As the principal license holder for TEDxSBU, I had to attend a full blown TED event in order to raise our attendee and sponsorship caps at our own event. So – I went to TEDActive in Canada. TEDActive is kind of like a regular TED conference wrapped in a makerish package — but more than anything else, it’s a younger and far more of a social crowd. I, myself, am not all that terribly social – so that part was largely lost on me.  (Plus, I’m getting older – but let’s not go there.) Also, I’m not looking to network to find a new job and some of that was happening as well.

However, I did benefit from Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman being lured to the satellite location based on the promise of it being more fun – so WIN!

 

Some other things that I learned about TED…  one never goes to TED.com and then searches for a talk about juggling or magic tricks (at least I can’t imagine many people doing this sort of thing, without also picturing them piling out on mass from a VW bug while wearing funny shoes).  BUT IF YOU WERE TO DO SO…  you would find many talks, including some from these fellows who have been invited to TED 6 times now:

 

There were however the standard talks of “ideas worth spreading” and I certainly enjoyed those.  Some of them have been released into the wild now including:

 

and

 

I’ll post more of my favorites as they are released.