Blog TEDGlobal
By Sam Martin - July 22, 2010
Six days after the curtains dropped on 2010’s TEDGlobal conference and I’m still sifting through the ideas heard and contacts made in Oxford. After a deep breathe, we now turn our attention to a special TED issue of design mind, one that will try to capture the spirit of the “And Now the Good News” theme, while also taking a deeper dive into some of the ideas we heard from the many interesting speakers.
Blog TEDGlobal
By Sam Martin - July 16, 2010
Is Julian Assange a troublemaker or hero?
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks just left the stage in Oxford, where he was interviewed by TED’s Chris Anderson. During the interview we saw footage of American helicopter soldiers shooting an unarmed group of men, among which included a Reuters photographer. The video was leaked to Assange from what he said was “a number of military whistleblowers” and published on the Internet. One question Anderson asked that I thought poignant: “Is Assange a dangerous troublemaker or a hero?” Most everyone in the audience raised their hand for the latter. Only a few for the former.
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - September 23, 2009
TED Curator Chris Anderson – who had 844,821…wait 844,833 followers the last time we looked – tweeted about it yesterday, and we’re thrilled that the word is now out about the new special TEDGlobal edition of our design mind magazine, “The Substance of Things Not Seen."
We officially unveiled the new issue on Monday with an intimate TED Salon ("More Substance of Things Not Seen") with 120 TEDsters and friends at the Unicorn Theater in London. Hosted by Bruno Giussani, TED’s European director, and Sam Martin, editor-in-chief of design mind, the evening featured three TED Talks.
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - September 21, 2009
Yep, today is the big day, and we’re thrilled to present our most ambitious and heftiest design mind magazine so far – and a very special one indeed. The new issue is devoted exclusively to the TEDGlobal 2009 conference (the twin conference of the annual TED conference in Long Beach) that took place this past July in Oxford, England, with the theme “The Substance of Things Not Seen.”
It is the first time a publication was invited to fully cover a TED conference: In collaboration with the TEDGlobal speakers and attendees, frog’s designers, technologists, and writers produced art, essays, and interviews that translate the conference’s theme into a rich magazine, trying to make visible “The Substance of Things Not Seen.”
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - September 17, 2009
Giddy. That’s the best word to describe the design mind editorial team as we gathered in London’s Paddington Station to take the train to Oxford this past July for the TEDGlobal conference. Jacob Zukerman, intrepid art director, Tim Leberecht, stalwart publisher, and yours truly, worried editor, were meeting Antonia Ward, our British guide and local wordsmith, at the statue of Paddington Bear (pronounced “bare” in American English and “bey-ah” in Antonia’s UK English — yes, we’d already given each other plenty of good-natured guff over our accents).
One might expect there to be a statue of Paddington Bear in Paddington Station — the bear has been a popular literary character for English kids for generations — though one cannot be sure why, other than the similarity in name. What one would not expect is for the bear to be so small and so tucked away behind a partition, divorced from the main concourse, almost hidden under the nearby escalator. Did the sculptor botch the job? Did Michael Bond, the man who created Paddington Bear in 1958, have a falling out with executives at London metro? And indeed why is Paddington Bear in Paddington Station? Could it really be as obvious as the name, or is there more to the story?
Such is the inquisitive mind of a reporter, which was exactly what I was there to do, what we were all there to do — to investigate all sides of the TEDGlobal conference, onstage and off, find speakers to interview, parties to attend, ideas to chew on, and friends to make. In short, we were there to take part in the very theme of the conference, “The Substance of Things Not Seen” — and then figure out a way to mash it up into words and pictures for the next issue of design mind.
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - July 28, 2009
The last speaker at TEDGlobal, Franciscan monk Brother Paulus Terwitte, described how at the previous night’s party he was having a conversation with another TED attendee that was suddenly interrupted when the other person’s cell phone rang, upon which he excused himself and left. Brother Paulus waited for a few minutes, “but he never came back.”
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - July 27, 2009
The frog team just returned from the TEDGlobal 2009 conference in Oxford, UK, and it was an exhaustively inspiring week. TED is like a boot camp for ideas: You’re seriously sleep-deprived, constantly over-stimulated, and both humbled and mesmerized by remarkable attendees who all share a belief that “the glass is half-full” (even in the UK…).
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - July 23, 2009
One of the main themes at TEDGlobal this year has been a lively debate between optimistic and pessimistic voices on the social potential (or doom) of the web. This outlook has been somewhat more somber than I expected at a TED conference, perhaps – as some attendees suspected – due to the cultural differences between Long Beach and Oxford. There is definitely a palpable sense of enlightened skepticism at the conference, a distinctly European tone that serves as welcome counterweight to the Californian brand of optimism that TED is often associated with (just read this amusingly British commentary in the Times of London).
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - July 23, 2009
There were three African speakers today on the TED stage who I thought carried the most touching, moving, and important stories to Oxford. Emmanuel Jal (pictured above) was a Sudanese soldier from age six to thirteen before being smuggled across the border into Kenya by an English aid worker, essentially saving his life. He then found music and began unraveling the deceit and rage of his childhood. His spoken word about the atrocities he witnessed struck a deep nerve with the crowd. Then he got up and danced — along with the entire auditorium.
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - July 23, 2009
Not only do you get to participate in some great conversations at TEDGlobal, you get to overhear some interesting ones too.
The other day I overhead someone saying ‘You see they wouldn’t re-use a blood bag but they do re-use syringes....’
