I’ll admit it, TED was just as interesting and thought-provoking as everyone said it would be. But perhaps most surprising of all was the realization that TED is not about the presentations - it’s about the conversations you have with people after the presentations. These chance inter-session discussions were stimulated and contextualized by the presentations, and that was a fantastic way to spend time with some really smart people.

For example, I met Ann-Marie after attending her 15 minute university presentation titled “How to make a robot swim like a jellyfish.” She and some other folks built various cylindrical pulsing systems and managed to achieve the desired result - an underwater drive system that does not shred the creatures it is being sent down to study. I still keep thinking of refinements and then discarding them as I work through the chain of consequences, but I have the intuitive sense that there is a simple way to increase the efficiency… and it doesn’t involve gluing a jellyfish to your robot.

Perhaps most importantly, she set me on the chain of thought that led me to decide to run this year’s sessions with recycled, reclaimed, and salvaged materials. A decision which has enervated my thinking about the upcoming sessions. This year is going to be the best ever!

I think Amy Smith is my new hero. She’s developing low-smoke cooking fuels for the Third World using the materials available in each community. It turns out that smoke inhalation is the leading cause of child mortality in those areas. She’s inventorying the available fuel sources and then fooling around (in a very scientific manner) with that stuff until she gets a recipie that works - it’s just amazing what some tinkering can accomplish.

Not every presentation was earth-shattering, but they all stirred up interesting discussions. If you ever have a chance to attend TED, then do it. I highly reccomend it.