Have you heard of the TED Conference and videos? If you haven’t, go check out www.ted.com: you’ll be in for a treat!
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and is a conference which has run in the States for many years, and now costs about $4,000 to attend. It’s always sold out. At the conference some of the best minds in the world come to talk about creativity, the future of education, how the mind works, why we buy what we do, how we make decisions, how to motivate ourselves and others, and much much more.
Each talk is between 7 and 18 minutes. No longer.
More than 900 of these talks are now online and millions of people around the world have watched them: they’re very entertaining, informative and inspiring. The videos have had 600 million views so far!
About 2 years ago TED decided to allow TEDx events to take place around the world. These are independent TED events. But they have to follow certain guidelines including that no talk can last more than 18 minutes.
In May 2011 a guy called Sajjad Kamal and I were the co-hosts for TEDxAlAin.
Below are 2 versions of the video of my talk…
Here’s the YouTube version…
…and here is another version which is a third of the file-size so will load faster if the YouTube video takes too long to load…
[jwplayer mediaid=”1876″]
(Go to this page if you want to find out how I got involved with this conference.)
Go here to find a few other short videos I’ve created.
A second TEDxAlAin took place in April 2012.
If you want to ensure you get a place at a future event, register at the TEDxAlAin website early. Keep an eye out too in the local Al Ain monthly magazine, Oasis Living, which did 2 great articles on TEDxAlAin 2011.
There have also been…
- 3 TEDx-related conferences in Dubai
- one in Abu Dhabi (TEDxAbuDhabiU) at the University
- one in Muscat
- one in Ajman
The last 3 in that list took part in April or May 2011. All were within driving distance of Al Ain, and all were free to attend, and featured inspiring talks.
Sajjad and I attended TEDxAbuDhabiU which was great, and next year’s event will be even better, I’m sure!
Do comment on my TEDx talk below, or on the YouTube site, if you have a minute to spare…