Lara visits the recent TEDxGreatWall
A range of pundits, from trend forecasters and futurists to authors and spiritualists – even devotees of the Mayan calendar – will tell you that we’re in the throes of a paradigm shift. In this contemporary age, they say, we’re transitioning from a ‘Power Age’ to a ‘Conceptual Age.’
It’s a convincing theory; easily documented through a range of cultural moments. The dominance and infallibility of large institutions and social structures is on the wane (think: banks, corporations and The Church, for instance), and in their place we’re seeing more ‘highly evolved’ concepts arise; a stronger ethical position, the emergence of a so-called “Creative Class” and terms like the ‘Knowledge Economy.’
Enter the extraordinary TED concept, and it’s “independently organized“ satellite program, TEDx – two platforms which are arguably at the leading edge of this flux, both as symbol and as player. At the core of each is a series of Big Ideas, and spreading them is what TED is all about.
“TED allows you to dramatically expand your vision,” says Lara Stein, Director of Licensing at the TED office in New York. “You get to hear from people outside your line of day-to-day work, who have expertise in an area you know nothing about.”
It’s alive, it’s vital, and it transmits to create a certain evolution in society, says Lara.
Lara has just returned from a marathon trip which took her to TEDxGreatWall, -Sydney and -Tokyo. Exhausted but enthralled, she summarizes the appeal thus:
“[At TEDx], for a moment, you can dream of what could be; how different life could be.”
A TEDster for many years, Lara was asked several years ago by TED founder Chris Anderson to join the team for a project. Today, that work has evolved into launching the TEDx program, the ‘open source’ version of the TED concept which in March this year celebrated its first birthday.
The program has a bold vision and Lara’s focus is on growing the community and infrastructure globally. With over 500+ dynamic TEDx events planned for this year, each TEDx event is considered a prototype of what could be.
“There’s more than one answer to the TEDx direction,” Lara says. “It’s about communities driving what happens with the program. I can steer it but a lot of the initiative comes from these incredible TEDx organizers across the globe.”
All that’s fine, says Lara, because “we want it to be driven by local communities; that’s what makes it relevant.”
In recent weeks the TEDx concept has morphed fantastic to bring insight to breaking stories – TEDxVolcano, for example, and just this past weekend – and ever-relevant – there have been whispers on the formation of a TEDxOilSpill.
Lara describes events like TEDxSydney and TEDxAmsterdam as “hugely ambitious; they meet a need in the community,” but equally valid, she adds, is “an event in a shanty town community, like TEDxKibera.”
The story of TEDxShekhavati, in India, is particularly poignant. With the tagline “Idea Revolution,” it was clearly too much for some. The tale highlights not just the determination of local organizers, but the danger that ideas can represent.
Event organizer Masarat Daud faced continued and mounting obstacles in the local community in the lead-up to her event. At the last minute, access to the venue, a local school, was denied by the head of the community.
“I am so sick of this backward thinking, so so sick of it,” writes Marsarat angrily in her blog.
Masarat Daud: sick of backward thinking.
Lara responds with equanimity. “Societies all over are oppressed by regimes threatened by ideas,” she says. “I believe that most problems in the world are caused by [nothing more than] people’s inabilities to see things from another perspective.”
“I grew up in South Africa and we didn’t have a TV until I was 8 years old – the regime wanted to keep the masses uneducated.”
Not to mention women with ideas – a hot button if ever there was one.
Thankfully, the situation confronting Masarat spurred her more than ever. She soon found another venue, hurriedly placing signs around the village so that nobody would miss out.
“Nine hundred people showed up,” says Lara. “It’s remarkable that the event happened at all, and I know that everybody went on a journey that night that they have probably never been on before.”
The good news is that you don’t have to travel far to access the many great TED and TEDx stories. It’s TED policy to share, and spread under creative commons license. “Ideas should be free,” says Lara. “That’s why it was so important to us to have everything online, free for the world to see.”
New talks are being uploaded every week, and more Big ideas and grand designs will be on show this November 30th in Amsterdam.
Video: TEDx around the world
Facebook
Twitter
Youtube
Flickr
Hyves