The TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) community just released its 2011 Ads Worth Spreading contest winners, and the ads are more super than the ones I saw for the Super Bowl! But what did you expect from a brilliant group who’s moniker is “Ideas Worth Spreading”? Here are the ads below, in no particular order.
The ads tend to be longer than the Super Bowl ones, where time is so expensive, though the Chrysler Born of Fire and Volkswagen’s The Force are both here. Hey, the cream does rise to the top no matter where you put it. But you know, if ads were this good, I wouldn’t care how long they went on. They’d be better than most things I’d ever find on television!
Some of these ads are also not widely seen, especially in North America, because they come from the world over and not all of these ad makers have money for American television time, much less Super Bowl. However, as a whole collection, I’d take this over the top Super Bowl ads I’ve seen in any year!
This is part 1 of 3 since there are too many commercials to put into one blog post. The link to Part 2 is at at the end.
Benjamin Zander is conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. he is the person who makes no sound but is most responsible for an orchestral performance, because he depends on his ability to make other people powerful for his power, to paraphrase him. In this delightful, funny, insightful and very moving and invigorating talk, he helps one appreciate classical music in a basic way everyone can relate to, not some technical way. Throughout, he inserts various insights, life stories and life philosophies that will touch you in profound ways.
Besides the conductor definition above, Benjamin talks about qualities of leadership, how music playing progresses from technical to artistic, the development of a music piece to create tension and release before bringing you home, how there’s no such thing as a tone deaf person, and a few life philosophies like the ones in the title. The “shining eyes” refer to how to judge your life success by the number of people’s eyes around you sparkling, created by you awakening possibilities in them. That is, using the question who are you being in life, that the eyes of those around you are not shining, as a check and motivation to be more to the world with your life.
You know, I was eating a large bowl of Vietnamese hot and sour soup I had made for supper while listening to this. I picked it out because I expected it to be a charming and funny talk with some insight, already a fan of classical music. However, I was laughing out loud quite a few times in the first two thirds of the talk, and then had my brains and heart blown out of their casings with the music, beauty and insights and stories of the last third. There were so many tears streaming down my face so quickly that by the end, I could taste the salt from my tears in my soup in a new recipe, apparently!
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything for you by telling you that story, but rather just preparing you for it if you so choose to watch the video. None of what I said made you cry, after all. What Benjamin will tell you, though, especially with regards to the title, will. He also gives one last practical piece of advice about not having to be perfect to uphold your philosophies, but just trying to “live into” those philosophies as best you can.
A two life philosophies talk! Meaning I have two new life philosophies because of it. Just amazing…
If you can’t tell from all the TED.com videos in my VodPod Collection at lower right, TED.com is my inspirational and education addiction. However, as the site theme says, I’m interested in it mostly for “ideas worth spreading”. I know they have music on the site, but they weren’t often “ideas” of the type I was interested in. However, I stumbled upon the music of Nellie McKay today and it made me laugh a great deal… enough I thought it was worth blogging about because this singer/songwriter is fabulous! That’s a compliment from a listener and singer/songwriter points of view, of which I am both. Have a listen and see if you agree!
This song is about what Nellie thinks of having a clone could mean to her… and supposedly “the evils of science”. I’ll let her tell you the rest. Make sure you listen carefully. It’ll be hard to when you’re laughing your head off. From TED 2008.
The first of these two songs has the first line of “Feminists don’t have a sense of humor”, which, according to TED, was “immortal”. I couldn’t have agreed more. So is the rest of it. And the ukulele is priceless! From TED 2008.
This past weekend, I happened upon Ted.com, the site for the Technology, Entertainment and Design community. With a moniker of Ideas Worth Sharing, and people like Al Gore, Bill Gates, Isabel Allende, Brian Greene, David Kelley, among many others, I knew I was on to something good. A day later, it has become an addiction I will have to moderate myself so as not to spend all my time on it, and it will be something I will keep in my life as long as it and I exist.
Among the things TED.com contains are 378 videos (at time of posting) of talks and interviews with people who are inspiring, knowledgeable and/or interesting. Each is about 20 minutes, some with content markers along the bottom to help the viewer find the segment desired. The site has all the videos, but you can see some of my favourite in the bar at right in my Vodpod list.
The speakers in the videos are there to share, wow and open your mind, heart and soul. Listening to just a few, I realized this was the very state of existence I would maintain if I could 24/7. I love to learn and think, especially think about things and/or in ways that expand the limits of my thinking and imagination, in enlightenment of being inspired. I speak of enlightenment here in the purest sense of the word as in realizing something new that has value, not necessarily the religious enlightenment. My enlightenment could be about some very dark matters, though with insight it will be useful to shed a solution for positive change. To see the light in darkness is far more enlightening than to see it in light already existing because you see far more new things in the former situation.
Furthermore, TED.com has a vibrant free membership community where people can rate the talks on a variety of criteria, like inspiring, informative, jaw-dropping, etc. You can join forums, discuss, get notice of new videos, and so on as well. The synergy and inspiration I feel from watching the video and being part of the community is amazing. But be forewarned, the membership profile is probably the most thought provoking one you’ll ever have to fill out! They ask you some pretty neat things!
Bill has done similar talks before. Maybe not exactly the same talk, but it was not the first time he has talked about malaria to a large group, that’s for sure. Then, in a conference full of brilliant speakers, he ups the ante and becomes the story that gets out the farthest among all the ones at the conference. And he did it with a jar of mosquitoes. That was just brilliance. He didn’t get to where he is and isn’t who he is for nothing, you know!
Better yet, the video was mostly about Bill talking about what makes a great teacher. Most of us will definitely learn something from that! Now if only the many school systems around the country could and act upon it.
Now, how am I going to ingest Ted.com’s 378 videos, with more coming? That’s a lot of time! And even more brain and soul power! Inspiration and knowledge are like drugs for me. I can only handle so much of it at once, even though I love it. I then need time to absorb it and recover from it.
[ I should warn you that drug analogy is lie-kely a lie because I have never taken a drug in my life, and I barely drink an average of a glass of wine every 10 years. I don’t really know what I’m talking about but I feel I can imagine it accurately. ]
Moderation is going to be the key to ingest those videos. That solves the absorption problem, but what about time and my conscience? I can’t bear to ingest media without multitasking. Well, nobody said you had to really watch the videos. Sure, watching helps a little bit, but all you really need to do is listen. That’s all you need to be inspired, which means I could multi-task to do things like, say, cook? Yes, I need to cook more in my life. What a partnership this is going to be!
I can also download the talk in MP3s, which means I can also listen to them while I run. I already listen to audio books while I run, but for the most part, they won’t compare to this! As if running generally weren’t enlightening enough for me considering how many bright ideas I get during my runs, this will be unbelievable!
Of all the sites I have discovered over the years, I can honestly say few have gotten me as excited as Ted.com, includes porn sites if you’ll pardon me for an inappropriate and inaccurate joke. 🙂
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