Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection
Reshma Saujani
TED2016 Vancouver British Columbia, February 2016
Powerful. Game changing. Growing up, boys are encouraged to take risks far more than girls. To address this, Saujani started a company to teach girls to code. Learning perseverance, how to fail and try again, in coding in turn taught them to be brave and freed them from the debilitating trap of perfectionism.

Photos from a Storm Chaser
Camille Seaman
TED2013  Long Beach California, February 2013
The photos are as spectacular as the story at the beginning of this talk reminding us our interconnectedness with all of creation.

The Greatest TED Talk Ever Sold
Morgan Spurlock
TED2011 Long Beach California, February 2011
I have tremendous respect for the work of Morgan Spurlock. He immerses himself in situations, often at danger and discomfort to himself, in order to bring awareness and change through the medium of documentary filmmaking. This talk highlighted themes of transparency, risk-taking, marketing, and branding, as explored in the making of his film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

Why I’m a Weekday Vegetarian
Graham Hill
TED2010 Long Beach California, February 2010
Consuming meat is expensive, hard on the environment, hard on our health, and cruel to animals raised as if they were assembly line products. Consider cutting your meat consumption by 70% by only eating meat on the weekends.  

How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings
David Grady
TED @ State Street Boston, November 2013
Simple idea – find out the goal of the meeting before accepting the invitation to attend.

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I’m trying an experiment in 2016. Maybe you’d like to try it with me.

Here’s where I am
I’m tired of the spin. I’m tired of ideas, news, and entertainment really being one long sales pitch for profit or power.

I’m longing for creativity, curiosity, and inspiration. I’m in search of passionate people willing to speak to the truth and complexity of living with a heart of hope. I want to hear from authentic humans who are in the trenches working for the greater good.

I think I’ve found them in the TED community.

“TED is a global community, welcoming people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. On TED.com, we’re building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers — and a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other, both online and at TED and TEDx events around the world, all year long.”

TED’s been around for 30 years. I’ve heard about them and even watched a couple of talks, but I’ve never spent any concentrated time mining the good stuff. So….

Here’s the plan
Watch 5 enthusiastic, inspiring TED Talk presenters a week for a year.
Apply and share the goodness.