| Speaker |
Category |
Quick Thoughts |
| Hans Rosling |
Global Health, Wealth and Statistics |
Got me into TED Talks. Useful data in a way you’ve never thought about before. |
| Larry Brilliant |
Health, Preventing Epidemics |
A way to prevent epidemics by crawling the web, looking for patterns |
| Ken Robinson |
Education, Creativity |
Creativity is more important that memorization. Ability to reason, not repeat. |
| Bjorn Lomborg |
Economics, GlobalWarming, Solving Global Issues |
Created a top 10 list of problems and rated them by how much benefit would come from spending 10 million on them. Not to be trusted on global warming (he does not really believe in Global Warming or severe environmental dangers in general), but the basic premise is genius. |
| Ashraf Ghani |
Afganistan, Aid vs Investment, Aid in 3rd world countries |
An angry, frustrated man with good observations- (1) Aid in terms of raw donations is not as good as capitalist investment, (2)tariffs strangle 3rd world countries, (3)cotton cannot compete with opium but a t-shirt can, and (4)the textiles industry could save afghans |
| Sasa Vucinic |
Free press, Socially Concious Investing |
A brilliant idea at the end of the talk: create an investment bond market that not only measures the profitability of a company but its magnitude of good works done. Just like a stock market these bonds for charities could be traded and sold. These bonds could be rated for their ’social value’ like stocks are rated by Morningstar for financial value. |
| Jacqueline Novogratz |
Socially Concious Investing, Non-profit, Ending Poverty |
The whole premise is one I consider fundamental to solving poverty- how do we enable the poor to help themselves and make the problem confrontable. It is not a question of motivation but of tools- they lack the tools, we must find a way to self-sustainably provide tools from themselves to themselves with only small seed investments to get the process started. |
| Iqbal Quadir |
Socially Concious Investing, Microlending, Ending Poverty |
Co-founder of GrameenPhone providing cell phones in poor, rural areas. This company was so successful the cell phone companies changed their business model to match, but GrameenPhone did it to help the poor, not get wealthy. The poor are a resource, not a burden. By giving them opportunity they become more productive and enrich themselves. |
| Malcolm Gladwell |
Business, marketing |
A chipper speaker with an interesting point- people want certain “categories” of things, rather than a gradient of something. IE., the various types of spaghetti sauce for the people would like chunky, creamy, smooth etc. You cannot mix categories, types of sauce, without ruining all of them. In marketing you need to find the categories of things people like, and cater to a specific need rather than a boring (or detestable) mix of all of them. A good contrast to Dan Gilbert’s talk on the cost of too many choices. |
| Jimmy Wales |
Wikipedia, open networking, Internet |
This is what the internet is all about, and why the internet is a good thing. Wikipedia is an amazing project, more so because the stated goal is to help man in general with open knowledge, not simply create wealth via a dot-com. |
| Nicholas Negroponte |
One Laptop per Child, Education, |
Aside from Wikipedia.org the best thing that has ever happened to education for children around the world. They are producing a very cheap laptop (approaching $100) that will be given to children around the world. I just bought my own XO laptop from them and donated one to a child in the developing world. |
| Tony Robbins |
Motivation, Social Responsibility |
A speaker legendary for his motivational ability. The main points that resonated with me: (1) you are cause (no excuses) and you can make it happen, and (2)it’s simply more fun to help others and more rewarding than acting for yourself alone. |
| Anna Deavere Smith |
Performance |
The actress transforms herself in and out of character as she embodies an author, a convict, a Korean merchant in Los Angeles after the 1992 riots, and finally a rodeo bull rider. The monologues are drawn verbatim from interviews she conducted. |