TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

Every year, hundreds of the greatest thinkers and changers on the planet, by invitation only, come together for no other reason than to exchange their great ideas. Scientists, philosophers, designers, artists, musicians, technologists--all kinds of people at the cuffs of their fields have been meeting together for years without me even knowing about it! Are you kidding me?! I just couldn't believe it. Learning about this was like someone finally telling me about Christmas.

The event I'm referring to is called TED. What used to be strictly for Technology, Entertainment, and Design has now branched out into countless other venues.

The attendees are given 18 minutes to give a presentation, or TED talk, and the results are always astounding. This event is letting people in a community of genius and action, who would never have otherwise gotten a chance to meet, hear cross-disciplinary ideas from one another and make real change and help others.

But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Chase, this is nice and all, but I'm not one of the greatest thinkers and doers on the planet yet. What about me? Why can't I hear these talks? I still have great ideas and potential to change the world!" Well, if you're not thinking that, you definitely should be. And here's great news for you!

TED as an event might be invitation only, but the thoughts are for everyone. On TED.com, you can watch over 150 Ted Talks online, together covering almost every subject imaginable. God, poverty, technology, philosophy, design, globe warming, peace, love. It's all there!

Think about how great it would be to listen just for a little while to one of the guys who discovered the double helical structure of DNA, or sit down for a spell and chat with Richard Dawkins, famous atheist, or Paster Rick Warren, author of A Purpose Driven Life. Al Gore was there, too. He gave his PowerPoint to the TEDsters before we ever saw it as An Inconvenient Truth. Watch incredible performances! See the ways you always thought be shaken by a brilliant presentation!

I'm extremely excited about this concept and have been so for months! In the end, though, what makes these talks so important may not be that they are so brilliant, though many of them are. The important thing to me is what it represents. I hope that we as humans can learn to listen to new ideas from all kinds of sources and use them as the lumber for our own revolutions, innovations, and change. TED.com is a great source of intriguing ideas, but there are other's too. You're a source, for instance, and so am I. The way we make change is by acknowledging new ideas, pondering them, evaluating them, and finally--and most necessarily--acting upon them. This, I believe, is how the world really changes.

The man below sings a multi-lingual jig with many African languages worked in, and even a little English! It's one of my favorites: