Those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter may not know that I am attending TED India as a fellow next week. TED is a conference devoted to problem-solving and unexpected solutions; the theme for next week in Mysore is “The Future Beckons.”
I’m pretty excited about the conference, and I am hoping to learn a lot. But I’ve never been to a conference like this before; I’ve only ever been to technical conferences like the APHA annual meeting, or Global Health Council. Inspiration and ideas are a whole new deal for me. So, since my readers are some of the smartest people I know – how do I get the most out of this? What kind of sessions do you think I should attend? Should I write down what I learned every night? Have any of you been to TED? Anything I should prepare for?
OK, hold on a sec….
…just geting over the jealousy…
… and I’m good.
My suggestion? Avoid most sessions of subjects that you know very well. Choose some sessions that you have a tangential connection to, where others will come from completely different backgrounds, but you can really engage in the conversation. And pick a few select ones where you have no shared background, to open your eyes to new areas.
Don’t take notes. Take a notebook. Capture ideas and connections, of any type. My current example? I’m sitting in an economics class as I write this. My notebook has:
– an idea for a blog post ‘avoiding binary views of the world’)
– a question to ask a prof I know (ironically it is: who on faculty should I ask ‘how do ideas spread’?)
– a new philosopher to google
– note to ask careers for a salary distribution of previous grads, and exmplanation of it.
This system works pretty well for me. Let us know how it goes, and enjoy!
B
Oh, wonderful! I watch the TED talks online, and I love them, and I think it’s great that you’re getting to go to this.
The only thing I would add to the above is that it doesn’t matter how interesting the topic is if the speaker is not engaging, so if you hear good things about someone’s presentation skills or just meet someone dynamic who will be presenting later, go to that session – it will be bound to be good!
[…] write about this today? Alanna over at Blood and Milk was wondering what strategy to take while attending the upcoming TEDIndia conference (a place of inspiring ideas). I suggested she just […]
Hi Alanna, happy to have you @ TEDIndia!
My advice: arrive, disengage from the rest of the world, take a deep breath & soak in every single moment.
Best 🙂
Oh damn – Curt, my colleague in the Appropedia Foundation, was at TED India. I would have told him to make sure he met you.
I must organize a blog reader and keep up to date :-(.
No worries, I met Curt!