Great week, great people. More than one fellow TEDster described it as "Summer Camp for Nerds." Which is pretty accurate, considering that the talks spanned topics as diverse as sustainable agriculture, neuroscience, Muslim comics, gaming, astronomy, voting systems, computer science, ethnic conflict, education and entomology.
For whatever reason--I started doing this at TED India--I usually hold off commenting on the speakers until the end of the program. Their talks are being edited and uploaded to the TED site as a write this, and all of them will be available soon. Here are my picks (bearing in mind that I missed a few sessions due to a massive headache):
Matt Ridley, looking on the bright side
Naif Al-Mutawa, bringing superheroes to the Arab world
Eben Bayer, whose team uses mushrooms
Adrian Dolby, likes to play in the dirt
Marcel Dicke, who has a new diet for you (that you're not expecting)
Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International
Sebastian Seung, mapping mouse brains
Sugata Mitra, on educating kids (if you watch only one, make it this one)
Chris Anderson, on the future of TED
Ze Frank, who will make you laugh (and more)
Long list, but they're only 18 minutes (so you could pack in three in the same amount of time it takes to suffer through So You Think You Can Dance).
As usual, TED also makes the most of its surroundings, hosting receptions in venues like the Ashmolean Museum, chock full of European history. Great place for a party.
And, of course, punting. Which is packing up to six people in a Mekong Delta-style boat, giving one of them a pole, and hoping everyone can swim. After a barbeque. No worries: no one ended up in the drink.
There's one final TED Fellows dinner tonight that I'm off to now, likely some pub-crawling after that, and a 9:00 am train back to London with my name on it.
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