Kevin Chesters writes:

Just back from an amazing week at the TED2011 conference.

It is the third year that I have been lucky enough to attend and this was the best yet. Try and imagine having your brain fed with interesting and fascinating stuff like a cross between a fois gras goose and A Clockwork Orange. It is thought-provoking, entertaining, slightly scary and amazing in equal measures.

I’ll be converting the sixty or so talks into a presentation for the whole agency. In time all the content will be available at www.ted.com but it will be a while before all the content is uploaded. There were so many highlights from the main stage but the stand-out talks to watch out for over the coming months, in my humble opinion, were/are:

Eric Whitacre (Composer): Talking through the youtube choir project where he auditioned, created and edited an entire performance of his piece ““Lux Arumque” using nothing but youtube and Facebook. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs. Incredible. And he premiered his new piece “Sleep” created from 2051 videos from 58 different countries.

Thomas Heatherwick (Architect) talked through his inspiration and various international projects he’s been involved in – especially the Shanghai Expo space.

Homaro Cantu (Visionary Chef) took us through his “flavour transformation” creations where he tries to create sensations and experiences with food whilst attempting to reduce environmental impact – tuna made from watermelon, and hamburgers made just from what you FEED to cows were highlights. Oh, and creating chips from muesli bars. And ketchup from health smoothies.

Felissa Wolfe-Simon (Geobiochemist) gave a fascinating talk on reframing our opinions on what are the conditions needed for the creation of ‘life’ based on a new microbe they have discovered in Mono Lake, California that uses ARSENIC(!) to live. Implications for the presence of “life” on other planets.

David Christian (Historian): Has developed a syllabus to teach history from the Big Bang to the present day. Brilliant, inspirational and very entertaining. Worth watching.

Wael Ghonim joined via video from Cairo to talk through the amazing events in Egypt over the last month and his POV on them. He was the google guy whose facebook page is credited with starting the events over there. Pretty amazing bloke with the key message “the power of the people is greater than the people in power”. His talk is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/wael_ghonim_inside_the_egyptian_revolution.html

Deb Roy (Cognitive scientist) gave the standout talk of day 1 where he showed how dynamically linking his whole home to video (90,000 hours, connected in 360 detail) over five years taught him the patterns and science of how a child learns to speak. Great implications for social media tracking too.

Salman Khan (educator) talked through the creation of the Khan University that started with him uploading simple 12 minute videos to youtube to help his cousins learn maths! It is now over 2200 tutorials, downloaded 100,000 times per day and over 35m Khan academy lessons have been delivered.

The 2011 TED Prize went to artist JR, who took the audience through some of his amazing visual art projects from across the globe. This talk is already available online and well worth watching. http://www.ted.com/talks/jr_s_ted_prize_wish_use_art_to_turn_the_world_inside_out.html

Daniel Tammet (autistic savant) gave a moving and very memorable talk through the way he visualises numbers and letters as shapes and colours. Fascinating stuff – and hard not to listen with respect to a guy who can recite pi for 5 hours from memory (22,000 places…)

Shay Hembrey gave (in my opinion) the most memorable talk of the four days (certainly the funniest) when he talked through how he has curated a 100 artist gallery show in the USA. He did it by inventing 100 totally fictional artists complete with back-story and styles, but did every single piece himself! This has to be seen to be believed (watch out for “Dig Jigs”)

Jack Horner (Dinosaur guy) debunked the myths of Jurassic Park but showed us how it is possible to engineer a dinosaur by reverse engineering a chicken. I know it sounds ridiculous but the Chicken-o-saurus is just around the corner apparently.

Day 3 saw some of the more wondrous and amazing inventions that are now becoming commercially available. These included:

Sebastian Thrun (Google) taking us through the car that drives itself. This was available to test “drive” at TED. It is real, it is here and it already drives on US roads. This theme continued with Dennis Hong (from Virginia Tech) who took through the car they’ve designed that can be physically driven by the blind using non-visual interfaces.

Eythor Bendor from Berkeley Bionic wowed everyone by showing us through the new exo-skeleton technology that allows the paralysed to walk. And then a lady who’d been paralysed for 20 years walked on stage to prove it. Amazing.

Finally, Anthony Atala (surgeon) printed a kidney on stage. True. The technology exists to load a printer with stem cells instead of ink and prit human organs. It’s real and it’s happening now. This talk is already up on TED.com. Enjoy: http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html

There were loads more highlights. Far too many to mention, but these were just some of the talks that stood out for me. Can’t wait for next year. Now off to convert two books worth of notes into something useful for the agency. Might take a while…

Kev.