TEDx Danubia March 2011 by Regina Saphier

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday I looked at my facebook news stream and I got curious about the latest TEDx Danubia program. I had a quick look and suddenly decided to set up my latest live blog, but for the first time to blog about a TEDx event in Hungary (I regularly blog about the main live TED events, but not about TEDx events). It looked like the organizers have finally overcome the provincial curatorial style of the previous TEDx Danubia events and for the first time the program looked world class. I had everything set up and was looking forward to blogging the entire show when right at the beginning: on the official site the stream link was nowhere to see (and trust me, I knew what I was doing, I am a regular live conference streamer and it was not going to be my first TEDx Danubia live stream either), no stream started, and by the time I figured out that the free webcast was supposed to be on ustream, there was still no live stream… I posted quick notes to the organizers after I established that other people had the same stream error…

For hours the stream did not work so I decided to spend my day with different tasks, e.g.: reading the English letters of a wonderful female painter (while sunbathing on my balcony), who lived a short life and painted some remarkable pictures mainly in Hungary and in India. I was rather frustrated that I did not get to see some of the excellent morning TEDx D. speakers… so I kept returning to my computer and suddenly the steam went live.

So, I have seen some of the speakers… well… it was rather hard to see them, because the stream quality was miserable (on the organizers’ side). It was nowhere near the TED Long Beach quality. But still after the many technical problems, I have to say: there were some really interesting talks, good speakers and I especially appreciated the English speaking talks, because they have a better chance of making it onto the TED.COM site’s talk archive list for everyone to see. (There were some boring speakers too, but I am not here to write about the negative aspect of speakers.)

The event was also special because Bruno Giussani TED’s EU director attended in person and also spoke at this TEDx conference. I am hoping to see his talk soon on TEDx Danubia’s official site, along with Tamás Freund’s talk (I have no idea why he did not speak in English, I know for a fact that he is able to speak in English, because we were featured in the same BBC World News report a few years ago).

So, below is the program that I did not get to see in its entirety, but whatever I managed to see during the day, most were interesting, well delivered and TED-worthy. I congratulate the curators of the sessions. They have done a really good job and set a new standard for Hungarian TEDx events. I even played with the idea of attending the next one in person and even suggesting speakers.

But please, pay much more attention to the online stream. It is after all the future… The online experience in the world of social media is a key aspect. Also, while I am glad that last year’s idiotic toilet paper stage design was nowhere to be seen (I mean, really? is this how you want to be seen in the world? toilet paper behind the speakers?), still the boring boxes only overcrowded the stage and were lacking fantasy. Also, the member profiles on the tedxdanubia site are unavailable (I used to brows them last year but now there is no link to them.). Plus, for the next event, please find a host with real charisma, stage presence and well timed humor or some other deep intellectual substance.

Finally, the most exquisite performance happened right at the end of the day. I am sure the Moholy-Nagy light play will soon be on the TED.COM site. It was wonderfully directed and performed. A true creative delight for the international connoisseur’s mind. Excellent curatorial decision. Thank you! (Especially because I could see it twice: the webcam was on even during the rehearsal…)

Here is the performance: http://www.tedxdanubia.com/hu-HU/TEDxDanubia_Talks/Negative_Variete.aspx

 

8:50-10:40 Exploring Within

• Tamás Freund – neuroscientist: Brain Waves and Creativity

• Julian Treasure – sound designer: Conscious Listening (in English)

• Keren Hanan – pianist, painter: Music in Colours (in English)

• Péter Csermely – biochemist, network researcher: The Tao of Talent (in English)

• Bruno Giussani – TED’s European Director and Curator for TEDGlobal (in English)

• Lakshmi Pratury – host of TEDIndia 2009 and INK: What the West Can Learn from the East (in English)

11:40-13:20 Connecting the Dots

• Vilmos Csányi – ethologist: The Nature of Beliefs

• Carolyn Steel – food urbanist: Sitopia – how we can think through food (in English)

• Antal Kelle – creative artist: ArtFormer

• Zsuzsa Szvetelszky – social psychologist: The Art and Science of Gossip

• Péter Papp – programmer mathematician: What a Software Designer Dreams Of…

• Tomicah Tillemann – international relations expert: Creating Change in a Changing World (in English)

14:20-16:10 Extraordinary Journeys

• László Kiss – physicist, astronomer: Almost Nothing

• Zoltán Galántai – futures scientist: The Glasses of Time

• Gábor Korom – instinct management researcher: Ariadne’s Thread

• Carin King – fashion consultant: Style Without Mirrors (in English)

• Róbert Mandel – musician, organologist: Instruments Ago…

• Stuart Schulzke – new media entrepreneur: Detrivializing a Twitterized World (in English)

17:10-19:00 A New Beginning

• Gábor George Burt – strategist, innovation/creativity expert: Re-engaging Your Childhood Creativity (in English)

• Gábor Karsai – philosopher, spiritual diplomat: The Origin of the Beginning

• Nic Marks – statistician: The Happiness Manifesto (in English)

• John Foppe – motivation expert: Within Reach (in English)

• Balázs Havasi – pianist, composer

20:10-20:30 Special Evening Session: Dream Bubbles

• Viktória Szépvölgyi – director, producer: Negative Varieté

Regina Saphier TED Long Beach 2011 Day 4

Cover via Amazon

So, this is the final day. I hope you find some interesting ideas below about TED talks to look for during the following year (major, multi-day TED conferences and TEDx events are the sources of the hundreds of free TED talks on ted.com). MyTEDblog (my live conference blog) aims to inform those who do not have the opportunity to watch live (especially for 4 days) and for those who have to wait months to start watching archived and edited talks one by one, and for those who need to wait for the complete subtitle translations of the talks. I have written short intros or one line tweet like key sentences, so even people with basic English knowledge could grasp what is coming up on the TED site. Have a nice read. 🙂 I highlighted my favorite talks (or the most important ones).

TED photo stream slide show (opens in new window) Day 4

Friday, March 4, 2011

8:30 AM – 10:15 AM Session 11: The Echo of Time

• Jack Horner
• Dinosaur digger

He is making “chicken-saur soup” genetically speaking in my humble opinion. Well, he is trying to create atavistic features in chicken, for example regrowing the tail, by turning on sleeping genes, so that the new chicken would satisfy sixth graders’ need for a modern day dinosaur. Imagine asking for “fried chicken tail” for lunch… In fact a good way to show how evolution works: reverse it. According to Jack, he will be able to show the end product in a few years time. Bring it on TED! I am so glad that he did not say that he is making a dinosaur. I am so bored with dinosaurs.

• Rajesh Rao
• Computational neuroscientist

Reading ancient signs with a diligent computer.

• Harvey Fineberg
• Health policy expert

There is no going back… we are going to individually determine out own genetic evolution.

• Stanley McChrystal
• Military leader

A new kind of leadership in the military.

11:00 AM – 12:45 PM Session 12: Only If. If Only.

• Kathryn Schulz
• Wrongologist

Get out of your bubble of being right. Realize, that we are all wrong about a lot of things. Even TED as a conference, over ten years ago predicted things that did not happen. But there is the opportunity of revisiting an issue when you realize that you are wrong. Being wrong feels bad, but realizing that you are wrong might just save you and lead you into the right direction.

• John Hunter
• Educator

He shows how children solve the world’s problems in class. He is a wonderful, humble teacher, who does not want to control every answer and uses serious play to teach. And he is able to learn from his pupils. By the way he also apologizes to them for leaving such chaotic world to them with so many problems. On the other hand, he is trying to prepare them for their roles as excellent future leaders.

• Roger Ebert
• Film critic and blogger

A truly moving performance, where his wife, computer and friends give him a voice on stage.

Regina Saphier TED Long Beach 2011 Day 3

Image by redmaxwell via Flickr

TED photo stream slide show (opens in new window) Day 3

Thursday, March 3, 2011

11:00 AM – 12:45 PM Session 8: Invention and Consequence

• Edward Tenner
• Historian of technology and culture

While listening to Mr. Tenner, I created the word: “TEDknowlogy”… This is the most boring talk possible on interesting human technology, so my mind wondered off a bit… sorry… anyway… when I see the TEDnews tweet “Edward Tenner at #TED: Drawing an astounding connection between Legionnaires’ disease and the magnetic tape drive. 140 chars not enough.”, I reply: “@TEDNews E. Tenner: Magnetic tape drives disturbed by original formula: Legionnaires’ disease air conditioner bactericides remixed. #TED” 🙂

Philip Zimbardo is worried about boys! Social Intensity Syndrome: young men prefer men’s company, instead of women’s. (Guess what: many women do the same, they feel more comfortable with other women. Now why is it, that I have no women friends? Only men! And I am the type who remains good friends with ex boyfriends. You really have to be a jerk to be rejected by me as a friend. My few close friends are types from the show: The Big Bang Theory lol) Anyway, Philip says, boys are getting isolated from women, they have no idea how to handle intimacy, and are chronically shy, unable to be mature men. They are actually digitally reprogrammed while addicted to computers, games and asynchronous online contacts.

• Dennis Hong
• Roboticist

Car for the blind in development! Now we understand why there are braille signs on drive up ATMs… lol

After this a self-driving car is introduced by Sebastian Thrun from Google. It was tested on the road and not one driver noticed that the car was driving empty…

• Ralph Langner
• Security consultant

I am glad I did not get this talk… Chris says Ralph scared him…

Mranu Prakash viewing an office fly in a geeky way…

An activist speaking to us about China and lack of freedom of speech… We in Hungary know what it is all about after decades of communism. And this “internet censoring” China is the owner of a huge portion of the US debt.

• Eli Pariser
• Organizer and author

57 parameters of online search profiling… Everything is tailored today. You are in a filter bubble. You do not know what gets in and what stays out. Artificially curated info… algorithms filtering news and data… We are back in 1915 with the web… he says this: algorithms need ethics to let in even the uncomfortable news.

• Eythor Bender
• Berkeley Bionics’ CEO

Exoskeleton for soldiers and paralyzed people.

2:15 PM – 4:00 PM Session 9: Threads of Discovery

• Juan Enriquez
• Futurist

Guest curated and hosting this session…

• Fiorenzo Omenetto
• Biomedical engineer

Silk reinvenTED hightech!

• Daniel Tammet
• Linguist, educator

Aspie and Savant. Daniel shows the emotion behind words and colors of numbers. 🙂

• Janet Echelman
• Artist

Putting beautiful and colorful fishing nets into the fabric of cities. 🙂

• Ed Boyden
• Neuroengineer

Engineering light activated brain cells… so atrophied brain cells in eg: schizophrenia causing cell groups could be  selectively turned off by blue light… You could treat PTSD, bipolar depression, chronic pain, end so on by using this method. You can eliminate fearful behavior. Or research parts of the brain to find out which part is doing what exactly. This is brilliant work! 🙂 This is revolutionary research!

• Christina Lampe-Onnerud
• Energy expert

She is introducing her energy building blocks.

Steve Gullans: After eliminating infectious diseases, cancer, and cardiovascular illnesses, well: we are going to face accidents to eliminate them or fix their outcomes.

• Anthony Atala
• Surgeon

Talking about regenerative medicine. Cells, external building materials, or both… Building heart valve… human bladder… and other organs. Engineering human liver tissues… a skeleton of a liver perfused with blood vessel cells and real liver cells… 3D printing organs and bones… scanning and printing wounds with cells. The large solid organs are a problem.  Printing a kidney on stage! We see a finished one. And a young man telling about his own printed organs. Luke Massella received his printed organs 10 years ago… he talks about living a normal life and being saved by Anthony. 🙂

5:00 PM – 6:45 PM Session 10: Beauty, Imagination, Enchantment

This section was full of fun that one has to see. Unfortunately, I got food poisoning and was unable to fully enjoy this session. But I am going to watch it again! 🙂 I am feeling much better now. I have no idea what made me so ill so suddenly. I have not been ill for the last three years (since 2008) at all, so I am really surprised.

• Beatrice Coron
• Papercutter artist

Putting stories in paper. That is right. Not on, but rather right into the paper.

• Sarah Kay
• Poet

Putting poetry and heart on stage.

• Kate Hartman
• Artist and technologist

Making really funny and wearable technology.

• Shea Hembrey
• Artist and curator

I watched his TED talk several times (live during the webcast, later just to repeat the fun, and finally when I reviewed the Hungarian subtitle translation of his TED talk…). I still sometimes burst out laughing when I think of his style, words, ideas, and images. His public persona is a work of brilliant art in itself. 🙂 Not only has he created 100 artist profiles, and complex art, but also managed to stage it in the form of stand up comedy. Plus he also managed to fit in a lovingly critical mirror for the contemporary artists who are only trying to become original. Congratulations upon his true story telling genius. I shared his TED talk with all people who are able to appreciate it. Thank you for being you Shea. 🙂

 

• Jason Mraz
• Musician

Regina Saphier TED Long Beach 2011 Day 2

TED photo stream slide show (opens in new window) Day 2

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

8:30 AM – 10:15 AM Session 4: Deep Mystery

At the beginning I spent over 60 minutes trying to figure out why TED live stream chat has not been working at all since yesterday… not at all while watching yesterday’s sessions, and working a bit today, but I could not post. After nothing helped in Mozilla, I went to Chrome… We exchange e-mails with the always helpful TED associates representative: Anjali. After about 12 e-mails she forwards my complaint to the TED tech team… after I ask: “Is it possible that the new TED profile integrated chat has a selective problem that they don’t know about yet?” We try many things, nothing helps… I never had such problems in the past, or if there was a problem, it was always on the TED tech side… (and as it turned out at the next conference, it was…)

• Antonio Damasio
• Neuroscientist

What is consciousness? He explains his theory that human self is created by a cooperation between the cortex, the brain stem, and the body map (the body is represented by an acquired map in the brain). We create our brain maps of our bodies as we develop and use that inner map as a reference for all other maps. We learn that there are three levels of self: proto, core and autobiographical self. Animals usually have the first two, but you and even your dog, you both have the latter. The more developed the cortex, the richer the experience of the self and the more conscious and creative the creature, but according to him the cortex is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon of the self and consciousness. If you hurt one part of your brain stem, the result is coma and your self is gone (at least you do not recognize or detect your brain images, etc.). If you damage another part of the brain stem, your self is imprisoned into your paralyzed body. So, for normal functioning of the self, your body, brain stem and cortex must have a fluid feedback system. He also shows us how he first discovered his own retina cyst visually (looking at a matrix with only one eye at a time) and how it was later proven by special retina imaging.

I am unable to concentrate on Damon Horowitz while I am still fighting with the TED chat technology glitch… no idea why it is not working…  Update from march 10.: Guided by instinct that I missed something important, I went back to the TED 2011 Sessions Archive and had a second look at how Damon performed. Yes, in fact he performed. He was brilliant! When I filled out the TED Associate  questionnaire yesterday, I did not yet review his part in the archive… my god, the truth is, he was off the charts as a speaker! He not only spoke about philosophy, but also about a teen in prison who did something really really wrong… and Damon showed us how they started to argue about what is wrong… what it means to be wrong. Damon, I am sorry about not giving you the “off the charts” mark. You deserved the very best! (Damon has a BA in Computer Science from Columbia, an MS from MIT Media Lab, and a PhD from Stanford, according to the vark website. He and his colleagues are behind Aardvark. Here is another talk by him, this time at TEDxSoMa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YdE-D_lSgI)

• Felisa Wolfe-Simon
• Geobiochemist

I have seen live the NASA stream when Felisa announced her discovery of possible arsenic based life on Earth. She is telling the same story at TED.

• Aaron O’Connell
• Physicist

Aaron is a young man who is both high on the left and the right hemisphere’s aptitude scale. He has a hunch that all things should be behaving according to quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, he misses the fact that we are not as high on quantum mechanics as he is…

• Maya Beiser
• Cellist

We relax our brains…

• Deb Roy
• Cognitive scientist

The largest home video collection… I start crying when Deb shows the voice sequence from “gaga” to water… as his little boy learned to say the word: water. Amazing: a long word learning process distilled and played within a few seconds! So moving! He is also showing us his home word-scape. The word “water” is mostly living in the kitchen, while “bye” lives close to the door… Amazing visuals! Later he is applying all this to the media. We see the topology of communications.

And my live stream chat word-scape is flat… still not working…

11:00 AM – 12:45 PM Session 5: Worlds Imagined

• Julie Taymor
• Director, designer

We are introduced to the visual magic of theater and film.

Rob Parto shows a short video of what World of Warcraft is. I think it is sad… with no real-world meaning… people escaping into this artificial world while contributing nothing… I want that time and energy to go into real world problem solving.

• Morgan Spurlock
• Filmmaker

He shows how clueless companies are, while people know their own brands. So lets see what the brand experts say about Morgan’s personality brand: playful-mindful… He says: embrace fear, embrace risk… his film about product placement: “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” finally gets sponsored by product placement…

• Bill Ford
• Executive chair, Ford Motor Co.

Bill always felt different in his own adult environment… in his family, his industry and company that is… he knew that the environment must be considered by the car industry. He says, its wonderful and now natural that we have more and more environmentally friendly cars, but a traffic jam at a level of 9 billion people is not something we want to see… we just have to change the way we think about mobility. We need a smart car network for better mobility. Ready for prime time pretty soon… One day your car is going to reserve a parking spot via a smart data system. We need a global and interconnected network. It is a very complex issue, so we all need to get going today, to design this flexible future.

• Terrence McArdle + Ben Newhouse
• Inventors

They demo bubbli: http://bubbli.co/intro/

• Indra Nooyi
• Chair+CEO, PepsiCo

I will never ever think of PepsiCo as an ethical company, no matter how hard Indra is trying to convince us… with her cheerleaders playing nice with the mentally challenged… oh, so American… even if she got to the US at age 23… this is just another CSR (PR) project by a monster company selling sugary drinks to people… come on TED! You should know better!

Did I see PepsiCo in the Sapling portfolio? Hm… Well, no, I did not (at least not in their “2008 Return of Private Foundation, or Section 4947 ( a)(1) Nonexempt Charitable Trust Treated as a Private Foundation” document). But I did my research and I recommend this Foundation Center link, if you want to know more about the Sapling foundation, the owner of the TED project. Their market value was over 33 million dollars in 2008: http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/943/943235545/943235545_200812_990PF.pdf

2:15 PM – 4:00 PM Session 6: Knowledge Revolution

• Bill Gates
• Philanthropist

He appears as the guest curator of this session.

• David Christian
• Historian

David wants to build a free history teaching platform. He talks about Big History Project. He is the kind of teacher you like to listen to.

• Amina Az-Zubair
• Development worker

TEDnews: “1 in 5 Africans are Nigerian. 150 million people. 17 million in poverty.” “When Nigeria got debt relief in 2005, we asked: What could we do to make sure that money reached the poor?” Amina tells her development story of fighting corruption in the midst of national poverty and making sure development funds are spent well.

• Bruce Aylward
• Epidemiologist

Bruce is talking about poliomyelitis. He is really trying to completely eradicate it globally. Yes, it is still a problem in some places in the world. But Bruce looks like someone who won’t stop until it is done!

• Salman Khan
• Educator

I have seen the site of this young man a few weeks ago while browsing the net. And I could see that he is changing the future of education. And his talk was brilliant, encouraging and I am so sorry that I am not a school kid of today’s interconnected world. You can go ahead and become a mentor and use Salman’s technology and content to educate anyone, anywhere! Go and try it!

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Khan’s TED Long Beach 2011 talk is up already!

5:00 PM – 6:45 PM Session 7: Radical Collaboration

This session is open to anyone who wanted to see what a major TED conference is. By the way, I am also getting free TED Long Beach, TED Global Oxford, and TED Women Washington live streams in return for my TED volunteer activity as a translator and reviewer. I am a TED Associate. TED blogging is an extra volunteer effort I do just for fun.

• The Surprise
• Surprise guest

Wael Ghonim speaks from TEDxCairo about the revolution 2.0 in Egypt he helped start with a memorial facebook page to a victim of the regime. A truly intelligent young man!

• Edith Widder
• Deep-sea explorer

WOW! Luminescent deep sea creatures! Wonderful talk. A must see!

Jamie Oliver’s 2010 TED wish update in 2011: the Food Revolution got huge exposure and support in the US! Jamie walks up and down in stage telling his story of saving kids who were let down by adults in the US.

Jill Tarter’s SETI TED wish at risk! White Knight sought to make it possible.

• JR
• Street artist

He is using cities as canvases, pasting huge paper posters of all sorts of people, like Face to Face: Palestinian and Israeli faces on the border wall (on both sides, mixed). 4 years later those photos are still there. Another project: Women are heroes. When you look at Kibera now: they look back! Vinyl eyes on roofs protecting people from the rain! If an eye is gone, the person moved from underneeth… More and more people asking for vinyl roof cover photos. lol  French artist wishing: Turn the World Inside out In a Global Art Project. Tell him what you stand for in pictures. Offer a place to paste a huge picture. People in the audience listing their contributions one by one.

• Antony
• Musician, visual artist

Space TED

TED2011 : Cady Coleman @ The International Space Station

TED2011: Cady Coleman @ The International Space Station from TED Blog on Vimeo.

Astronaut Cady Coleman speaks to the TED2011 audience from the International Space Station. TED’s own Director of Film + Video, Jason Wishnow, directed the shoot remotely… really, really, really remotely.

Regina Saphier TED Long Beach 2011 Day 1

Image by redmaxwell via Flickr

TED photo stream slide show (opens in new window) Day 1

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

11:00 AM – 12:45 PM Session 1: Monumental

• Janna Levin
• Physicist

So, after Astronaut Cady Coleman spoke to us from space, Janna is introduced by Chris. Black holes are not dark on the inside she says… She also shows us the sound of a small black hole falling into a larger black hole…

• Sarah Marquis
• Explorer

Sarah is in Sichuan, China in the middle of nowhere, talking with Chris via phone. She is walking from Siberia to Australia. Meanwhile we see wonderful pictures taken by her during her long distance nature walk.

• David Brooks
• Columnist

Why are the most socially skilled people dehumanized when it comes to policymaking? He mentions a study: scientists predicted well from the mother-baby interaction at 18 months if a child would graduate from high school in the future. (In his New Yorker article he wrote: “Researchers at the University of Minnesota can look at attachment patterns of children at forty-two months, and predict with seventy-seven-per-cent accuracy who will graduate from high school.” 18 or 42?) According to other studies people are misjudging their social status, earnings and skills within the US population, highly overestimating their own standing. 95% of professors rate themselves above average teachers. 96% of college students think they have above average social skills. 19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of earners. Our suffering leads to our wisdom as interconnected people… I have to say, I don’t know what David was doing at TED… he did not fit my cognitive TED picture. March 13. note: When I read his article in the New Yorker, I changed my mind about him. He is actually much better and funnier in writing. What I think he is trying to say is that there are ways to improve our connected selves: by being better, emotionally more mature parents to future generations, by suffering and learning via life experiences, and by utilizing new scientific results to understand human nature. (I hope the several camera and sound errors will be edited out by the time his talk is uploaded.)

• Eric Whitacre
• Composer, conductor

We listen to music for a little while… I know Eric and his virtual choir… I think what he is doing with his volunteers is wonderful… I believe this is the message we should send deep into Space!

• Wadah Khanfar
• Media executive

Al Jazeera’s 43 years old executive says the change we see was inspired by idealistic, globally connected, educated young people who wanted the corrupt old leaders out. This is change from within, not change forced from the outside. He passionately predicts a better and more tolerant future! He looks really happy about what is going on. According to him the youth in the Arab World is much more able to lead those nations… the old regimes are not able to do that well anymore.

Chris introduces LocaTED, a new smart phone application that connects people at the Long Beach site.

Unfortunately, during the entire session the live stream chat did not work at all…

2:15 PM – 4:00 PM Session 2: Majestic

• Handspring
• Puppeteers

Interesting… but largely a bit too large for the TED stage…

• Sunni Brown
• Visualizer and gamestorming

Please, go ahead and doodle!

• Paul Nicklen
• Polar photographer

This is a must see… lots of highly visual presentations this year…

• Thomas Heatherwick
• Designer

Thomas is a sensitive young man, showing us his elegant building designs. This also a highly visual talk.

• Bobby McFerrin
• Musician

He does his usual trick: improvising with the audience. 🙂 I had  my first hand experience with him, I wrote a TED comment about it last year:

Feb 27 2010: “I did enjoy Bobby McFerrin’s musical talent in New York, at Lincoln Center‘s Avery Fisher Hall around 2000. We were sitting in one of the front rows of the middle section, me on the third seat from the left aisle. He made people sing one by one, after he performed alone on stage. He walked right to my friend’s old classmate and tried to make her sing. She would not. I tried to cheer her to sing, and Bobby noticed. Oh, oh… I realized he was climbing in-between the seats and was suddenly standing right above me, with his microphone. I am no singer, but he made me sing an African sounding duet. Sorry, about my ignorance, no idea what it was. No idea what I was singing, and I know I was off key, but I loved the experience. Can you imagine your own voice filling Avery Fisher Hall together with Bobby McFerrin? Thousands of people paid for the outstanding evening, with him being the only performer, and I got to sing with him. One of my dearest memories from New York. :)”

Read (and rate by clicking on their titles and giving a thumb up) more of my TED talk comments on my TED comment page:  http://www.ted.com/profiles/comments/id/270846

5:00 PM – 6:45 PM Session 3: Mindblowing

• Carlo Ratti
• Architect and engineer

More visual mindblowing… I think the most interesting project Carlo showed us was the trash tracking… from one city through the entire US.

Kevin Stone talked about his Rescue Reel that will save anyone in burning skyscrapers: they will be able to slide to safety. It is a wonderful idea.

Mattias Astrom showed us how formally classified technology is revolutionizing how we map the world in 3D.

• Aaron Koblin
• Data artist

This is an easy day for me, because most of what happens on stage is visual. Anyway, Aaron plays with data, random people, and the interface that is powered by IT. He shows us the beautiful fabric created by airline traffic data, or the online community created video clip.

From @TEDNews on twitter: “Mike Matas shows the future of digital books with Al Gore‘s “Our Choice” on the iPad. It’s the sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth” ”

• Homaro Cantu
• Chef

Homaru Cantu and Ben Roche are fooling with our food and taste. They design unusual dishes that either look weird, taste different, or are made of something else… like the burgers that look like meat, but are actually not made of animal sources.

TEDED Brain Trust is introduced: http://education.ted.com/

• Franz Harary
• Magician

An illusionist plays with tedsters’ minds.