you see here, but it is not pictured,
we talked about some of the stuff people were talking about online.
And it helps to get people engaged.
And then, down to how you walk out of the events...
this is Jessy Arrington at TEDActive a couple of years ago.
The whole thing was over,
we were walking out to our party and she brought rainbow colored hats
and everybody wore solid coloured shirts and we walked out
after a marching band and rainbow colours to our farewell party.
We also like to put together places were people can make stuff.
It helps introverts connect really well actually,
because for some people it's really hard to walk up and introduce yourself,
but they still want to be talking to people.
So a great way to engage them is to allow people to sit down and make stuff,
and feel creative and be creative.
And then, that has this incredible benefit too,
of giving you fantastic artwork for your event,
that's been created by the community that everyone feels really proud of too.
So that's the sculpture that these people were contributing to.
That was at TEDActive this year. The artist is Grace Hawthorne.
And we also had this artist Kyle Johnson, who brought materials to make flags.
And everybody could make a flag that sort of represented their personality.
So if you look at it, it created this beautiful sort of landscape
of artwork representing all the people at TEDActive out there.
And it looks great as a whole, but what's really awesome
is that you go up to each one of those very different flags,
and that represents a different personality of someone who is there,
which is really fun.
But, you guys are doing these things too
and TEDxManhattan did something I think is great:
you don't have as long to get people to connect.
They had a family style lunch, people were passing dishes.
It feels like, how can that not be intimate, right?
How can you not get to know the people you are sitting next to?
TEDxSingapore had do-it-yourself name badges.
People made name badges that,
not only said words that represented them,
but visually represented them as well.
It was pretty cool.
There is another asset that we all have, all of us,
that I think also contributes to experience
and that's space - event space.
It's stage design, it is like the flow of a room,
thinking about all of these elements really add to the experience.
Thinking about the ideas that are inspired by the space that you choose.
TEDxUbud. Look at that!
It's a bamboo pavilion, then they got bamboo mats out there.
I'm dying to crawl into that picture and sit on one.
And they have flowers for their TEDx logo.
TEDxAlmedalen in Sweeden.
What I love about what they did is it's a really simple set up, right?
The idea behind this: it's at midnight!
They had their TEDx at midnight outside! You don't need much.
TEDxLaçador:
they decide to use their environment to put their attendees in a cage -
(Laughter) - Not sure what's going on with that one.
But actually it was on a farm and they let them roam free.
A beautiful farm that created a good experience for everyone who was there.
And I'm sure it really formed the event too.
At TEDxRio+20 they built a venue
and the spectacular thing about that too is that every piece of that -
Look at the size of that! Every piece of that was reusable later,
when it was taken down.
Stage design is also important and it's something that
we really care about and we love to see what you all come up with
because it also impacts the videos that we see in the end,
so it's really important to think about it.
TEDxEdmonton is known around the office for their fantastic stage design,
we love different stages they've turned out.
I think this one from TEDxMidAtlantic is really wonderfull.
It's so simple - bookshelves, with special books on the stage.
That's something that is easily achievable,
but well thought out too.
I think, this one, from TEDxCairo,
is really nice and just shows the power of lighting.
You know, that's lighting to create ambience.
And then, there is a third thing that I think we all have in common
with what we do and that is this massive passion.
The love and what this allows us to contribute to each event
is the kind of ideas that don't relate to anything else but just
"Wouldn't it be cool if...?!"
And so, TEDxSanna said,
"Wouldn't it be cool if we could put our logo
on a mountain side and you could see it from Google Earth?"
Yeah, that's Google Earth!
TEDxSanaa, right?!
In Yemen.
TEDxKids@Chiyoda in Tokio
decided to do an audition event for kids!
Fantastic!
A lot of you guys know about the cupcake love
on the page on Facebook with people who just made TEDx cupcakes.
And what I think is amazing is how many of you all
contributed cupcakes to that.
Who has in here?
Oh, that's pretty great!
Then in TEDxDetroit, every year they gather their attendees outside
and make a big X and take a photo of the attendees.
Which I think is fun.
So, I'm going to end this with another disaster story.
(Laughter)
Because I love those and I've had a few of them
and I know lot of you have had a few of them too.
But this is one where all of those three components
ended up coming together,
to not only save the day,
but actually provide an incredible experience for people who were there.
Last year, we did a series of talent search events.
We did one in Sao Paulo, Brazil and we had this horrible thing happen
there was a weird power problem
and we lost power a few times, for accumulative 3 hours.
So, I was co-hosting it with Rodrigo Cunha,
and we had to kind of fill the time,
because we had all these speakers who'd worked so hard on their talks,
and we really owed it to them to keep the audience there.
We had no idea actually how long it was gonna take,
but we knew we had to go to plan Z.
We had to really do something right?!
So, we started trying to get people up on stage and it was not easy...
First actually, the space thing really helped us out
because the way they had planned their space
was that there was a main theater and then also a simulcast area.
So we did loose some people over time.
The event was due to end at 9pm and it ended up at ending at midnight,
so it was quite late.
And we lost a few people, but you could not feel it in the room at all.
Every single seat in the theater stayed packed until the end
because of that simulcast area.
Everyone was able to stand there and watch live
and that really made a difference.
The other thing, we just looked around and said,
"OK, what do we have? We don't have power, it's late at night,
we have nothing, we've got iPhones with flashlights on, and a bunch of people.
So, we started getting them up and trying to get stories out of them.
We sort of figured out how to do that
and had people come up and do stuff and it was a little hard
and then people started to come up and sing and do talents and stuff.
And what you see here is these 3 women getting on stage, leading us all in a song
and the only reason you're seeing it lit at all is because of the camera's flash,
but there are 2 of us holding iPhone flashlights up on them,
and it turned into this totally magical thing.
And one of our speakers actually
gave a marriage proposal from the stage at the end. (Cheering)
It was pretty incredible. And it was also the passion
of the team there, that help everyone go -
like for a second there were moments when everyone thought,
"What we are going to do, this is horrible", but then,
because everyone loved what they were doing so much,
they pretty quickly went to: "Ok, what's the opportunity here,
how do we make this great?"
So, I guess I just want to end this with,
all of this makes me really think,
we all need to look at our events,
every single logistical piece, everything we ever do and arrange,
every piece of it, e-mails, all of it,
and think, "What is the experience here?
Why not make it extraordinary?"
Thank you.
(Applause)