TED’s Excellent Adventure

By Neal 

One of the favorite elements of my RSS feed in recent weeks has been the TEDblog, a website associated with the annual conference on technology, entertainment, and design where major players like Al Gore and Tony Robbins rub shoulders with people like Julia Sweeney and Bronx activist Majora Carter. The main reason I’ve been digging it so much—and the reason I’m recommending it to people in the publishing game—is that they’ve been posting a series of “TEDTalks,” audio and video podcasts that open up the private conference so we can all benefit from the ideas being shared and maybe learn something about how to transform our lives, our industries, and the world around us. The talks are short (usually about 20 minutes), but always provocative. In one case, deliberately so, as atheistic philosopher Daniel Dennett tries to poke holes in the argument of fellow attendee Rick Warren. The blog also features a book club with picks like The Long Tail and Stumbling Towards Happiness, plus a few other posts in the WorldChanging vein.