I'm delighted to be back at TED again this year. It's year #4 for me! OK, first set of notes ...
TED U, the pre-conference sessions that are led by TED participants, is one of my fav parts of the conference - you really get some insight into the interesting things that people are involved in. This year, the six talks I went to were all over the place - some of them I wasn't really impressed with. The three that stood out were:
Exotic Chocolate Tasting by Katrina Markoff of Vosges Haut-Chocolat (a TED sponsor). This was a really cool session; Katrina brought in a tasting wheel plus 5 different chocolate bars for each of us to taste. Pretty much like wine tasting except that one of the things you make note of is the "snap" of the chocolate: the sound it makes when you break it. Best line: "my storytelling medium is chocolate" ... Katrina has traveled all over the world to collect different cultural recipes and tastes to incorporate into her chocolate. Amazing stuff. And we received the Mini Exotic Chocolate Bar set as a gift.
Tour the China Web by Cate Riegner from Netpop Research/Media Screen. Really interesting presentation on both the stats as well as the behaviour of the web population in China. There is a high reliance on public computers in China - this is a very social experience for Chinese internet users. There is a lot of user-generated content on Chinese sites, particularly around shopping and product recommendation sites. And 3 of the top 6 shopping sites are auction sites - particularly auctions on home furnishings and home improvement products.
From Bottles to Bags: How a Discarded Water Bottle Became Your TED Bag by Mark Dwight of Rickshaw Bags. Rickshaw is a new company, and they created the conference bags this year. This was absolutely my favourite presentation - and not just because of my obsession with laptop bags - but because it really gave me hope that we can create manufacturing processes that are environmentally conscious. The bags are made from recycled water bottles. Mark took us through the entire process (I wish there was a video or something) and showed us the raw materials from each phase. There is still a way to go to making this a 100% environmental process - but the fact that these beautiful bags are made from bottles and valuable landfill space was saved is phenomenal. There is a video of Mark (who is, btw, the former CEO of Timbuk2) talking about the design of the bag - and how it has special pockets just for Moleskine notebooks. Super cool!
Speaking of bags, the goodie bags from TED are awesome as always. I am really pleased this year that they actually have less stuff than the usually do. This year, it's much higher quality and it's likely I will use all of it. So, kudos to Tom Rielly who is the partnership director at TED (but hey, Tom, I didn't get my Slusho! Maybe J.J. Abrams knows where it is??). Great stuff. One of my fav items is the super-cool electronic tire gauge from BMW. Talk about geek-chic! There is a full list of the bag's contents over on the TED blog.
Tags: ted2008, rickshaw bags, cate riegner, mark dwight, vosges haut-chocolate, katrina markoff
Photo Credits: TED Conference and Vosges