Actually, TED isn’t a who at all, it is a what — an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED’s proper name is “TED: Ideas Worth Spreading.”
Like this article? Sign up to receive our weekly news blasts here.The tagline is correct — the spreading of ideas is really what TED is all about.
What started out as an annual conference that brought together people from the fields of technology, entertainment and design has now broadened to two annual conferences, a website that offers on-demand access to talks and presentations and a community program that creates global exposure — all with the focus of spreading ideas. As a writer and trade journalist, I feel I need to be objective in reporting the phenomenon these conferences, talks and online videos represent.
But as an addict, there is not even the slightest hope of objectivity.
These are some of the world’s greatest thinkers speaking on some of the most critical and interesting topics of our time, delivering their most powerful ideas most of the time in twenty minutes or less!
PAGE 2
Fifty of the best and brightest minds in the world forced to share their most important ideas in less than twenty minutes, competing with 49 other brilliant and thought-provoking mavens, early innovators, futurists and change-agents, all focused on leaving their audiences with just enough information to change lives and start cultural and intellectual revolutions!
My son got me hooked on TEDTalks (www.TED.com) earlier this year during a presentation he brought to last year’s Automotive Service and Repair Week. The presentation was on engaging Gen Y, and the concept that captured my interest and imagination came out of a live TED simulcast. It was so powerful that it compelled me to find the website that night so I could experience the online video it came from for myself. The nature of the presentation and the abbreviated format was all it took to keep me coming back for more. Now, I find myself visiting the site every week and the ideas I’ve been exposed to have forced me to look at my world in a host of new and different ways.
I’m not going to lie. Anything that forces you to confront and then challenge your assumptions — the paradigms that give structure to your very existence — is uncomfortable if not downright terrifying. But, I can tell you from personal experience it is every bit as exciting as it can be difficult!
I share this with you now because I just finished watching three different TED presentations, each one more challenging and profound than the one before, and couldn’t help processing each of them in terms of our industry and the relationships we share.
You see, the purpose to TED is to share and spread thoughts and ideas, and they appear to be doing very well. However, what happens next is ultimately up to those of us who knowingly and willingly place themselves in the wake of their contamination field.
You and I find ourselves trying to live and manage our businesses in times of great and profound change. And yet, the changes I’ve witnessed and experienced both as a participant and an observer in this industry have been incremental at best.
PAGE 3
We’re still talking about the critical need to attract and retain more and better-qualified technicians. We still argue about information availability and Right to Repair. We’re still debating whether or not we can even bring up the subject of licensing technicians; issues of training and education; a minimum, nationally accepted curricula; how, or even if, we should support aftermarket-related educational programs in high school, community college or, perhaps, even within our universities; and, white-box parts and the swirling controversy of price, quality, fit and finish that trails after the flood of inexpensive parts presently flowing into the country.
We still appear to be fighting the same battles that were being fought 46 years ago when I entered the industry, and we’re still losing.
TED is all about new, fresh ideas. It’s about energy and the challenges that come from confronting new, unlikely, difficult, uncomfortable and impossible. It’s about prying the top of your head open and just pouring in every new idea, every innovative concept that will fit and then doing something with all those new ideas, all that new knowledge.
I can’t promise you that TED and TED alone is the answer we’ve all been looking for. I won’t suggest it’s all we need or that just by exposing yourself to TED’s staccato attack on everything you know and believe, you’re guaranteed to change the way you think. What I can promise you is that this industry will never change until we demand that it changes. It will never change unless we want it to change. And, it won’t change unless somebody changes it.
And that someone is us — it’s you and me.
TED is as good as any place I know to challenge what you know; and, as far as I can tell, the very change we seek cannot take root until your current reality and all that you know and believe is challenged.
Actually, TED isn’t a who at all, it is a what — an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED’s proper name is “TED: Ideas Worth Spreading.”
Like this article? Sign up to receive our weekly news blasts here.The tagline is correct — the spreading of ideas is really what TED is all about.
What started out as an annual conference that brought together people from the fields of technology, entertainment and design has now broadened to two annual conferences, a website that offers on-demand access to talks and presentations and a community program that creates global exposure — all with the focus of spreading ideas. As a writer and trade journalist, I feel I need to be objective in reporting the phenomenon these conferences, talks and online videos represent.
But as an addict, there is not even the slightest hope of objectivity.
These are some of the world’s greatest thinkers speaking on some of the most critical and interesting topics of our time, delivering their most powerful ideas most of the time in twenty minutes or less!
PAGE 2
Fifty of the best and brightest minds in the world forced to share their most important ideas in less than twenty minutes, competing with 49 other brilliant and thought-provoking mavens, early innovators, futurists and change-agents, all focused on leaving their audiences with just enough information to change lives and start cultural and intellectual revolutions!
My son got me hooked on TEDTalks (www.TED.com) earlier this year during a presentation he brought to last year’s Automotive Service and Repair Week. The presentation was on engaging Gen Y, and the concept that captured my interest and imagination came out of a live TED simulcast. It was so powerful that it compelled me to find the website that night so I could experience the online video it came from for myself. The nature of the presentation and the abbreviated format was all it took to keep me coming back for more. Now, I find myself visiting the site every week and the ideas I’ve been exposed to have forced me to look at my world in a host of new and different ways.
I’m not going to lie. Anything that forces you to confront and then challenge your assumptions — the paradigms that give structure to your very existence — is uncomfortable if not downright terrifying. But, I can tell you from personal experience it is every bit as exciting as it can be difficult!
I share this with you now because I just finished watching three different TED presentations, each one more challenging and profound than the one before, and couldn’t help processing each of them in terms of our industry and the relationships we share.
You see, the purpose to TED is to share and spread thoughts and ideas, and they appear to be doing very well. However, what happens next is ultimately up to those of us who knowingly and willingly place themselves in the wake of their contamination field.
You and I find ourselves trying to live and manage our businesses in times of great and profound change. And yet, the changes I’ve witnessed and experienced both as a participant and an observer in this industry have been incremental at best.
PAGE 3
We’re still talking about the critical need to attract and retain more and better-qualified technicians. We still argue about information availability and Right to Repair. We’re still debating whether or not we can even bring up the subject of licensing technicians; issues of training and education; a minimum, nationally accepted curricula; how, or even if, we should support aftermarket-related educational programs in high school, community college or, perhaps, even within our universities; and, white-box parts and the swirling controversy of price, quality, fit and finish that trails after the flood of inexpensive parts presently flowing into the country.
We still appear to be fighting the same battles that were being fought 46 years ago when I entered the industry, and we’re still losing.
TED is all about new, fresh ideas. It’s about energy and the challenges that come from confronting new, unlikely, difficult, uncomfortable and impossible. It’s about prying the top of your head open and just pouring in every new idea, every innovative concept that will fit and then doing something with all those new ideas, all that new knowledge.
I can’t promise you that TED and TED alone is the answer we’ve all been looking for. I won’t suggest it’s all we need or that just by exposing yourself to TED’s staccato attack on everything you know and believe, you’re guaranteed to change the way you think. What I can promise you is that this industry will never change until we demand that it changes. It will never change unless we want it to change. And, it won’t change unless somebody changes it.
And that someone is us — it’s you and me.
TED is as good as any place I know to challenge what you know; and, as far as I can tell, the very change we seek cannot take root until your current reality and all that you know and believe is challenged.
