The last 3-4 days of mine have been spent in immersing myself into an experience called TED. As you may have noticed we had blogged about the fact that we would be at TED and shall be covering the same. So lots of people tweeted about TEDIndia and many blogged as well. The reason Ive waited till the event got over was because I didn’t want to blog about each talk individually but about TEDIndia as an event as a whole.
In my last 3 years and more of blogging experience Ive attended over 50 events (atleast) and each of them have left me richer in knowledge or in insight. But none of them have ever moved me to tears or made me go in deep thought or made me proud to be Indian all in the matter of days.
TED which stands of Technology, Entertainment and Design is far more than that. TEDIndia infact was more a reflection of what are the grave issues in India and the brilliance and the fallacy of India rather than being specific to Technology, Entertainment and Design.
So here is my humble attempt at summarizing or being more artistic “painting” my experience of TEDIndia via words in this post and more to follow.
Pre Event – 3rd Nov – In the bus from Bangalore to Mysore
Even before I reached Mysore I knew that TEDIndia would be a different experience. This is because as I entered into the bus from Bangalore Airport to Mysore Campus of Infosys I met people as diverse an American born Pakistani woman working in healthcare in Tajikistan a place near afghanistan, A cancer expert from USA who researches on cancer, An Indian startup entrepreneur in the field of education in Hyderabad and a Data Analyst from British Standards. All of these people and more travelling with me to attend Ted. This eclectic mix told me that this would unlike anything ive attended or seen in India.
4th Nov – TED university talks
Ted university talks were 3-6 minute talks given by experts (known as professors) in different fields ranging from micro-finance to entrepreneurs working with weavers in east africa to brain specialists talking about mirror neurons i,e. how our brains react to what we see and how we can feel what we seen even though its not happening to us.
Ted university talks were short and each one gave an insight into a field that most likely you woudn’t have any clue about.
Again I found the talks to be extremely diverse yet engaging. These were not exactly Technology, entertainment and design oriented but were engaging and insighful nonetheless.
5th Nov – Day 1 TEDIndia
Day 1 and Session 1 Fast Forward was kicked off by the now famous Hans Rosling the swedish professor who became popular after his now famous ted talk. He used the same graphs that he had used in his earlier talks but he made a new prediction. He predicted exactly when would the average per capita income of Indians would match that of the western world i.e. US and UK. His prediction was 27th July, 2048. He also warned though that this is provided there are no wars or climate aspects that affect India.
The second talk was by Chief Belief Officer of Future Group Mr.DevDutt Patnaik who told the story of Alexandra and A Monk and their subjective truth. Alexandra’s subjective truth was about growth, progress, winning and conquering the world as the way to achieve happiness while the monk thought that nothingness was life and hence striving to achieve was pointless. The difference in the way Alexandra and the monk’s thinking about life was in the fact that Alexandra thought we live one and one life only and hence we should make the most of it while the monk thought the we lived many lives and what we did not learn in one we would in the other. This contradiction of the subjective truth is what separates the Indians from the west. While Indians work it out and don’t stress on processes the west cannot function without processes. Where Indians are emotional the west is practical.
In the second session titled Not Business as usual Tony Hsieh the founder of Zappos.com spoke on the key to happiness as being a higher purpose. He said companies needed to focus on purpose rather than profits to do well. He also said that culture played a key role in company even more than processes did.
Harsha Bhogle the famous Indian cricket commentator spoke on how Small changes make a Big Impact. His talk was centred around the rise of 2020 cricket and its global impact on the sport of cricket.
From a technology point of view the 3rd Session of TEDIndia called Wonder Wonders was probably the best as Sixth Sense founder Pranav Mistry enthralled the audiences with a peek on what he called the sixth sense of the future. Check the pictures below:
Sixth Sense uses a camera and gesture recognition technology to turn any surface into a screen and to use your fingers to interact between the real and the virtual world. Amazing stuff if you ask me. Pranav Mistry also stated that he would be making this technology available as open source and his idea was to change the lives of poor people in India via this rather than cater to the rich.
While tech may have enthralled the audiences the highlight of the day was definitely Usha Uthup and her multi lingual singing. The stage was soon filled with folks who started dancing to her tunes. It was a breathtaking performance.
All in all Day 1 set the bar for what was to follow in day 2 and 3. The real value of an event like this is realised when it leads to action and thats exactly what happened in day2. More details on Day 2 in the next post.
SixthSense is awesome…