Regina Saphier TED Long Beach 2012 Day 2

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

8:30 – 10:15

Session 4: The Lab
Hosted by Chris Anderson

This session had at least two talks with the wow factor. After Scooter spoke to the TED audience and pointed out that TED is like the academy awards for nerds, Regina, a nerd herself says that people  should be nice to nerds because they are the ones who are able to change the world. She asked us: What if you could not fail? Life gets interesting by the way when we fail because it means we surpassed ourselves. She is designing amazing flying objects at DARPA and one of the most interesting ones is the nano hummingbird… looks amazingly real as it floats over the TED stage  and Chris jokingly remarks at the end: Look what a cute hummingbird just flew into my headquarter… he also kept trying to make her say that her designs will be used by the military in unknown ways and what those ways might be… But anyway: What would you attempt to do if you knew that you can’t fail…? Jack demonstrated the highly practical digital anatomy device where the human body is represented by a 1:1 3D model of the human body, excellent for training and also for surgery consultation. This amazing table is already on sale, cheaper than a human body. Marco visually narrated Tesla’s short form bio and we learned that Tesla’s mind was supported by synesthesia and he built models in his head. After hundreds of inventions he had one failed idea, that was actually possible, but he kind of overestimated the possibilities and got no funding. Finally he ended up a recluse in his Waldorf Astoria suit. I mean, how silly, after so much success, how could people leave him so alone? Donald explained his world changing idea: The Liquid Metal Battery. This invention might just save the planet, according to Chris. We were informed that while watching, there are 165 TEDx events happening simultaneously. Vijay showed his team’s agile flying robots. I knew about his work, I have seen it before, but some of the videos were new. I especially liked the small robots flying in formation. At the end of the session Chris remembered Steve Jobs.

11:00 – 12:45

Session 5: The Earth
Hosted by Chris Anderson

Karen took us high up in the mountains to watch bears and showed footage of a newly discovered bat that has a tongue longer than its own body to reach the nectar in a flower. Sharon showed photos of beautiful bird nests. Wade asked us to protect the sacred head waters of the world. James reinforced our knowledge that global warming is real and we need to put extra price on carbon. Boone spoke unconvincingly about natural gas as the bridge energy for the US. I mean he lost 150 million as a solar energy entrepreneur, and now he has investments in natural gas… you can see where he is coming from. The Civilians performed the end of humanity.

2:15 – 4:00

Session 6: The Crowd
Hosted by June Cohen

After some music, the start up whisperer, father of LinkedIn, Reid says that individuals need to use their online company of people, their network as entrepreneurs. You somewhat have to understand technology, have a network identity, need network intelligence and network capabilities.  If you are a company collecting user data, do not do anything with it that you would not publish in The New York Times. David Hornik had a 3 minute talk. He spoke about his invisible disability, dyslexia preventing him from remembering names. He says that even if he can not remember our names, he still loves us. 🙂 Lior presents the first crowd sourced TED talk, and brings a real ox on stage. Jen gives the most practical talk of this session, introducing OccupytheSEC. She brings application developers into City Hall. It is a peace corps for geeks. We need a crowd of voices, but more importantly we need a crowd of hands actually doing things. Frank gives an epic talk about asking people to share their secrets with him on a postcard. June shares her secret: her skirt zipper broke but safety pins saved the day. 🙂 And finally Reggie speaks nonsense in the most intelligent manner possible and produces fun with his persona.

5:00 – 6:45

Session 7: The City
Hosted by Chris Anderson

JR’s TED wish turned his idea into the biggest collaborative art project in the world. Edward spoke too fast, so Chris made him summarize his talk at the end: cities are important for us to be able to connect to create collaboratively. Eduardo demonstrated how efficiently his operations center works in Rio and his colleague came online to tell him about the weather, the traffic and river levels. Suja, a stunning person and excellent storyteller spoke about her urban planning project in Africa, where she is working on a new city in Free State in South Africa.  The session is closed with lively Gospel. 🙂 (I will never forget the kindness of the church people in Harlem after we visited their community following 9/11. It was an unforgettable and wonderful experience. Thank you!)

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February 29, 2012
Categories: In English, My TED Long Beach Live Blogs, TED, TED Long Beach 2012 . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: The Virtual Human . Comments: 1 Comment