Closing Thought. Opening Mind.

Someone described TED as “somewhere between Davos and Burning Man”.

I haven’t been to either (too old to go to BM, not rich enough to go to Davos), but it's a good sound bite.

I feel extremely lucky and I feel incredibly grateful that I have the ability to indulge in an event like TED. I say indulge like it is a luxury, and it is, but it is also a necessity. As a leader of a creative organization, I am constantly working on “what’s possible” in terms of exploring creative marketing for our agency and clients. Going deep into an environment like TED is not only inspiring, but it is graphic and authentic evidence to keep pushing, pushing, pushing. A large part of creativity is mashing up influences and stimulus to create something new and cool and surprising. And at TED you get to witness, nay jam your skull full of, new and cool and surprising all week. Who wants to be merely a bystander to that?

As I mentioned earlier, my favorite part of the conference is the surprise talk, the one I didn’t expect anything from, the one that quite literally blows my mind. It may not be the most entertaining talk – for instance Sarah Kay is riveting performance theater – but it is the talk that (excuse the French here) fucks me up in a good way.

This year, I give The Talk That F’ed Dan Up In A Good Way to . . .

Deb Roy

Deb started with a simple idea – simply record both audio and video of every minute of daily life for five years. From that all sorts of crazy things came out of it. Speech development – how it is connected and informed by spatial influence – and how that eventually laddered to the thought that all televised content can be measured and illustrated with social media activity. This could have a major impact on marketing and advertising.

I’ve always thought a (significant) flaw with marketing research is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Which, to over-simplify, is the mere act of observing affects and/or changes the results. Calling people into focus groups environments and asking them to comment and reflect on content is a false construct to me – it only measures their behavior in situation that they know they are being observed, i.e., not reality. Whereas with social media chatter and activity -  as measured intensely as Deb Roy’s crew at MIT - we can, theoretically, get real-time behavioral response from content. The phone is the ubiquitous remote control to the world.

Now it’s time for a little thing I call: Questions I Want To Ask Myself If I Could Interview Myself. 

WOULD YOU GO BACK?

Yes. I’m curious to see what the Long Beach TED is like. Palm Springs has a great vibe and I love the people there. I mean, that’s the reason to go frankly, since you can eventually see the talk online. But TED takes on a depth and dimension that you can get lost in where you physically commit to it. It is exhausting and a couple times I get overwhelmed and just want to curl up with my wubbie, but I think an immersion into an event like this is worth it. 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

I would completely check out of work. I didn’t this time, nor last time, I feel it’s a disservice to both. I mean, if you’re gonna go, GO, right?

I would slow down. I worked on managing the haunting feeling that I had to participate in everything and go to every talk. It’s hard not to feel this way, because the one thing I have learned is that you get surprised when you least expect it at TED. And the more you open yourself to talks, events and people, the more you get out of it.

I would open myself even more to meeting people. This is the best reason to attend. And I will say that, at least in Palm Springs, the vibe and culture of the conference makes it easy to meet and engage with other people. It’s really up to you how much you want to do that. Obviously people are what make it what it is and the more chances you take reaching out, the more rewards you get.

OUTSIDE OF THE TALKS, WHAT DID YOU LIKE THE BEST?

I was invited to a dinner one of the nights that was “curated” (there’s that word again). In fact, it was called a “Jeffersonian Dinner”. What’s that you ask? Well, it is a dinner where the host puts forth a question and the rest of the dinner the guests grapple, expand, discuss and build on the topic. I think if you can assemble the right group chemistry, it made for a super cool dinner.

Our host put forth the question – “What is authentic leadership?” – a question that inspired a 90-minute conversation with full active participation from about 10 people. I would like to repeat a dinner like this – mind you with the right crowd and the right question.

WHAT DIDN’T YOU LIKE ABOUT TED?

Lack of sleep. Didn’t exercise. Plenty of healthy food options, but still made crappy choices.

Regret that I didn’t go out to the desert party on Thursday night.

Missed a couple talks due to work conflicts and/or travel schedule.

Also couple of the talks were disappointing. They felt like commercials and not TED talks (obviously I am not anti-commercial, but I am anti-self-serving-un-self-aware commercial). TED talks have high expectations and if a speaker takes a wrong step it can be painful. A couple of them did that. #fail.

HOW WILL YOU APPLY IT TO YOUR WORK LIFE AND PERSONAL LIFE?

 Well, one of the things we did at work was tap into the webcast and broadcast it on our creative floor. I can’t wait to get back and talk to my co-workers to see if they were able to watch any of the talks. I’ve been blogging the event with them in mind as my primary audience as a supplement to the webcast. I want to give them my personal POV on the talks and the conference. Obviously there is other coverage and analysis of TED out there, but I’m hoping, by knowing me, and my biases, they will get some texture and tone of the conference itself in addition to the content of the talks.

Also, I have been talking with the agency about creating famous work this year – what does that mean and how do we get there. I am outlining famous as Smart, Surprising and Social and I feel like it aligns with the TED “Ads worth Spreading” contest this year. They were looking for creative work that transcends advertising and becomes content that people want to share. I think that’s the goal for our agency, to create content that people like so much they interact with it and share it. Content that adds value to their lives in the form of smart and surprising information, entertainment, resource, knowledge – some form of relevant utility.

Personally, I can’t wait to share with my family and kids a couple of the talks when they come on line. Aaron O’Connor is just such a cool charismatic nerd that I can’t wait to show the kids (already riffed on this in an earlier post). And there are a bunch I want to share with my wife because she is into science, education, compassion and art. I guess I just can’t wait to “nerd out” with my family.

TED used to send out a DVD package of all the talks after the conference. I don’t think they are doing that any more. But that used to be our family movie night content. Make some popcorn, pop in a TED session. Good times. Now with the hub on line, we can just go there. God bless Apple TV.

HOW DO YOU FEEL APRES-TED?

 Good. Like I’ve said, it’s an overwhelming experience to sit and listen to intense performances and significant content. I do think there is a saturation point and TED can definitely drown you. But you have let go and just enjoy the drowning.

But I’m ready to come home. Just not ready to stop thinking big.

And, hallelujah, I won’t.

Muttering Hats and Printing Kidneys

I want to drink from a silk cup.

At least I do after Fiorenzo Omenetto’s talk about high–tech applications for nanostructured biomaterials. Or, basically, what can’t we do with silk?

In addition to making disposable cups that naturally biodegrade, Fiorenzo’s lab is working on silk that can dissolve in the body as well transmit light.

Janet Echelman’s fluid sculpture is beautiful. Enormous. Grand. And literally awe-inspiring. As she was walking on the beach some odd years ago, she came across fishing nets. Handcrafted. And she turned it into art. Or perhaps, re-framed it as art. I would love to have a sculpture of hers in Chicago. Over Lake Michigan. Please check out her portfolio.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins” is a quote Daniel Tammet used to illustrate his high functioning autistic savant syndrome – a syndrome where words have colors and numbers become paintings. I have often referenced Nabokov’s opening line from Lolita as one of my favorite lines of writing EVER- especially coming from a Russian writer writing in his third (or fourth?) learned language. The beauty, power, craft, fire, poetry and alliteration of that amazing sentence has stuck in mind and rings in my ears to this day. And Daniel’s mind sees the words from Lolita in purple (purple prose?) and pointed out that Nabokov had the same syndrome.

Then Anthony Atala printed out a kidney.

No shi*t.

Shea Hembrey is hilarious. As an artist he set off to curate a biennial with over 200 artists. The problem is/was corralling 200 artists would be painstaking. So he just constructed 200 fictional artists, complete with bios, and now the biennial is set to open later this year. As he walked us through about 20 of the works, my favorite “artist” in his group is a collective know as the Silver (Sober?) Dobermans. Their mission is to spread pragmatism across the world, one person at a time. And their installment is a barbed-wire fence with every single barb tagged with a “warning” flag. Still makes me lol.

I heart Kate Hartman.

She of the muttering hat and the go go gloves and glacier-embracing suit. She makes these super funny, almost Seussian articles of clothing that are interactive and primitive at the same time.

Quote that best sums up the spirit of the conference:

“We’re not here to protest global warming, we’re here to fix it.” By Christina Lampe-Onnerud. Exactly.

Sarah Kay came onto the stage like a power surge. She is simultaneously balls out and sweet and a super hardcore performance artist. She riffs these fantastical, confessionary poem-anthems that seriously rocked my world. And her performance is not to be missed. It’s so much fun to witness someone who seems like they are intensely wired. She was a sparkling presence.

JR made a live appearance in Palm Springs. The dude is well, just super cool. He’s got an inspirational vibe, great clothes and an awesome accent. And he appears so comfortable and approachable that it’s charismatic. He took a bunch of questions from the audience, talked more in depth about his project and just hung out. He is such a great example of how following your muse truly can set you free. He didn’t have to prepare a talk, he can just talk. Because he has a meaningful project and thus, meaningful work.

Beauty, imagination, enchantment. My favorite session of the conference.

Delocalized and Radically Collaborating

Aaron O'Connell is a rock star geek. Seriously. He refuses to believe that we are limited to the cliche either/or of Right Brained (intuitive) or Left-Brained (logical).  We are both, or most specifically he is a both - or the bigger thought, that it is not a binary choice. And due to his flexing and utilizing of both aspects - intuition and logic - he has been inspired to a career as an Experimental Quantum Physicist. He is funny, super cool, super smart and telegenic.

I can't wait for my kids, all kids really, to see his TED video. Just to have other images and notions of aspiration than to be on the cast of Jersey Shore. And his idea, and his passion, really captured my attention today. He is convinced (and convincing) that rules and laws of quantum mechanics (the very very very small things) apply to more than just quarks, atoms and molecules. For instance, he has been able to logically prove that a particle can be in two places at once ( a term know as "delocalized") and that if we can prove this in the quantum space, we can achieve it in our  physical space. Perhaps I connected with the "delocalization" idea, since I would like to be at a TED AND at home with family AND at the creative lab that is my office. At the same time. I would like to delocalize.

Today's theme was/is Radical Collaboration. Another notion I can passionately embrace. I think the myth of the Lone Ranger creative soul is exactly that - a myth. Leo Burnett's famous quote about the "lonely man at the typewriter" is as outdated as the technology referenced in the quote. Yes, we need individuals that spend time alone, incubating and thinking deep, but we need to be aggressive at collaboration. Collaboration is not a passive, namby-pamby "no bad ideas" activity. It is a highly-energetic, full contact, tenacious, dynamic practice and process. We need smart, ambitious people from different points of view, getting together, sharing, pushing, pulling, banging on ideas and interacting. It's the most Human thing we can do.

Ok, whew. Getting a little riled up here. Overstimulated and over-caffeinated.

One of the things that is happening this year, the first year, is "Ads Worth Spreading", in fact I was part of a lunch today that was chasing down the question - "what makes a Ad worth spreading?" which quickly turned into "what is an ad?" two questions we grapple with everyday. I think what is interesting and important here, is that a community like TED, where bio-chemists and experimental quantum physicists give talks about plankton and quarks (not at the same time), a question about advertising and marketing, and the future thereof, and taking the subject seriously, if not critically, is cool. Cool mainly because it's on my mind 24/7, most of my waking time for sure.

Two little films shared are the following (ad worth sharing in my pov):

Intel, "the chase" and "Strindberg goes to the beach". Watch. This is content. Not even branded content, just INTERESTING content on the subject of a brand.

But there's more.

Deb Roy gave, so far, my absolute favorite talk at TED.

He "filmed" with audio/video cameras in every room of his house, his family life for 5 years. He captured his new born son through all aspects of development from walking to speech. I can't possibly capture the magic of his research here, other than to say it ladder into a scientific method that can measure and visually graph engagement on any pieced of televised content and how much social energy it generates. It is exciting, to me, because it scientifically validates that we have to generate content that causes reaction and/or interaction or it is a waste of money. And as I have ranted before, TV is interactive now. All reality is augmented. And all media is social. We all carry little handheld feedback machines.

JR is the 2011 TED prize winner. He is amazing. He announced the formation of a site which the beginning of a global art project.

From the site the "Inside Out Project site:
INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Upload a portrait. Receive a poster. Paste it for the world to see.


Other highlights today include Indra Nooyi talking about "Refresh University"; Morgan Spurlock previews his upcoming movie "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" and Bill Ford pushing his company forward to help mitigate "Global Gridlock" - creating a smart car network to have our cars "collaborate" with each other in real time to reduce gridlock.


Now that's radical.

From BEDhead to TEDhead, Session One.

"Unbuckle your safety belts . . ."

That was the opening charge from Chris Anderson.

First a hello from Cady Coleman from the space station . . .

Then physicist Janna Levin played the sounds of the universe: the ringing songs of a massive star collapsing upon itself into a black hole. This is how it ends, not with a bang, but with an ever increasing tempo of thwack thwack thwack . . . but Janna wants to render the audio of the Big Bang, capture the original sound bouncing through our universe unveiling the we are perhaps just a branch off a Multiverse.

Too hippie for you, perhaps?

Well, it was all quickly brought back down to earth, quite literally, by Sarah Marquis who called in from a remote camp sight in rural China, en route HIKING from Siberia to Australia. yes, I said HIKING.

Then things started getting interesting.

David Brooks came on and discussed New Humanism.  And he said a lot of smart things.

Like how Politicians suffer from Logorrhea Dementia - they talk so much they drive themselves nuts.

And how he has seen these Politicians at work in the flesh - they have uber-social skills; the most adept and socially aware people on the planet. And yet they/we have failed to translate this talent into policy.

We rule and guide and decide by reason where emotion is really at the center of all our decision making.

That we understand that our unconscious and subconscious do the dirty work of making decisions and the conscious mind simply makes the bed.

This, was a powerful talk. So much so, it elicited and inspired some to give a standing ovation. Which, further inspired a discussion around what deserves a standing O?

Next up was Eric Whitacre who has developed the Virtual Choir. He previewed his Virtual Choir 2.0 which debuts this April. 2,000 people participated. There is nothing virtual about it.

To conclude the first session: Wadah Khanfar of Al Jazeera talking about the end of corrupt regime and the rise of people in the mideast. The role of journalism and social media ending the regime's ability to deceive.

And then we had lunch.

Food Trucks & Parking Lots: images from TEDActive Night One

Random Thoughts And Deep Thinking Out Here In The Desert On The Eve of TED.

CAVEAT #1: I AM ATTENDING TEDActive IN PALM SPRINGS, NOT TED LONG BEACH. I USE THE TERM "TED" AS SIMPLE SHORTHAND BECAUSE, FRANKLY, IT'S EASIER TO TYPE AND IT GETS TIRESOME TO CONSTANTLY DELINEATE BETWEEN THE TWO LOCATIONS IN TERMS OF EXPLANATION SINCE MOST OF THE SPEAKERS ON THE PROGRAM ARE THE SAME, SO ASSUME TEDActive FROM NOW ON.


CAVEAT #2: THIS BLOG WAS/IS INTENDED TO BE A SHORT TERM SNAPSHOT CHRONICLING MY EXPERIENCES, OBSERVATIONS, MUSINGS, INSPIRATIONS, AGGRAVATIONS, ETC AT TED 2011 (SEE CAVEAT #1). HOWEVER, AS I AM PRONE TO TANGENTIAL FLIGHTS OF MENTAL FANCY THAT DON'T ALWAYS STICK TO THE SCRIPT - AT LEAST NOT OVERTLY - THIS IS ONE OF THOSE TYPE POSTS.


Here are some random, small world things that may/may not be related to attending TED that I would like to get to in this post:


- Weirdly, the IAB Leadership Conference is happening here in Palm Springs at the same time as TED.
- They are discussing copy testing at said conference.
- There is a Newsweek Article about Chicago - "America's Hottest City".
- Rahm Emmanuel and Dan Sinker.


First, Palm Springs may or may not be your first idea of a digital-techno destination mecca hotbed, in fact, besides being the youngest person on the plane (and I'm not young, mind you) en route, I mostly think of Palm Springs in terms of that Entourage episode where Team Vince all bivouacked out to the desert to gobble 'Shrooms and seek the answer of whether Vince should appear in the Benjie movie in Season 5.


Maybe perhaps it's the ideal place to seek some answers.


Well, the IAB is wrestling with a doozy of a question, and I quote (actually copy & pasted from their site):


" . . . as they address head-on two non-intersecting conversations taking place right now in the digital industry:

• the belief that marketing success derives solely from expertise in data gathering and analytics
• the belief that marketing success derives entirely from creativity, context and content.

Quite simply, is the future of marketing a question of man versus machine?"

Wow. That's pretty heavy stuff. Very-TED like question. Maybe WATSON will show up with some answers? I actually would like to go hear some of this, but I have a TED to attend!! In fact, in a half hour there is a Kickoff celebration - a Food Truck Party in the Parking Lot (hey, I like all those things - food, trucks, parking lots and parties - hoping the gestalt/combination makes for a good time tonight).


I guess I'm curious about the IAB's/ANA/4A's pov on the above questions, digital metrics and how it affects OR is affected by creativity. I will be following that one. My very very very superficial reaction to copy testing digital campaigns is, no surprise, not happy. I guess, again without knowing the details here, isn't the internet one giant testing machine? Doesn't it already measure behavior? Isn't that the beauty of an interactive system? Instant and prolonged feedback?


Hmmm . . .


So Newsweek is proclaiming that Chicago is now hip. And goes into deep detail about why. Makes my head spin a little bit when a publication like Newsweek uses the term "hip". Kinda makes me uncomfortable. Like when Phil Dunphy explained "wtf" on Modern Family. Anyway the positive attention for the city is nice. I did think Rahm getting the nod as Mayor would help the image of the city in terms of the coasts. Speaking of Rahm . . .


So Dan Sinker has been outed as the man behind @MayorEmanuel, maybe one of the funnest/funniest fake twitter accounts since @BPGlobalPr. Though, I must say, I did find Dan's portrayal as the f-bomb dropping Chicago Mayoral candidate hilarious conceptually, the joke got a little old in the constant barrage of tweets. So I liked the idea a whole bunch, SERIOUSLY, it's once I got the joke I almost didn't need to see the tweet(s). I know I will be alone in that sentiment.


NONETHELESS . .  here's the small world thing. We had Dan speak at one of our Energy BBDO Salons, which (watch this) is modeled at least in spirit to a TED Talk, where he talked about "side projects" (it was a very cool talk) where Dan talked about the importance of having creative side projects (I can't do the talk justice here) and how that's how he gets to new and different ideas. Evidently @MayorEmmanuel was one of the side project he was brewing up when he came to see us last year. And I love the description of Dan in the linked Atlantic profile: "The genius behind @MayorEmanuel is Dan Sinker, who has a heart made out of Chicago and balls of punk rock. "

See that? TED>IAB>Chicago>Mayor>Questions<The Desert>Answers.


Maybe not so random after all . . . 

Of Course The Flight To TEDActive Has Wifi

CAVEAT: ONE FINGERED TYPING ON AN AIRPLANE THERE WILL BE TYPOS. JUST LETTING YOU KNOW. OK? OK THEN.

En route and up in the air. With inflight wireless, I feel contextually obligated to post.

Excited for tomorrow with David Brooks and Homaro Cantu of Chicago's own Moto on the sked.

These are the familiar ones to me, but one of the best parts of the experience is the surprise talk.

The one talk from a person with a background I don't connect with and a topic that doesn't (on the surface) seem to catch my ADHD-addled interest.

One year it was a from a woman who crocheted a reef (I think).

Often, these have been the most inspiring talks. So that gets me excited when I look over the program and don't recognize a speaker.

It also causes me stress. Like a hyper conference nerd, I am always haunted by the fear that I might miss The Most Important Thing or Talk or Experience. So I try to get to it all. Like a cram to gulp it all down.

Which makes me glad all will be re-broadcast on the site later.

Another stressor is simply the amount of content to input in a day. As a professional creative person, I am always absorbing and storing ideas, language, images, impressions, faces, moments, flashes on mental hard drive for, hopefully, a productive output later at a relevant time. But the sheer amount of input over the next couple days always comes close to frying the noggin. Plus I have curb my enthusiasm "to make something" out of all the input. I'm a compulsive creative soul . . . I need to output as much as I need to collect fodder. Look, before you feel too sorry for me, I know that these are not big problems/issues in the scheme of all things, believe me.

One of the arguments to attend TED in either Palm Springs or Long Beach in person, analog-style is to mingle (connect, network, expand, socialize, whatever) with the other attendees.
My last TED, I didn't capitalize on that aspect of the conference as I much as i wanted to/want to this time. Those of you who know me, know that I am quite easy going, easy to talk to, but yet, you know, though the conference is set up to make it comftable to connect, a little social awkwardness always creeps into these things.

Anyway, this will be the last of the pre-TED musings. About to transition to real time observations.

Stay tuned.