TEDxViadellaConciliazione: What is TED?

(Vatican Radio) Ahead of a TEDx Rome conference on Religious Freedom April 19, we speak with the European Director of TED, Bruno Giussani about this global phenomenon that has everybody talking.
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What’s in an idea? It can be created out of nothing but inspired imagination. It doesn’t cost or weigh anything and can travel at the speed of light across the globe. Yet an idea can reshape the way we think and act; it can impact a person, a community, and even nations.

It was an idea that led to TED – a small non-profit organization dedicated to spreading some of the best ideas out there and putting them on the web so anyone can access them.

John Hunter is a teacher and musician who gives a TED talk about how he gets his 9 year old 4th graders to solve the world’s problems with his idea for a World Peace Game.
John Hunter: “the World Peace Game….”

Hunter’s idea for the leaders of tomorrow – to start working for peace today - is just one of hundreds of online TED.com talks whose motto reads “Ideas Worth Spreading.”

TED’s European director Bruno Giussani spoke to Tracey McClure about the kinds of ideas that TED tries to promote – the kind of ideas he says “that tend to solve problems.”

“There is a lot of power in two things: in sharing an idea, a piece of knowledge or information and sharing it openly, freely… not putting a price tag on it but giving it.”

TED sponsors two pricey conferences each year – one in California and one in Edinburgh, Scotland, gathering some seventy experts who speak about everything from science and technology, to philosophy, medicine, spirituality, and economics, but the list goes on.

The conferences are filmed by the highest professional standards, and the speakers are given coaching and tips to turn them and their speeches into “rock star” quality, bringing out the best in them and the audience. The proceeds from the conferences go into the production and publication of online videos free for everyone, anywhere, to watch.
Giussani is part of the TED team that curates the programs of those conferences.

Besides promoting the good ideas of scientists, explorers and experts in all fields., TED also has a program to create protected marine areas in oceans and help open schools for mathematically gifted kids in Africa.

Does TED influence policy makers and encourage good governance?
Giussani cites Honduras, whose government leaders heard a TED talk by an expert on ways to jump start emerging economies. They later hired that speaker as a consultant. And, a few years, back, as the Greek government entered into discussions on education reform, the first thing the Prime Minister did was to show his cabinet a TED talk by British educational scientist, Ken Robinson. The talk, Giussani says, has become one of the most popular on TED.com, downloaded millions of times.

“It’s not us influencing governments and policy makers,” he says. “we are just providing a platform. We don’t want to play a lobbying role; we don’t want to play a political role. We are really trying hard to create an open platform as broad as possible to extend the conversation and to let ideas travel. And some of them have legs of their own and some of them don’t and it’s inevitable. It’s like reading a book where some chapters are good and others less good but we really try hard to create an open space where this conversation can happen freely and openly.”