Reliving favorite moments from #TED2014 via the @TEDTalks weekly newsletter…

On the bottom right of TED.com is a little subscription widget that invites, “Sign up for our daily or weekly emails to receive notifications whenever new talks are published.” It’s so worth it.

I was privileged to attend TEDActive two months ago. It was the 30th anniversary of TED (TED = Technology Education Design) and their first annual event in Canada, so I knew it would be special. I’m still deconstructing all that I experienced and learned while there, and the weekly email updates I receive from TED is a lovely push to listen anew to awesome people sharing their passions. I’m still awaiting news of more uploaded talks from TED2014 including those from Sara Lewis, David Kwong, Moshe Safdie, and many others. Plus, AJ Jacobs and Ben Fry spoke live at TEDActive, and it would be great to be able to watch and share the videos from their talks too…

Here’s a sampling of some of my favorites from TED2014:

Sarah Jones: What does the future hold? 11 characters offer quirky answers

Mark Ronson: The exhilarating creativity of remixing

Chris Hadfield:What I learned from going blind in space

Randall Munroe: Comics that ask “what if?”

Ziauddin Yousafzai: My daughter, Malala

Del Harvey: The strangeness of scale at Twitter

Ed Yong: Suicidal crickets, zombie roaches and other parasite tales

Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance

Lawrence Lessig: The unstoppable walk to political reform (Larry spoke at TEDxNYED in 2010!)

Amanda Burden: How public spaces make cities work

Larry Page: Where’s Google going next?

5 social media lessons from @EbertChicago via @sree:

@Sree offered an hour’s worth of tips and talking points at his @Teach21c keynote this afternoon. His full slidedeck is here: http://bit.ly/sreeteach21

He floored and honored me with a personal shout out. I invited him to speak at @TEDxNYED 2012 because he’s awesome and I wanted him to share his message about social media and education from the TEDxNYED stage. Well, he announced today that he will be assuming the role of Chief Digital Officer at @MetMuseum, and the video of his TEDxNYED talk had been an influential part of his portfolio. As my friend Sharon Clearly (@cleary1066) would say, “That’s bananas!” (The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKkeS8gpndM)

Among many notes and quotes I wrote down, he summarized an article he wrote about Roger Ebert and what Ebert brought to the social media table:

1. Be interesting in real life.
2. Great content gets you great followers.
3. Be humble.
4. Engage with others.
5. Social media has changes the role of expertise.

(Full article on @CNETnews at http://bit.ly/sreebert)

Finally, here is Sree’s social media success formula. Your tweets, statuses, updates, posts should have as many of the following attributes as possible:
Helpful
Useful
Timely
Informative
Relevant
Practical
Actionable
Generous
Credible
Brief
Entertaining
Fun
Occasionally funny

(More at http://bit.ly/sreetips)

Making time to watch all the archived videos from #TEDxNYED 2012

Click the bottom of the player window above to navigate between TEDxNYED speakers or click below to watch specific talks from:

Jenny Buccos (@goodglobalcitiz)

Jose Vilson (@TheJLV)

Juliette LaMontagne (@jlamontagne)

Jim Groom (@jimgroom)

Sree Sreenivasan (@sree)

Jaimie Cloud (@cloudinstitute)

Chris Emdin (@chrisemdin)

Adam Bellow (@adambellow)

Sophie Altchek (@sophiealtchek)

Tony Wagner (@drtonywagner)

Bre Pettis (@bre)

Patrick Honner (@MrHonner)

Frank Noschese (@fnoschese)

Jaymes Dec (@jaymesdec)

I finally have time to watch the TEDxNYED 2012 videos! I was too busy running around backstage (and all over the Museum of the Moving Image) on the day of the actual event to witness any of the live talks. Recently, our production team from True Life Media (@truelifemedia) uploaded the edited videos to a TEDxNYED YouTube playlist on the TEDxTalks channel. Now that the school year is winding down, I have available pockets of time to watch the talks. Baruch Hashem.

Looking back, April 28th was probably one of the most stressful days of my recent history. Still, even with all the anxiety (and figurative/literal blood, sweat, tears), it was gratifying when volunteers generously showed up on Friday and Saturday for much needed assistance, speakers enthusiastically thanked us, attendees waved aside the glitches, and when people shared positive and thoughtful tweets and blog posts.

These last few years, I’ve learned a lot about how to organize, delegate, and negotiate, and the process has changed me. I clearly have a ways to go, and I greatly appreciate everyone that has been a part of my development – most recently, this year’s batch of TEDxNYED co-organizers including Basil Kolani (@bkolani), Kiersten Jennings Chou (@choutofu), Tammy McKenna (@tmck76), and Matthew Moran (@matthewpmoran).

Many thanks need to belatedly go to:

Homa Tavangar (@growingupglobal) for hosting the event

The Horace Mann School (@HMschool) and The Dwight School (@thedwightschool) for their incredibly generous support

Flik Independent School Dining (@FlikISDining) for partnering with us and providing healthy food all day long

Museum of the Moving Image (@MovingImageNYC) for their glorious theater and helpful staff including B.G. Hacker (Director of Events) and Chris Wisniewski (Deputy Director for Education )

WhippleHill (@whipplehill) for their organizational support

Livestream (@livestream) for streaming the event

True Life Media (@truelifemedia) for all their hard work streaming, filming, editing the videos of our talks

Teq (@TeqPD) and The School at Columbia University (@The_School) for their support

AppBaker (@appbaker) for the awesome TEDxNYED app

Wayne K. Lin (@wayneklin) for his awesome photos of TEDxNYED

Clare Anderton for helping us design the program and nametags

Tabitha, Akio, Dong, Zoe, Milagros, Lautaro, and the high school students from Horace Mann and Dwight (apologies if I missed anyone…) for their generous volunteerism

5th graders at @The_School are “outsourcing” their Greek 3-D temple designs!

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There’s an awesome project happening in two of the 5th grade classrooms at The School at Columbia University right now. To supplement their study of Ancient Greece, Dena Rothstein and Heather Lortie, are having their students collaborate with students from The Marymount School across Central Park on the Upper East Side. (The School is located on the Upper West Side…) Both groups are designing 3D Greek temples using Tinkercad and sharing their online files with a group at the other school to tweak, customize, and ultimately build (“print”) in our 3D printers. The humor of us being able to say that we are literally outsourcing to the East is not lost on us.

Teachers supporting this collaboration at The School are Heather, Dena, Greg Benedis-Grab (@gbenedisgrab), and Don Buckley (@donbuckley) with a lot of support from Cristina Martinez (@finlaycm) and a little support from me. On the UES of the park, Jaymes Dec (@jaymesdec) and Lesa Wang oversee Marymount’s particpation in the project. Jaymes designed the new Fab Lab at Marymount, and he just spoke at TEDxNYED last month.

Today, the groups communicated “long distance” and “real time” using Google Video Chat. (Cristina Martinez turned on the Chat feature for students just for this project and just for a few days. Usually, this feature is disabled.) I moved about checking on all of the groups. At one point, I observed four kids (two in front of me and two on the screen) discuss their designs and even use a secondary laptop facing the camera to visibly demonstrate how to use Tinkercad to make a triangular hole to decorate the roof of a temple. I thought that was awesome. 🙂

See the full gallery on Posterous