TED – A Resource like No Other
ByYou never know what you need to know as a coach. And TED is just the resource to help with that - for those who just love to learn, like I do, it is a treasure trove. For those who already know everything, like my brother, I hope it will remain a secret. (Yes, you could have just seen a little sibling rivalry here.) So what is TED? It is an incredible event that is “inspired by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers”. The event now is a website, a blog, a conference and a contest.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and began as a conference in Long Beach California in 1984 that challenged the world’s brightest to “give the speech of their lives” in 18 minutes. It was intended to bring together the three areas for intense collaboration. The conference continues to this day with 50 speakers each year over the span of 4 days. Please don’t get excited about attending the conference anytime soon since it sells out each year for the following year before the gates close. It also costs $6000 to attend and you have to apply and be accepted. However, the good news is the website.
The TED website has over 200 of the past speeches waiting for your viewing pleasure. You can watch them on the site or download them to your computer and have them for your own. Awesome. The reason this great resource exists is because TED is devoted to making a “change in attitudes, lives and ultimately the world”. That’s thinking big. In case you are not excited about this yet, let me give you more details. There are speeches there by Amy Tan, Stephen Hawkins, Dan Gilbert, Al Gore, Isabelle Allende and countless brilliant people whose names you may not know. I have delved into fascinating subjects that many coaches might be interested in including creativity, happiness, blogs, choice, “amateur professionalism”, memes and collaboration. That barely scratches the surface of the listings wiht more released each week. Take a cruise on over to the website soon and learn something new.
