Meet TED
A while back I did a strength assessment quiz based on the book by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton called Now, Discover Your Strengths. My top five strengths turned out to be:
- Maximizer
- Analytical
- Intellection
- Ideation
- Strategic
Put that all together and what’s that spell? G-E-E-K.
“Ideation” caught my attention, partly because I never thought about it that way, and partly because it rings so true:
You are fascinated by ideas. You are delighted when you discover beneath the complex surface an elegantly simple concept to explain why things are the way they are. You revel in takiing the world we all know and turning it around so we can view it from a strange but strangely enlightening angle. You love all these ideas because they are clarifying, because they are contrary, because they are bizarre. For all these reasons you derive a jolt of energy whenever a new idea occurs to you.
Based on this description, it’s no surprise that one of the coolest sites I’ve ever been turned onto is TED.com. TED features videos of the world’s greatest thinkers presenting their insights on just about everything – technology, science, nature, business, art. The array of selections is pretty mind-boggling.
Even if you don’t explore any further, check out these two:
Ken Robinson on how schools are killing creativity:
Linky to Ken Robinson video on TED.
Tony Robbins on why we do what we do:
Linky to Tony Robbins video on TED.
I’ve got more favorites if anyone’s interested. If you do decide to explore TED, let me know what you find – I’m always looking for more neat ideas.
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By the lone gunman, September 18, 2008 @ 10:00 am
Woah… Let the profoundness flow! I liked what that guy Ken had to say about education… at least up until the 8 minute mark… I hit pause… cuz I had to, like, you know, work… Then when I got back to it, they sent me back to the beginning. I couldn’t get back to the 8 minute mark… Any way for me to do that? Or do I have to watch the 1st 8 minutes again? …. Argh, which I might as well do, since I’m making so many typing errors… I might be approaching aboout 8 minutes worth…
By egeek, September 18, 2008 @ 11:40 am
The embedded video player has a pretty limited feature set. If you log onto TED, their videos have a lot more functionality (FF/RW, resize, etc). I’ll add direct links to the videos into the post.