My TEDx Talk: Problem-Solving and Adaptation in a Digital World
Recently I was honored to give a TEDx Talk on creative problem-solving in a high-tech world.
Using examples from three different film projects, I talked about thinking on your feet, adapting to change, and improvising solutions—valuable skills in any era, especially our digital age. It’s not just about mastering the gear, I tell my students. It’s about releasing your creativity. The ability to acquire and propagate images with ease doesn’t make you a Spielberg, any more than learning to write turns you into Shakespeare. But creativity, inquisitiveness, and collaboration will never go out of style.
TEDx programs are independently organized TED-like events.
“TED … has become in recent years a showroom for the style of the digital age,” writes Nathan Heller in The New Yorker, “ … People who know TED these days frequently know it best from ‘TED Talks,’ a series of Internet lecture videos that has received more than eight hundred million views to date (That’s nearly two-thirds the number of movie tickets sold last year in all of North America). Yet its style and substance have begun to overtake other media, too. To feed a market for ‘ideas’ which it has helped create, the organization has launched an e-book imprint and an e-reader app to accompany it. You can watch TED lectures on your seat-back screen as you fly cross-country, or listen to excerpts in your car as they air on NPR.”
The venue for my talk was Mission San Jose High School in Fremont CA. Ten speakers were recruited to give 18-minute speeches that day, under the general theme of Synergy.
Text of my speech and more about TED and TEDx appear below.
Video of my talk was just posted on YouTube.
Watch it here:
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. (Subject to certain rules and regulations.)
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. At TED, the world’s leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com.
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