The 18 June 2012 WiTT meeting featured talks from TED, a non-profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. All of the talks are available to view or download for free from the TED website, at TED.com.
TED started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.
The two annual TED conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh, Scotland, bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less).
The WiTT event drew on talks from the annual TED conferences, as well as TEDxWomen and other TEDx events. Here are the talks we watched on the evening:
We started the evening watching high-tech magician’s Marco Tempest’s talk, The magic of truth and lies (and iPods):
http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_the_magic_of_truth_and_lies_on_ipods.html
We then screened a few short presentations that we considered to be tech, but not as we WiTT members generally know it: Lucy McRae, who transforms the human body; Ayah Bdeir, who has created open source electronic building blocks; Aparna Rao, who creates amusing high-tech art; and Suzanne Lee, who grows her own clothes. Suzanne was able to join us, and to answer a few questions about her efforts. The links for these talks are here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lucy_mcrae_how_can_technology_transform_the_human_body.html?awesm=on.ted.com_McRae&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=on.ted.com-static&utm_source=t.co&utm_content=awesm-publisher
http://www.ted.com/talks/ayah_bdeir_building_blocks_that_blink_beep_and_teach.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/suzanne_lee_grow_your_own_clothes.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/aparna_rao_high_tech_art_with_a_sense_of_humor.html
We were then inspired by the three teen-age female winners of the Google Science Fair, and by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon who talked about her own journey, and about women entrepreneurs she’d encountered along the way. Here are the links:
http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/10/award-winning-teen-age-science-in-action-video-on-ted-com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/gayle_tzemach_lemmon_women_entrepreneurs_example_not_exception.html
And we finished the evening with Nellie McKay singing “Mother of Pearl” (with the immortal first line, “Feminists don’t have a sense of humor”) from her set at TED2008. Here’s the link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/nellie_mckay_sings_feminists_and_if_i_had_you.html
We plan to repeat our special viewing of TED talks about women and technology next year. We hope to see you there!
