TED2011: Only if. If Only.

As I think back to the final session of TED2011, "Only if. If only," I'm lamenting, "if only I could have gotten my blog up sooner." But, the good news is that the messages remain "ideas worth sharing" and I'm excited to highlight key takeaways.

Joss Stone sings, “Right to be Wrong” and Kathryn Schultz, author of “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error” took the concept a step further as the opening speaker of the final session of TED2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder.

Schultz is a wrongologist who has dedicated the last five years of her life to the study of why we misunderstand the signs around us. To start, she asked the audience “how it feels to be wrong?”

Dreadful, thumbs down, embarrassing…were a few of the responses, which Shultz cheered as all good responses and then immediately framed as answers to a different question – “how does it feel to realize that you're wrong?”

She pointed out that we all go through our lives conditioned to understand that people who are “wrong” are lazy, irresponsible, dim wits and that those of us who achieve success do so by being “right” more often than not.

However, in order to continue feeling right, we create a reality based on assumptions that everyone around us is either with us or wrong. Those assumptions generally focus in three areas:

• Ignorance Assumption: not aware of the facts
• Idiocy Assumption: not smart enough to see the error of their ways
• Evil Assumption: aware of the facts, but manipulating them to their own benefit

After I stopped laughing at the three levels of wrongness, I quickly picked up on Shultz’s point that this life would be an incredibly boring place if we all saw it the same way – without all the supposed ignorance, idiocy and evil.

So, this crazy wrongess lady (her term, not mine) challenged us all to step outside our tiny, terrified world of rightness and look at the vastness of the universe and say, “maybe I’m wrong.” And that will be OK.

Ten years from now, as we look back on TED2011, many of the theories and discoveries discussed this week will have been forgotten, but I hope this sentiment about the need to reach beyond our comfort zones to accept new ideas and people (including ourselves) in a new way will persist for decades to come.

~ Kimmie

TED2011: Deep Mystery

Last week was a busy week at GroundFloor Media as the team and some invited clients took to the Internet to watch the live webcast of TED2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder. The fourth session, Deep Mystery, was one of the more dense, mind bending sessions and as such it’s taken me a bit to make sense of what to write in this blog.

The session featured:
• Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist
• Felisa Wolfe-Simon, geobiochemist
• Aaron O’Connell, physicist
• Maya Beiser, cellist
• Deb Roy, cognitive scientist

While much of the science 101 was tough to absorb on just one cup of coffee (or five), I greatly appreciated the progression of the conversation, which loosely boiled down to the fact that we are all made up parts and that those parts have both physical and emotional elements that make up our selves. As individuals walking through this world, our selves are not just insulated beings, our environment regularly influences us – just bump us in one direction or heat us up slightly and we will change.

Layer a bit of human interaction onto all of this biology, physics and chemistry and you have the whole person – dynamic and ever changing, which is a good thing.

Case in point, Deb Roy’s young son had every move tracked for the first two years of his life by video surveillance cameras installed in every room of the home. The cameras captured his movements, but also recorded every word he heard and later spoke in his young life. The point? To track his language acquisition and identify patterns not only in how we learn language, but also in how information is communicated and shared.

Extrapolate this household experiment out to the conversations taking place daily via social media and the potential is extraordinary to identify what captures our collective attention and who cares. Roy and his team may have created the best social media monitoring tool ever!

The PR industry may not get our hands on it for a decade or more, but it’s exciting to understand what’s possible with new technology and how the work we are doing today mapping out conversations for our clients is a precursor to something much bigger in the future. A future that connects us all based on our passions and shared interests – with or without the coffee.

- Kimmie

TED: Beauty. Imagination. Enchantment.

When viewing TED2011 last night, these three words kept running through my head, and I realized when exposed to art, they all lead to one another, but not always in that order.

For two hours last night, I was simply enchanted by the artists who shared a brief insight to their imaginations by displaying the beauty they create. It was inspiring; especially to this fledging artist who found her passion for clay work a little later in life. Not enough room here to tell you all I took away, but here are a few thoughts.

Beatrice Coron, is a papercutter artist who found her calling at nearly 40. After walking on stage draped in the most beautiful cloak cut from a single piece of paper, I washooked. Fascinating me with the simplicity of a silhouette, I was left enchanted by the complexity of the stories she tells in one single strand of paper.

Sarah Kay took my breath away! She was lucky, finding her passion at the age of 14 and harnessing it to become a remarkable performance poet. Not only beautiful, her imagination is bursting from her core and she clearly knows how to look inside herself to discover what matters most. Now 22, she is wise beyond her years advising us to put the things we know to be true into the work we do. So honest and so enchanting.

Kate Hartman is a funny and thoughtful artist and technologist. She creates devices and interfaces for humans, houseplants and glaciers in a playful manner that questions the ways in which we relate and communicate. Her recommendation to discover the act of listening is simple, yet so underrated. I mean, we all have two ears and one mouth right?

I want to thank Shea Hembrey for the laughs. This artist and curator is immensely talented, brilliant and amusing. We should all live by his three H’s – putting Head, Heart, and Hands into our work. And I will always keep this thought in mind: if you can’t find what you like, create it yourself.

And to Jason Mraz – you are A-W-E-S-O-M-E! I didn’t think it was possible to adore you even more but “You #$*&ing did it!” Thanks for the anti-Sesame Street performance. I promise to be better at acknowledging others around me each day.

~ Wendy

TED: Threads of Discovery

Printers that can “print” human organs in less than 24 hours. Artistic sculptures that are as tall as skyscrapers but as soft and pliable as lace. Solving brain disorders like depression and epilepsy with light. Modular energy packets that reduce households’ energy usage at peak times. Using strands of silk to make everything from biodegradable cups to fiber optics.

Do such wild and fascinating things exist in our world?

Yes, or they will soon thanks to the brilliantly creative and dedicated minds of Fiorenzo Omenetto, Daniel Tammet, Janet Echelman, Ed Boyden, Christina Lampe-Onnerud, Steve Gullans and Anthony Atala—the featured speakers of the TED “Threads of Discovery” session I had the pleasure of listening to yesterday afternoon.

The overarching theme was so simple. What already exists, and may even be considered old, that you can reinvent to do something new? From strands of silk or handmade fishing nets from India, to the concept of a LEGO or our own organ cells, these TED speakers questioned conventional perceptions of items we are already aware of and discovered or invented something entirely new, and in some cases lifesaving.

Parts of the session were well over my head. I never excelled in math, so neuroscience hypotheses are lost on me. Yet TED brings it back to the practical, the understandable, and probably most important, the wondrous.

What is “old” in your life, or your profession, that you can challenge and make new tomorrow?

~Alexis

TED: Worlds Imagined

I tuned in for Session 5 of the TED2011 conference yesterday – Worlds Imagined. This was my first TED experience and what an amazing gig. Speakers included:

• Julie Taymor
• Morgan Spurlock
• Bill Ford
• Terrence McArdle + Ben Newhouse
• Indra Nooyi

I wish I could write about all the speakers, but three will have to suffice in this blog.

As a theater buff, I was thrilled to hear Julie Taymor, film, theater and opera director, speak about “being true to what you believe as an artist.” Her latest film is "The Tempest," with Helen Mirren. She's recently produced "The Magic Flute" at the Met, and created "The Lion King" and the new "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" on Broadway, which is a collaboration with U2’s Bono. She spoke about focusing on how the story is told, how the mechanics are just as important as telling the story, and how playing with a medium can change perspective. This will become my new motto for rolling out programs for clients.

Morgan Spurlock, who makes documentary films and TV programs that are personal, political, and, “above all, deeply empathetic,” walked us through his new film about the greatest brands ever sold. His crazy concept of having an entire movie promoting brands and trying to sell this concept to major corporations resonated with this communications professional. It was the smaller brands that decided to take the risk because, Spurlock says, “within that risk is opportunity.” A great reminder that sometimes we need to encourage our clients to not be afraid of taking risks.

On the new technology front, we were introduced to “Bubbles,” a magic window that takes a photo and allows you to swing around 360 degrees. Using a camera on a phone, Terrence McArdle + Ben Newhouse created this interface that blurs the distinction between the digital and the real. By “sharing space” you are able to relive the experience and have a memory surround you. For me, this was just as cool as a 3D chalk art painting that I always throw into brainstorms. Just think of taking your wedding photo, vacation photo, or even a weekend hiking trip picture and being able to swing it around to a 360 view.

And if you really want to be inspired by Worlds Imagined, check out the Let’s Colour Project video of a local community rolling up their sleeves to paint schools, streets, homes, and squares.

~ Amy Moynihan

Connected

Today marked the start of the TED2011 conference, and this year GroundFloor Media generously signed up for the live webcast of the entire conference to allow team members to audit sessions throughout the week. I am lucky number one – and just watched the opening session: Monumental, which featured a wide range of speakers from a physicist to a media executive to a composer. Their expertise was diverse, but the overarching message was the same – connectivity.

Favorite takeaways:

• Janna Levin, physicist: together in this tiny microcosm of time, scientists are working together to understand more about where our planet came from and where we're going. Did you know that black holes make noise when they collide?
  
• Sarah Marquis, explorer: Sarah is rediscovering the connection between humans and nature by walking the world. She starts each trek with questions in her left pocket, and hopes to answer them by the end of her journey. Follow Sarah on Twitter @sarah_marquis.
• David Brooks, New York Times columnist: maybe it's because I'm a new mom, but I loved David's message about the power of the unconscious mind, the importance of emotions and the importance of connecting with other humans. I'm interested to read David's latest book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement.
• Eric Whitacre, composter/conductor: I was blown away by Eric's Virtual Choir project. The connections he's made among people across the globe are extraordinary and brought tears to my eyes. Follow Eric on Twitter @ericwhitacre
• Wadah Khanfar, media executive: Wadah is the Director General of Al Jazeera and the timing of his presentation was remarkable, given current events in the Middle East. Wadah inspired me to think differently about what’s going on in that part of the world and his message of hope, tolerance, security and friendship inspired me. Amazing stuff.

GFM team members will be posting blogs related to the sessions throughout the week – but in the meantime, see below for the opening comments recorded by Cady Coleman who is currently on the International Space Station. I actually found myself clapping at the end of the opening session even though I was sitting alone in GFM's playroom! Remarkable the connections that can be made thanks to technology!

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

Keep Your Foot on the Gas

Last week, my inbox alert chimed not once, but twice, with a forwarded message about the recent TED talk by Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook. Yes, a woman is the number two behind Mark Zuckerberg – wow! I think many assume another youngish, Ivy League, tech-savvy male works side-by-side with the Time Magazine 2010 Person of the Year, when in fact it’s Sandberg, mother of two.

So, how does she do it – juggling the demands of one of the highest profile and fastest growing companies in the world with the responsibilities of family life?

This is precisely the reason why she was speaking as part of TEDWomen, which took place this past December in Washington, D.C. The event showcased an amazing number of accomplished women including Deborah Rhodes, who developed a new tool for breast cancer detection, and Beverly Joubert, who lived in the bush with her husband to capture stunning images and footage of lions and leopards in their natural habitat. One more time – WOW!

Sandberg mentions up front that she does not have all the answers, not even for herself, but she does offer up some startling statistics and follows up with three pieces of advice for women who wish to continue advancing their careers.

To begin, a statistic that we’ve often heard and hope isn’t correct – success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. The “witchy” executive woman stereotype is proven time and again in studies. Ugg! Also, only 15 percent of C-suite and board of director positions are held by woman, and the numbers have remained flat since 2003. Double ugg!

So how do we begin to move the needle in the right direction? Sandberg shared three recommendations. While she’s doubtful that the current generation of women will experience a significant shift in attitudes and advancement in the workplace, she’s hopeful that the next generation – including the new little girl who was born into the GroundFloor Media family earlier this month – will benefit from all of us thinking and acting a bit differently about our careers.

• First, she recommends that women “sit at the table.” All to often, we are comfortable taking a seat on the sidelines and that’s just not helpful for us to be regarded as the leaders and thoughtful contributors that we are.
• Second, she suggests, “make your partner a real partner,” referring to the need for women and men to share equally in the responsibilities at home. How can a woman with a full-time job be truly successful in her career if she’s doing more of the housework, childcare, etc.
• Third, Sandberg encourages women not to “leave before you leave.” All too often, she has experienced women who are opting out of promotions or big projects as they prepare for maternity leave or a transition out of the work place. She suggests keeping your “foot on the gas” up until the moment when you make the decision to take another path.

Sandberg shared a lot more detail along with these recommendations during her talk, and the importance of her points cannot be overstated. Personally, beginning the New Year and looking to my one-year anniversary with GFM, I feel both grateful and proud to have the opportunity to work and continue to grow in an organization that is bucking national statistics and making a comfortable place for all of us – both male and female – to be successful.

Next month, GFM is looking forward to TED2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder. The agency has planned to participate as a video member of the four-day event, Feb. 28 – Mar. 4, 2011, and we will be sharing highlights and lessons learned through viewing parties and blog entries.