Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Making Us Think

Seth Godin explains what he thinks makes the TED Conference so great:

Which brings us to TED, a conference held every year in Long Beach. It’s going on right now.

Watch a few TED videos and try to get ahead of the speaker. They have an idea…it’s probably a conceptual tricky idea, one with a lot of moving parts. And there is a lot of shorthand and arm waving … basically, it’s similar to a quadratic equation. If you need the other person to slow down and explain every little bit, you’ve missed the point. The point is to do abstract conceptual thought. To get in practice taking the accepted status quo and questioning it, at least for a little while, at least this or that part of it.

I think this is a skill, a rare one. The ability to be facile in the manipulation of ideas, both theoretical and established, is a valuable one, and I think the TED videos and art of reading books (at least the first ten minutes of each) are two great ways to getting better at manipulation of ideas. It takes practice, and it’s worth it.

I completely agree with Godin; it’s this “taking the world as it is and imagining a better future out of it” aspect of the conference that I love so much, and TED does this year after year with a stunning consistency.

Feb 14, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize Wish

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver took home the TED Prize for 2010. His message? We’re killing our kids with bad food, he said. Let’s change that.

“I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” – Jamie Oliver

More about the talk, with additional resources, over at Barking Robot.

Feb 14, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

TED Taken Over by Play

From KaBOOM! representatives, who are down in Long Beach right now at the TED Conference promoting their latest initiative – the Imagination Playground:

For the past two days, two sets of Imagination Playground blocks have been displayed in the plaza just outside of the main theater. Completely without context, conference attendees – ranging from business leaders to scientists to designers to actors to musicians – stopped to investigate the strange light blue structure that lay before them.

And then they started to play.

I’m happy to see smart adults getting into play, and KaBOOM! has always done great work at advocating for play. Still, I’m trying to bite my tongue about the Imagination Playground concept. It just doesn’t seem to quite get children’s play right: What KaBOOM! and the Rockwell Group have put together is an adult-designed, packaged, and ultimately commodified solution to play provision, when we don’t have to look far to find even better solutions that are inherently more sensitive and honoring of children and their communities.

But that’s a talk for another time.

Feb 12, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"Our Future Depends on Children's Books"

An interesting independent TEDxOttawa Talk from Mark Blevis, who looks at how the future is shaped by children’s books:

Much of what we become is shaped by the ideas we’re exposed to and the relationships of which we’re a part. The stronger those foundations are from childhood, the better equipped we are to understand the people with whom we interact and the world around us. Children’s books are the tools that help us open the door to a child’s natural curiosity, creativity and desire to connect, and are one of our strongest hopes for a great future.

Feb 01, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #