I don't know how many of you'll know about TED , http://www.ted.com. Its a unique event that happens every year in California where a bunch of smart people are invited to present their ideas ; "Ideas Worth Spreading" its called. Anyway its become a kind of cultish thing. The talks themselves are generally prettty good, though on a wide range of topics so that they might not interest everyone. They archive the talks at their site, releasing a new one every day. Nandan Nilekani spoke there this year.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/themes/top_10_tedtalks.html might be a good beginning point, Top 10 talks. I haven't seen all of them yet, but here's one that's really cool:
I and Priya were at a similiar event in Bangalore called "Beautiful Minds" this weekend . The list of speakers is up here (http://www.beautifulminds.co.in/who.htm) . It was pretty good ! Not a lot of better ways to spend a Saturday than listen to a bunch of smart committed people talking about their passions. I think it would be excellent if a lot more of these happened in India, since life tends to be pretty humdrum otherwise (!) and offer relatively little intellectual stimulation or exposure to new ideas. Huge bonus was the location, Our Native Village, an eco-resort. They had *great* organic food for lunch. And it was all free.
2 comments:
The graphical stuff - I found annoying really. Flash but no cash. I like the beauty of ideas not the drivel of moving circles and colors.
I would politely disagree (unlike the normal case with you, where I would disagree with a great deal of irritation and vigour). Its incredibly powerful particularly as a teaching tool, to be able to show so much data in a few short seconds, and to be able to extract the really high level trends out of it.
For a guy who (last I remember) follows stupid (American) football games with enthusiasm: to complain when someone is able to invest boring reams of data with some of the same energy and excitement of a sports contest; is hypocritical, no ?
Vijay
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