TED Talk #8: Richard St. Johns 8 Secrets of Success

To begin the video, the speaker gave meaning to why he chose to speak about the topic: "What leads to success"?  He explains that on a trip to a previous TED convention, he met a poor, high school girl on a plane who asked him the exact question.  In his quest to answer this question, St. John interviewed over 500 successful people over a span of seven years and came up with some points. Here are his 8 points:

1. Passion
2. Work
3. Good (be good at what you do)
4. Focus
5. Push (pushing oneself)
6. Serve
7. Ideas
8. Persist

With all of these points made, the speaker gave subtle back up to each one along with humor to help people really understand what he was talking about.  Another thing that I thought was clever was that he used quotes from famous people that directly tied into the subject thast also made it easier to grasp on to.  Overall, I thought the speech was very thoughtful and well-planned.  He did a very good job of keeping his thoughts clear and concise as to not bore the audience.  I also liked the structure of the video.  He made his focus easier to understand with his clear-cut ideas and I think that that is an importantthing to consider for my TED project.  The techniques the speaker used in the video were subtle humor and clear ideas that one should have to be successful.

TED Talk #7: Adora Svitak

When the video first started, I was very surprised to see a kid standing on the stage starting to deliver her message. I have to admit that there was some prejudice in me at first in tems of me thinking that this video was going to be unprofessional.  The message that was impressed upon me was quite the oppoite, though.

The first thing that Svitak did was very clever.  She used ugly-seeming things and events (sometimes humerous i.e. George Bush) that adults are responsible for and the good things (Anne Frank and other good actions by children) that children are responsible for to prove the word childish can be obscelete.  With this, Svitak makes the point that the word childish, a word associated with age discrimination and irrational thinking, should be abolished. After this, she did something that I thought was interesting.  She brought up the point some of the irrational thinking that children can produce could be important for the world.  To put this in context, she explains that the same grand ideas in children and adults are easier for children to see happening because they are not hampered by the idea that "it's impossible" or "it costs too much".  She also brought up another point of how education can hamper ones dreams for the future.  For example, a child might have the aspiration that no one go hungry but an adult may see how this has failed in the past and dismiss the idea.  A major point that Svitak brought up after this is how she thinks that learning should be reciprical through teacher and student but the reality is that, right now, it doesn't work due to a lack of trust.  An example given is that she thinks that some rules could be made by both kids and adults if the trust is there.  To finish off her speech, Svitak makes the point that progress happens through generations building upon eachother.  For this reason, she says, it is imperative that adults give children the opportunities to make new strives and "blow them away".  Throughout the video, Svitak was very organized and precise with her speaking.  This let her drive her point home with efficiency.  Another thing that I noticed was that she built in time for the audience to react to statements.  I was blown away by that aspect because  that tactic is used by the best of speakers (Star Jones) and she completed it to perfection.  Overall, this video was very impacting upon me.  I don't know whether it was the comfortablity of a child giving the speech or the way it was given that did such a good job on making an impact upon me.

TED Talk #6: Dave Eggers

To begin the speech, the speaker introduces the topic of the necesity of one on one attention for students when there is no way for each teacher to do this.  I noticed as he was introducing this that he was very loose and casual with his posture and speech.  To try to solve this problem, the speaker and some other people took an open store and converted it to a publishing/tudoring/retail store named 826 Valencia.

To get the rent to support the store, the front room was converted into a pirate shop with items such as peg legs eye patches and replacement eye balls.  I thought this was a very good idea because from my point of view, I would rather walk into a tudoring store with pirate goodies than a very formal office space with tudors.  With this store, children could come in after school and get help from writers, editors, and authors serving as tudor.  With the children doing their homework at the store with the converted tudors, it provides a gap between television and other activities that the speaker says is important to not combine homework with.  The store also lets students write stories to possibly put in stories.  They found that the motivation of kids to get their stories in books can help them get interested in learning.  One thing that I thought was interesting is how the idea of a joint tudoring/retail store can spred from San Franciso all the way to Brooklyn, NY with the similar idea of a retail store with goodies (i.e. superhero item store). 

To wrap up the speech, the speaker talks about how we need to share our ideas with the world and get things out there as what we think could make a large impact.  Overall, I thought that Eggers had an excellent message.  I loved how he used creativity to bring together children and the writing community together for a good purpose of teaching students.  The use of hand gestures were good because, for some reason, it helped tie me in to the speech.  With that said, I wish that he would have been more fluid with his talking as he was spastic in his talking and very choppy with his message.

TED Talk #5: Pete Alcorn on the world in 2200

In the video, the speaker talks about the belief that in 150 years, the world's population will hit a summit (around 10 billion people) and then start to decrease.  In his speech, he talks about how this decrease in population will impact society.  In the beginning, Alcorn shows the U.N.'s graph of the populations in the regions of the world from 1950 to present/projected future.  It's obvious to see that the populations in all regions of the world are steadily climbing.  While he is talking about the increase in population, he also talks about how ugly thin can come out of it.  To show this, he uses a picture of an orange growing mold.

After this he starts talking of the positive changes that will come from the eventual decrease in the world's population.  One of these postive outcomes, he explains, is the aspect of scrace labor because of the fewer amount of people.  The reason that this is a positive is because scarce labor drives wages upwards.  An example of this that he used was of the die off of people in the black death (he also explains that this isn't the type of drop in population that people are eluding to).  He explains how after its occurance, there were higher wages, land reform, technological innovations, the birth of the middle class and finally forward looking social movements.  The last thing that Alcorn says is that with this eventual decrease in population, people will start romanticizing the future again (before this he talked about how many times people romanticize the past and even all three western religions are rooted in the past).  To conclude his speech, Alcorn explains that powerful people will fear for the future, which could lead them into rash decisions.  His overall message was that a positive outlook on future events can help avoid bad decicion-making.  The one major technique that ALcorn used in his speech was that of putting differnent ideas out on the table and end up bringing them back together in a climax at the end.  Usually I wouldn't like that technique (i.e Clay Shirky video) but in this case I found it interesting throughout the speech and he proved his point well upon me.

TED Talk #4 Clay Shirky

In the beginning, the speaker talks a company named Ushahidi which started to map things in Kenya which has expanded into being a global company mapping things such as snowplowing in Boston to the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.  Ushahidi is an open source project which allows people to give information about important events via mobile phone.  This concept is very interesting to me and I think it is very cool.   I like that it gives people who have experienced an event to map things out.  Overall I see this as a revolution in news tracking nd mapping places.  I also think that ideas like this should be used in education as it could be a fun way to learn about events and see what happened while still teaching kids the importance of the event.
  He also explains how the dumbest possible act of creativity is still an act of creativity such as wall cats (wall cats are humerous pictures of animals with funny captions beside them detailing what they are doing).
 In the speech, he also links Ushahidi and wall cats by explaining that they are both designs and creative.  He also explains how these designs differ from eachother.  In the speech, he describes the wall cats as being of communal value (created by the participants for the participants; more important ideas not likely to come from it) and the Ushahidi company as being of civic value (created by the participants for the whole society; could make an impact on society). Another main idea was how the implication of what would seem to be a punishment can actually make a problem worse.  When a fine was put in place for parents picking their kids up from daycare, the number of late arrivals skyrocketed.  Even when the fine was revoked, the number of late arrivals stayed the same because the previous culture had been broken and not returned to.  To end the speech, the speaker poses the idea that people can take the 365 days in a year to choose to create things with civic value which, in the end, could be the thing that helps change the world.  Overall, I did not enjoy the speaker was presenting things. It was very hard for me to follow and it seemed as if his points were close to being random.  I wish he would have used story in his speech because it could have given me something to grasp and compare to my life.  I also wish that his points would have been easier to follow because, in the end I though he had a great message but it was very jumbled and hard to impress upon people.

TED Talk #3: Daniel Pink

To begin the speech, Pink uses humerous talk to draw his audience into the speech.  I find that many people who are displaying an idea through speech tend to do this as it gives the audience an easy thing to grab on to at the beginning.  One of the main ideas in Pink's speech is that of the "If, Then, Reward" type of motivation.  He explains that these kinds of incentive-laiden tasks eliminate creativity.  He also talks about how many  businesses and tasks in the U.S. are based off that idea while countries like China work much differently.  With that said, Pink also talks about studies of amounts of incentive.  In a study, he says, people doing a task  with a higher incentive than others performed worse than those with less of an incentive.  I find that interesting because of the contradiction made.  It also shows that people aren't always motivated by compensation (there is more to people than worldly greed).  In watching this video, it makes me realize how humans work with creativity.  When some kind of task is put in place with an incentive on the other side, it eliminates the aspect of creativity that is important to solving problems.  For example, the Candle experiment shows that those using their normal creativity to solve the problem were much more successful than those who were using analytical thinking for the purpose of obtaining the incentive.   In conclusion, from watching the speech, Pink has conviced me that rewards should not be offered for things like school, work etc. because humans work better when they use creativity instead of analytical thinking to try to get the reward.

TED Talk #2 (Shai Agassi's Bold Plan For Electric Cars)

First of all, the reason that I chose this video is because I am interested in the actions of the auto industry becasue my father works for Chrysler Corporation, therefore, I am naturally interested in issues surrounding his job.  In listeneing to the speaker talk, he used a few dynamics in obtaining th attention of the audience.  First off, he surrounded his speach with  issues that are prominent in our society.  One of those issues is that of using oil in cars and how prices are affecting life.  This issue is especially important in American society as the majority of the population has cars and pays for gas.  The other issue that he brought up is that of the polution that petrolium is responsable for and how we should convert to using "clean" energy.  In the video, the speaker shows how electric cars could be a true reality if we take the steps to make it happen.  One quote I enjoyed from the video was when the speaker was talking about JFK and said, "One of the Reasons why he is remembered is because he said 'We're gonna send a man to the moon and we'll do it by the end of the decade'.  He didn't say ' We're gonna send a man about 20 percent to the moon and there wil be about a 20 percent chance we recover him'".  When hearing this quote, it made me think that although he was talking about the specific topic of the integration of electric cars, he also had a hidden message of needing to make something happen instead of having something else happen instead.  The last thing I have to say about the video is of the speaker's presentation style.  In the speech, the speaker was very organized with backup facts and statistics.  From what I saw, this was a very left-brain type of speech.  What is interesting to me is that I am a right-brainer (60%-40%) but this left-brained type of presentation was very easy for me to watch and listen to.  This shows me that there is always a way for people to take things away from topics whether it is given in a left-brained or right-brained way.

TED Talk Response #1

The main idea that Sir Ken Robinson is relaying is how all people are naturally creative, but most of them "grow out of it".  He also says how humans need to embrace the creativity of the human mind as it could help lead people away from destructive activities. Throughout the video, the speaker used humor and subtle jokes to keep the audience engaged in the speech.  By doing this, the speaker made the speech enjoyable to listen to, therefore helping prove his point in a more efficient way.  Another way the speaker proves his point well is through the use of personal experience.  He uses many occurances in his life that solidify his point along with facts and research.  By using these instances, it gives the audience something to relate to in their lives, therefore, adding strength to his ideas.  Another important factor in the effectiveness of his speech was how it flowed.  He had excellent transitions from thought to thought which also made it easier to stay attached to.