good afternoon it's my pleasure privilege and honor to welcome to the Googleplex Kris Anderson head of Ted and the author of the new book TED talks the official TED guide to public speaking Chris Harrison studied at Oxford and he studied politics economics and philosophy and went on to work in a variety of news media and at that point there's no indication in his background of eventually career revolving around technology or public speaking in 2001 he his foundation acquired little-known technology conference called Ted and over the years what Chris and his team has done has transformed it one of the most powerful vehicles we know of today for bringing to light compelling ideas that actually change many things in humanity in society in our social condition through short well articulated talks by some of the leading thinkers original thinkers and what Chris and his team have really done through this process is creating this amazing brand that serves a powerful ideas in thousands of videos and talks that you can see in person or through digital media more than a billion views every single year and this has given Chris this amazing opportunity to understand what is it that makes for a good talk that is well delivered well articulated he said the ringside view of watching thousands of them over the years working with thousands tens of thousands of speakers and drawing from them the best of ideas and presenting it to us and therefore it is really a privilege and an honor to hear from one of the best purveyors of this art of how to deliver a well-articulated talk something that intimidates baffles mystifies most of us so here to explain how to do it perfectly and get a billion views to each of your own talk please help me welcome Chris Anderson and thank you so much gopi thanks guys for coming out as a group of employees your work is probably as consequential as any group of employees anywhere in the world so it means a lot that you've come out for the next hour or so however it's possible some of you who are here under a bit of a misapprehension I mean it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that the guy who just published the official TED guide to public speaking would himself be a great public speaker so I think I need to start by telling you something that happened in Pakistan a few years ago I went there I gave a talk I was born in Pakistan and so after the talk I was excited to rush online and see what my countrymen had to say about it just how enthusiastically they had reacted and this is what I read ouch even worse was what happened the first time I stepped onto the Ted stage I'm just gonna show you a picture from back then if you're feeling squeamish please cover your eyes right now no believe it or not this is a man trying to build a natural human connection with his audience while wearing a wrinkled white t-shirt dorky haircut and so nervous he can't even stand so if we could please agree I'm actually not a natural public speaker and so of course in preparing this book I had to figure out a way of telling this bug into a feature and so my argument became listen if this awkward plonker right here can somehow find a way to occasionally give a talk that a semi effective everyone can that's the argument in the book and funnily enough even this talk with all its cringe-worthy faults actually did turn out to be somewhat effective and if I may I just like to tell you what happened that day because it does go to the heart of what's in the book and what I want to share with you now so this was 2002 back then there were no TED talks on the Internet Ted was this one see a private conference and this is this took place three months after my foundation had bought that conference it was the last conference being hosted by Ted's founder Richard Saul Wurman who's this charismatic figure his personality really infused every part of Ted and I discovered to my horror that pretty much the entire Ted community assumed that when he went ted was dead it could not survive him going reasonable assumption and unfortunately when he looked at the ticket sales for the next year it was clear ted usually sold out a year in advance 800 passes no problem at this point despite my best marketing efforts as the new owner i had managed to sell a grand total of 70 so i was i was actually feeling pretty sick about this and i I thought I had one chance one chance only to try and persuade the community to come along and so I took a deep breath and rolled my chair to the front of the stage and began making my case and 15 minutes later when I stopped speaking three people stood up and started clapping and then suddenly everyone was standing and clapping and an hour after this talk 200 people paid the big bucks to buy a pass to the next year's conference and I said hey this is gonna be okay what on earth happened how did that happen Wow certainly wasn't the t-shirt I think there were a few basics that happen so first of all I used my terror of the occasion as motivation to really prepare for it I knew what I wanted to say and I spoke from the heart with passion and there was actually discipline let's get rid of that yeah there was despite that there was something of a human connection built through a bit of humor and through a story of a business failure that I just been through none of that though was the biggest thing I think the biggest thing was this I think during that 15 minutes a strange object germinated and grew inside the minds of everyone listening an object called an idea in this case it was the idea that the cross-disciplinary sharing of knowledge that happened at Ted actually really mattered was the key to collaboration and innovation couldn't be allowed to die and in fact I was never going to convert Ted to a non-profit operate it for the public good so that one idea was enough to persuade people that even without a charismatic host Ted was going to be just fine they wanted to be part of Ted's next chapter and so this is the thing it's all about the idea your sole job really as the speakers it's not to entertain a tell a story promote your organization your cause whatever it's to give your audience a gift a gift in the shape of an idea that you transfer from your mind to there's an idea about something that matters because if you can do that you are changing their worldview you are actually potentially changing who they are their behavior many years into the future but what is an idea anyway well they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes I mean really an idea is anything that changes how you see the world and how you're going to respond to the world ideas can be analytical aesthetic complex simple here are some that have been shared on the Ted stage you know if you could picture these ideas as they physically exist in your mind they actually probably represent this tangle of literally millions of neurons constructed in a strange pattern and the fact that that entire pattern can be transferred wholesale to people listening in just a few minutes strikes me as a real miracle how on earth can that happen well the truth is it often doesn't happen very effectively it's it's hard for it to happen most talks are a bust I want to share with you if I may a TED talk I found on the Internet in this case it's ted poe he's a congressman from texas yeah here he is in action it is an honor to once again sponsor this Domestic Violence Awareness Month resolution and will commend judge green for working with me on this issue I mean one tip that's not in the book is if you're going to give a really dull talk on a really important topic live on television don't put your grandson in the row behind you don't do that I mean this poor kid you know this this kid stands for all of us there's so much public speaking right I mean whether it's politics business church university so much of it is boring and so nothing happens there's there is no actual communication it's it's a kind of tragedy how do you break through that boredom and land an idea in a way that matters well there's no one way to do it there actually are no rules about this there's certainly no formula what I think there are are tools that you can pick and choose from to make the talk that you want and these tools are teachable and if I may I'd like to show a few of them to you in action so here's one you don't have to begin the first few minutes saying how very very deeply honored you are and thanking everyone inside you know it's nice to do but for most people in the audience that's just not the interesting thing and we are all as you of all people know more than anyone we're living in an attention war and you contain on your laps right now and in your pockets these um dangerous weapons lethal weapons called smart phones or laptops once those are out and in use your chance of being effective are gone you know so you could have to try and grab people from the start I want to show you a Mason zyyd she's a comedian she suffers from cerebral palsy due to a botched medical procedure at birth she walked up onto the Ted stage literally shaking and swaying but she opened her talk this way my name is Maysoon Zayid and I am NOT drunk but the doctor who delivered me was boom right brilliant she owned us with the single sentence BJ Miller from San Francisco began to talk about redesigning death with a whole lot of life well we all need a reason to wake up for me it just took 11,000 volts it's a wonderful man wonderful talk artists can do this too they might take a closer look there's more to this painting than meets the eye and yes it's acrylic painting of a man but I didn't paint it on canvas I painted it directly on top of the man so I'm not saying that literally in the first sentence you have to smack people between the eyes but I really do think that within the first minute ourselves speaking you know you need to give people a sense of where you're heading with your talk and why they should come with you I mean after all if you're going to build an idea in someone's mind people are naturally a little skeptical about allowing a stranger to poke around inside their brain but the first they need to find a way of trusting you a little bit well how do you do that well you won you couldn't do it lots of ways anecdotes bit of humor bit of vulnerability but just looking at people like this is a key part of it your eyes have extraordinary powers when two humans look at each other their minds are literally synching up so don't give your two eyes talk with your eyes buried in your notes or out into some middle space you know find a few friendly faces in the audience talk to them conversationally makes all the difference it's so powerful when you do that now our minds are wired to love stories goes back to hundreds of thousands of years around campfires and stories can make or break many a talk so when Monica Lewinsky came to Ted she you know she came under a mountain of fear obviously because of the humiliation she'd suffered in her early 20s now a single story in her case worked it's magic at the age of 41 I was hit on by a 27 year old guy he was charming and I was flattered and I declined you know what his unsuccessful pick-up line was he could make me feel 22 again so that single story told Monica that the top was gonna be okay and it told the audience that this was gonna be great and that everyone was actually going to have a good time listening to her but talks don't just have to be about letting everyone relax they can actually set up your idea beautifully as well so here's some inest Oh sir Olli you know he wants to give it to talk about the power of listening the importance of listening and so we started with a story about what happens when you don't when you don't the setting here is a fertile valley in Zambia and a development aid project that went wrong everything in Africa grew beautifully and we had this magnificent tomatoes in Italy a tomato will grow to this size in Zambia to this size and we could not believe and we were telling the champions look how easy agriculture is when the tomatoes were nice and ripe and red organized some two hundred hippos came out from the river and they ate everything and we say to the Zambian my god the hippos and the drum you said yes that's why we have not recover here so from that obviously it's really natural to go on and begin explaining your idea because when you build an idea in someone's mind with that the explanation is the tool that allows that that's really what explanation is and it's pretty hard to do well it's amazing that we can do it at all the key to it is to remember that you are building from elements that are already in your audience's mind so using the power of language but it's not your language your jargon it's their language their concepts that's the only way this can work and one of the key tools to make it effective is to use metaphors to find the right metaphor because what a metaphor does is it shows the shape of how these elements are two fit together let me describe science writer Jennifer gone too you know she came to Ted she wanted to explain this hard topic CRISPR right and what that was the very important new biotechnology she said it's as if you had a word processor for the genome you can cut and paste any gene or any letter as you wish so we know what a word processor is you suddenly immediately get the power of this technology so metaphors are crucial and examples really matter as well because they cement an explanation they show you know you think you get it you tell an example and then it really lands and that that cements it into place but if explanation is the building of an idea in someone's mind persuasion first requires a little demolition you have to take down something that's there that needs to be replaced by better ideas and so one of the keys to persuading I think is to show people the implausibility maybe the absurdity of the idea that you're trying to take down here's master persuaded and Pallotta in action he was trying to persuade us we should rethink how much we pay people who work for nonprofits we have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people you know you want to make fifty million dollars selling violent video games the kids go for it we'll put you on the cover of Wired magazine but you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria and you're considered a parasite yourself I mean if you couldn't pull off a rhetorical home run like that people are gonna remember your talk for a very long time now the stakes can be higher a talk and so many speakers assume it's okay just to come and wing it couple of bullet points I'm good to go actors rehearse musicians rehearse speakers should rehearse for a talk that matters they absolutely should Tim urban gave an amazing talk at the last Ted about procrastination it was hilarious it was very insightful and three weeks before when he came to the Ted offices to give us a preview it wasn't that great the talk wasn't there it wasn't ready Tim used his experience there that the sort of the stressful horrible experience that that was as motivation to go through a bunch of rehearsals and what he came up with in the end was mind blowing so I'm gonna do something a little cheeky and show you some before and after footage of Tim urban in action and so the starts in the Ted offices ends on the Ted stage where he tells this story of how after procrastinating for a full year on his thesis he had to write the whole thing in three days though the thing about don't go there yet so there's micro procrastination as we talked about and then there's macro procrastination but the fact about them is they're both they both have the same pause so the next 72 hours is a blur during which I wrote 90 pages and ran full speed diving headfirst to hand it in just at the deadline I thought that was the end of everything but a week later I get a call it's the school and they say is this Tim ribbon and I say yeah and they say we need to talk about your thesis and I say okay and they say it's the best one we've ever seen that did not happen it was a very very bad Jesus I mean that difference between complete ownership of a talk and being owned by the talk you know it's night and day and the difference between those two is rehearsal so how do you actually give a talk I mean there are so many ways to do it you know a lot of TED talks are given like this just standing in front of an audience there's a vulnerability to this and there's actually power in that because audiences respond to that vulnerability but some people find that you know a little nerve-racking and they'd rather have a lectern maybe they've got things they need to her refer to we used to be not okay with that at Ted I'm now fine with it so long the speaker's still look up and connect or you can walk a bit if that helps you think some times it's good to take a moment just to pause between walking so that a point can land and actually sitting is fine to the late great Oliver Sacks give a wonderful talk seated and then again why not leap around the stage if the mood takes you there's no one way to do it what matters is finding your way because here's the thing when all is said and done there is only one thing that matters in giving a talk it's having something worth saying and therefore finding the way of saying it which is authentic to you it was ten years ago but something happened and this is kind of ground zero for it it was the flickering into life of online video cheered on by a small army of kittens admittedly but most people at the time for sure thought it was you know kind of a gimmick I see it now as public speakings Gutenberg moment from this moment a speaker's words and ideas could ripple out across the internet to thousands maybe millions of people and that meant that this ancient art that was forged around our ancestors campfires could suddenly go global it could suddenly scale so that is what has sparked I think a renaissance in public speaking it's suddenly so much more worth everyone's time to figure out how to do this well so I think you could make the case that there is a new skill for the 21st century that all of us need to pay really close attention to the name I've given it in the book is presentation literacy I think of it as public speaking adapted for the Internet age and I really believe it should be taught in every school I don't think our kids are going to spend that much time you know writing letters to the editor or preparing written resumes I think they're gonna present themselves directly on video I don't know what your theory of change is do you believe that a single idea can change the world I mean I do but not not not if it stays in a single mind you know for a change to happen that idea has to leak out from that mind to dozens of other people perhaps hundreds of other people perhaps millions of other people this is the miracle of human culture human society that we can do this that we can reimagine a different way and share it and if enough people believe in that different way and get excited about it that's when change happens and so it's communication but communication that shows the import of what is being communicated and so often that is done best by this ancient human to love of looking standing waving arms persuading where people can feel the passion and the emotion and why it matters and and feel that sort of that pulse of yeah you know what I get that and that matters to me too and I'm in and I'm going to be part of this the tragedy of the present is that so often the conversation is dominated by people who actually don't have ideas that are that insightful and so many of the people who do have something really important to share don't share it either because they're just not confident in how to do it or they're they're literally fearful of public speaking overall so I would so love this to change you guys are among the smartest in the world many of you have ideas that are literally capable of shaping the future share them you know they they won't probably have their full impact unless you find the courage and the means to show why they matter and to really explain them and bring along other people with you and by the way it doesn't have to be this amazing new algorithm or you know some scientific discovery or whatever I actually think this also applies in natural human settings or wedding the next wedding you go to share a moment of meaning or joy it can connect people in a way that's really beautiful and gives us all a little bit of hope the way I see it we humans are still huddled around a campfire it's just that the campfire spans the whole planet there it is here we are and maybe there's this moment where it's time for you to clear your throat find the courage to stand and speak I very much hope you do thank you so much so thank you for service both hugely entertaining and fascinating and very taut stimulating and you started off by saying that one of the most important things in talk is something a powerful idea you want to communicate and one of the most powerful ideas that took away is that even with all of the technology advancements human beings still communicate most effectively by standing in front of the campfire waving their arms and the campfire is now global so many of the people in this audience not everyone wants to be a TED talk or the Ted speaker but pretty much everyone wants to be a effective communicator they all have amazing ideas so what is one thing that you would ask this audience to do based on the book and the vast experience start doing tomorrow to start their journey well especially here in a room full of brilliant technologists it's it's don't forget the human side of this I mean we are who we are we're incredibly sophisticated machines we don't understand fully how we work we don't understand the level of complexity and nuance that happens in face-to-face human communication it's it's it's wild how many signals are exchanged it's wild to me that when you put two humans and have them just look at each other that their brains are literally sinking up and so it's possible to forget that and to just just assume that if you email someone a you know an obvious point but duh it's done no you know persuasion it takes it takes time and there's a human piece to it and people need to want to come along we're not very rational logical people over at the time it's in there but it needs teasing out so that means it's it's worth learning the nuances of explanation and persuasion and figuring out how to do it the right way but I do think everyone can learn to do this and I think the fear of public speaking is it's understandable why it's there it's because we're social species and we're worried about humiliation but you can get past that but the problem as you indicated is nobody teaches this form you said we should have it in schools the form of communication so it is not formally taught and you arrive as adults in a workplace and realized that I'm not that effective at getting my ideas across so how does one learn it in the midst of the career I think that is reading the book of course well that would help no I think I think you learn by doing and by starting small I mean literally giving a talk to your smartphone in in your bedroom is a good start because you will learn things about yourself and you go oh my do I really sound like that and am I actually doing that so you can start there talk to a few friends if you couldn't if you can have a dinner party invite people around and make a case or tell a story effectively then you can you can public speak so it's it's but it all comes from repetition and from taking it seriously it's definitely not easy to without real preparation just so stand up and you know speak from a few bullet points that a few people can do that usually that goes horribly wrong and this is way in the book I think one of the most important points to make is the need to practice yeah and rehearse I think so and I think so it depends on the stakes of the talk I mean but you know do the calculation I mean there's you know say there's a hundred people coming to listen who are they how much time are they investing in this well it's worth you're putting in a fair fraction of that time to prepare it's only fair you know if you're figuring to account for a hundred person hours of humanity's time you better put in a few of your own in preparation and if the talks being recorded it's going to go out to another five thousand after well multiply that up again so I think that's part of it it's just just being respectful of the time that's out there so and you said that even before you start practicing you should have something worthwhile to say it that makes it meaningful for the listeners to spend the time and most people struggle with how do I identify what is it that I want to what is my life's mission in articulating do you have a formula for another thing that definitely no formula and it's definitely that sense of the trap right is that you you're excited about the idea of speaking without having something good to say and we're certainly very allergic to this at Ted of the people who really want to be a sort of a TED talk star but without the actual content that matters but here I mean no one would be in this room if they if they weren't remarkable in some way and so it's it's finding the piece that you want to focus on usually the problem is that people want to try and say too much in a talk what is almost always more effective is to pick one thing and go go deeper into it so that you can say why it matters you can explain it you can give examples you can show the sort of implications of it and and where it might lead to you know that that's what makes the talk land and I don't know if you if you really don't know what you should be speaking about then don't speak until you do but it is worth having on its conversations with friends and and trying to say because we we only see ourselves from the inside right you can be a remarkable person and not know that you're remarkable because you've always been you isn't anyone like this no actually everyones not you're special but but with an honest friend you can you can figure that out with that in mind so I'm gonna ask you a question and I'll give you the option to say I pass on this one if you don't since his you said that when you're in front of an audience you should have something meaningful and important to say how would you rate our current presidential candidates on that index what Ted is nonpartisan so but what I will say is this is that you know one of the first rules of public speaking if there is a rule one of the first guidelines principles is to start where your audience are you know it's a talk is like a journey you start where they are and you persuade them to come with you on a journey Donald Trump has been masterful at doing that he spotted what many other politicians didn't spot which is just how much fear and anger there is out there and he started with them he's right there like everyone felt that for the first time here's a politician who gets me that's extraordinary powerful I think that goes a long way to accounting for the momentum that he's had but there are there are many other pieces to public speaking there's explanation of a complex topic or policy there's sharing a vision for the future that is you know inspiring and hopeful there's persuading people to tap into their better selves and you know I think different politicians out there have different strengths different abilities in in both those elements and also in just in different settings so I think I think public speaking is going to be incredibly important over the next six months it may determine all of our future and it's not going to be just the politicians you know we're in this age where any citizen can record themselves and a appointment they want to make and their own passion and humanity and on a technology like YouTube or whatever that can that can explode across America and the world and may well change how people react were all in this so if that is the case in in in many of the talks so many of the examples that he just showed us and he talked about in the book people talk of the kind of ideas that come from sociology and the human condition psychology one of the challenge for this audience here is the topics that they're most passionate about that they're best equipped to talk about might be highly technical how do you take yeah arcane technical topic and make it come alive so there definitely may be some topics deep in AI or machine learning or whatever that are really hard to in 18 minutes communicate to a general audience but here's what I believe is no matter who you are it's really important that we are able to communicate to each other why we're passionate about what we're doing and why it matters and how what other people should understand about it so it's not necessarily all the details but but the implications and how it fits into the rest of what's going on actually really matter it's a certain like AI I mean it's it's such an important topic for that for the future of the world both in the most thrilling ways and if you believe some scenarios in the most terrifying of ways and that that's a vital conversation that can't just be had among technologists you know that the citizens need to be part of this conversation and so people who can find a way of saying you know this is how you should think about what we're doing you know the reason why you shouldn't be terrified about machine learning is this or why you should is this and and find that way of framing it using metaphors using whatever you know means you can to make it accessible to a general audience I think that's really important and and people need need to figure out how to do that brilliant and one of the stories are really liked in the book that alludes to that point is Richard Torres case and the fact that he said just about anybody can be a public speaker but I'm still quite fascinated on the one hand you have Sheryl Sandberg obviously a senior executive at a big public corporation does a lot of speaking but tell us the arc of the story where you find a 12 13 year-old boy in the Messiah yes we also had a piece of technology but yeah war is survival and then he brought him onto the Ted stage so my colleague telly Stetson and I were on a global tour looking for new ideas new speakers to bring to Ted and in nairobi we we were introduced to this terribly shy Kenyan boy who was it was sort of cowering in the corner and you know he'd grew up in a Maasai village helping his family look after their flocks and you know they had this lion problem where they were they were being taken out by lions and he'd often been out in the night trying to frighten them away with fire and but he used the power of technology to solve the problem he taught himself electronics by kind of dismantling his parents radio and and somehow figured out a way to construct using this I think he found a motorcycle indicator and some solar cells and whatever he made this from this getup that flashed lights at different points because what he discovered was that what frightened Lions was not light but moving light and so he built this this device and it worked and so instead of villagers going out and hunting down the Lions they were now they were fine and this invention spread to other villages but so we were dying to bring him to Ted but he was so nervous and he could hardly speak and yet when you when you just took a bit of time with him and said you know piece by piece tell us tell us Richard you would find suddenly his face would light up with some moment of excitement that had happened and you got that's it if you couldn't say that say it that way people you have no idea how powerfully people are going to respond to you and so he you know he'd won a scholarship to a school in Kenya because of this invention and they allowed him to give several practice talks which is all part of it and then he got on a plane for the first time and came to Long Beach California and gave his TED talk slotted somewhere between Bill Gates and Sergey Brin and uh and he kind of came onto the stage and looked up and spoke and then he burst into this million-dollar smile and the whole audience their hearts melted and the end of this story they all just stood up and cheered it was an amazing thing to see so yes if he could do it anyone can give a talk so that is a fantastic example but it also attracts a criticism that Ted often gets that the audience and the speakers are very elite okay where they come from and this is one exception so how do you if your concept is ideas worth spreading good ideas exist in all population not necessarily among an elite community how do you democratize Ted as a movement well the criticisms more relevant to the audience than to the speakers and for the speakers we genuinely do try to pull the most interesting people doing powerful work from whatever part of the world most most of the speakers who come to Ted aren't particularly rich a lot of them you know they're working in academia or science or whatever the audience is rich and we see it as our noble duty to take their money off them so that we can fund the rest of what what Ted does and distribute these ideas for free on the internet for all time it's kind of the Robin Hood model of you know the site and please don't mention this to Larry but no but no it's it it that the journey of Ted over the last 15 years has been one of trying to open it up but to make these ideas accessible to everyone because ideas want to be free they they know no borders they should be shared freely and and that's what we sought to do we bring some fellows to Ted who don't pay we allow people to organize their own their own Ted like events with the TEDx license that is free so we're we're definitely aware of you know that the importance of that of democratizing this because it is for everyone and from that perspective getting everyone the whole world to be great public speakers is also part of the mission I assume and what I'm leading to is is that what led you to write this book yes exactly so what led me to write the book was the belief that ideas are everywhere and that we need to be sharing them and sharing them in a human way I think everyone's you know worried about this world we're we're all obsessed by our screens and looking down the whole time and we're entering this sort of texty world that sort of exciting and interesting but it's we're worried about the loss of human connection and I think the fact that we can now you know connect as humans you could look down at your screen you can see a human face speaking using or ancient technology of speech I actually find that really exciting and I'm stunned at the possibility of what's what's happening through over the next five years through things like Project loon and these other initiatives to take broadband internet to the entire world I think that is incredibly important and that but but but it's also a kind of an extraordinary social experiment because we're going to go in just a few years to people who never had the Internet just suddenly having anyone in the world there on their you know on their screen so I think I think we need voices coming from everywhere it's not just a few existing Ted type speakers we want to find the inspiring insightful voices wherever they are on the planet and help them find the way to inspire people because for the first time in history you can inspire lots of people if you've got something worthwhile to say you know even if you live in a village in Kenya or wherever on the planet you can reach out to hundreds thousands of people around you you know in language and using examples that are directly deeply relevant to them so let's figure out how to do it because there's there's so much at stake in this future and if we naively believe technology is going to make a better future we're probably mistaken we could easily sleep walk into a future that we end up hating it's all to play for and I think by putting a human at deeply profoundly in powerful human technology at the heart of it there's some hope and possibility in that and with those comments you just opened the Pandora's box of would ask the audience how many of you a powerful idea that you'd like to speak about at Ted all right I got about eight people what should they do Chris write to us tell us what's the idea speakers at Ted calm you know make make the case we get a lot of incoming but we absolutely were always looking for the ideas that matter most and yeah in this room probably more than most places on the planet that those ideas probably exist right now if you could only see them go away with a brain scan of everything that's going on this room right now I probably know the future I could he's got a question so my name is Greg my question so recently Barack Obama said that his greatest regret is that they failed to communicate what they were doing during each crisis that they were solving the next crisis and they didn't have time or you know but he made addresses and my question is what would you have changed to the format to the style what would you have recommended they do differently oh gosh I'm I wouldn't try for a minute to give any advice to Barack Obama and there I mean the the the level of challenges that modern government faces that are just extraordinary I think it just it just goes back to principles of you have to know where people are and it's hard we all suffer from the curse of knowledge where you you don't remember what it's like not to know what you know it's a bug and and to get round it it just takes an intense effort so that's that's all you can do is constantly say what does that person think what do they really think what do they feel how do I recognize that and then build from that but it's not there's no slick there's no silver bullet to that it's hard all right my name is Blake you're a journalist now in the course of my lifetime I've seen journalism change substantially when I was a child there was a very limited number of geographically limited news sources then cable news was born then blogging and Twitter and as it is transitioned into a much more financially competitive environment I've seen journalism go from the admittedly dryer transmission of facts to a much more exciting personalised world of echo chambers do you see this trend continuing or will journalism shift yet again into something new what is the future of journalism you know great and complex question I certainly think that the traditional business models are challenged like the notion that you can build a company that pays professional wages to a group of journalists put the output onto the Internet get enough traffic to pay for the and therefore add revenue to pay for those salaries I know no one is really doing that very effectively right now just that model simply because it turns out that there are so many other people out there who love to write there are so many other choices now for what someone could read 99% of it is poor but 1% of is actually quite amazing and often unexpected and and that 1% is still Dwarfs the total output of the page Ernest so it's a it's definitely a problem and you've you've seen you know business models like having to post and many others like basically tap into the mass amount of mass willingness to write for free to you know to make an effective business model I don't see that per se is going away and I think a lot of journalists probably could do with imagine themselves as curators and coaches and accepting that they're not going to do all the writing but they can filter and they can provide and see the journalistic talent in other people and and so you know certain if I was running a traditional news site that's what I would try and do is you've got to find a way of tap into the extraordinary willingness of many people to participate as for the whole echo chamber bit and the whole sort of personalization pay I mean I think the key thing that's driving that is is the fact that you know that there is companies running algorithms to find what are the one of the most click Beatty stories and that is having the effect of dragging the internet down market faster than a thousand Rupert Murdoch's you know it's very distressing actually and and I think I think what many people don't see is I think our view of human nature is wrong you know people see this is what people want no it's what people's lizard brain wants people are complicated they have many things going on in their the lizard brain is one thing and the lizard brain drives that clicking finger unfortunately unfortunately but it's not the only thing it's not the only part of people's identity and so there's another whole part of the internet which is where people share based on their identity and that is actually attending to promote much more valuable stories shall we say and I would I think this this huge power here actually in you know in this company to shape what happens online and to understand that humans are complex people and to have a personalization strategy that is much richer than just what the damn lizard brain does people should people's reflective brains should be given a chance to shape what they want to read and that means asking the question in a different way it means not just observing what people actually click on it's saying okay what kind of experience can we give you may we have your permission to sometimes put in front of you stuff that might provoke you and and not just satisfy that little twitchy finger of yours and I think most people would actually say yes to that yes please you know save me from my lizard brain so you know I think it's ought to be paid for so finally what I'd say is that I think journalism you know which at its best is the pursuit of of truth right I mean that's such an important in the knowledge age there's hardly a more important thing to do and I think it's gonna get funded much more by philanthropy in the future I think it's a really noble philanthropic thing to do to finance for example here's the new site which is shutting out and all the sort of commercial pressures to do stories for certain reasons we're gonna write the stuff that actually matters from whatever lens and I think there's gonna be at there's some great examples of that it's gonna be a lot more of that thank you very much thank you hi my name is Jamie I'm just gonna say first of all thanks a lot for coming great talk I've been a fan of Ted for a while I actually organized a TEDx event role as a college so a big fan one of the things I've noticed though and speaking to other people I think they've noticed as well you know you spoke about the democratization of Ted and being nonpartisan but one of the things I have noticed is that you know there does seem to be a pretty strong ideological slant to the talks that are on the front page and you know I wonder if you agree with that characters are a characterization and whether you see that as a challenge or something that needs to be addressed you know because there may be a risk there of it becoming either kind of humdrum or some people feeling in somewhere you know excluded and maybe the idea is not truly challenging you if they come from a place where you know there's a lot of agreement already know it's a great question jovian and first of all thank you for doing TEDx that's that's great I think about this a lot I mean we want the best ideas from wherever they are speaking personally there's there's not a political agenda like I if you could define what the radical Center looks like then you know I might put myself personally that way but there's people at Ted who come from most parts of the spectrum yes I think the majority in the audience traditionally at Ted and I think what this is what you're referring to if you like have a sort of progressive type agenda and you sometimes see that in the talks I would if you could hear us internally we are constantly on the search for great outside the box ideas from the right from all parts honestly of the of the political spectrum mainly what we're trying to do actually though is find talks that aren't locatable somewhere neatly on the political spectrum because the trouble with politics is that it provokes these sort of trigger reactions from people people stopped listening once they think you're you're kind of speaking you know this is tribal so we want we want talks that are just great ideas you know and so that that's the journey that that I think we're honor that I want us to be on but I I absolutely I mean if anyone's listening to this and you're you think you're in a different part of the political spectrum from what you think Ted normally represents suggest to us you know what is the compelling idea that that the world needs to know about from your lens because we really want to know it so I thank you and keep pushing for that extra diversity we we're looking for it so come cool thanks well my name is John well do you have any advice for people whose English is not their first language and what is Ted going to bring in ideas from like non-english speaking people yes absolutely we're committed to increasingly getting talks from non-english speakers they're already quite a few the TEDx mu you know initiative many of those events that have not held in English so those talks are being you know recorded and uploaded so they exist what we're trying to do slowly is is bring together more of them so in this coming year we have an initiative on Spanish where we're going to try and produce a critical mass of sort of Spanish talks and so it's I think we've done a good job so far of translating Ted and subtitles into many other languages were in pretty much 100 languages now but the next step is doing a much better job of sourcing non-english talks we're on it I my name's Zack I was wondering if you had any advice or things to say about stage fright if you learned to speak with stage fright or try the passage prior to go away or whatever maybe yeah so so absolutely I mean I think for me the first thing is think we naming that fear in your mind is in making it an asset I mean fear is there for a reason it's to persuade you to act to avoid that fearful thing coming true so use it as motivation to prepare and to do what's needed that's that's step one step two is to know that you know with rehearsal your your your kind of confidence can can grow and and that it's possible to just shift that fear from fear to excitement feelings are actually quite similar third is just you know on even on stage you can actually give you an extra edge it can sort of you know dial up your energy in the moment and if you feel like you're losing it and you're sort of shaking and whatever just Oh have an honest conversation with the audience people respond to it audience is a fundamentally supportive there's other things like being doing some physical activity right before breathing deep or all those kinds of things and having a couple of sort of escape clauses where you've got you've got a bottle of water and some notes off to the side and you know you can always bring on a little coughing fit and go over and have a drink of water and remind your notes and you know can't calm down but audiences audiences actually often see nervousness as a vulnerability and actually rise to that person they they embrace that speaker more so on as long as you can keep that authenticity there so don't it just it's absolutely over come onboard every month pretty much every speaker feels a level of nervousness it's only in a few that it's crippling but even there it can be overcome and if Monica Lewinsky could do it you can too okay thank you to the audience I want to close over two final questions Chris one is all of the examples that he showed many of the examples you talk about in the book humor is a big part of it making people laugh makes you endurable as a speaker and that's also a big fear for almost everyone mmm who feel that we are not naturally funny so how do you bring humor and when you think that I'm not a funny guy well I think I'm not offending guy and so what I do British I define natural and air what I what I do is I found some funny videos like like share the load right and and they're actually when you look at several really popular talks on Ted the early moment of humor comes not direct from the speaker but from something that they showed so I totally cheated with this you don't have to actually have humor humor is great it does open people up a bit and you know it helps helps people feel like they've got a connection with you but there are other ways to do that just being honest with people being you know vulnerable telling a story about you know a failure of yours or whatever you know you can you can connect with people in lots of different ways I would say the only thing you you really can't do in a talk is come on and kind of a blowhard of let me tell you they you know I the reasons I'm so great and I've done I've had such amazing success over the last few months I just got to tell you a few examples you know everyone hates that and that that that as soon as you say as soon as people get the sense this is about you not about them it doesn't work so you've tried it's worth trying to find the humorous moment because if you can find it it will give you more confidence from the talk and it just helps everyone relax but it's not the only way and bad humor is to be avoided that's worse than no humor so my final thoughts are on what you've done going beyond the book is it's not simply a conference that he created you created an amazing institution a legacy in an era where the art of this form of communication was dying out Ted as a brand has revived the art of public speaking and it's become a global platform through which many people are expressing themselves and you use digital technology to great effect to really take it all corners of the world what is your vision for Ted and TEDx and next five years what can we expect to see or 10 years I mean it's it's honestly being driven by the technological revolution that's coming like if you really believe that broadband video is coming to every part of the planet that gives us our roadmap now that means four billion people are coming online and leapfrogging straight to an Internet where there's video it's it's thrilling it's also terrifying and so I think that the TED talk you want to put in front of them is not necessarily Sir Ken Robinson much as I love him you know it's it's something that is relevant to them now and it's going to be competing in this incredible war with who knows what you know all these new marketing things that they've seen for the first time terrorist recruitment videos for I know you know we've got to get this right and so that plus a big push in education of the two sort of new things and and meanwhile trying to trying to welcome as many new fresh voices onto the platform the joyful thing about knowledge knowledge is different from ice cream right I love strawberry ice cream the first spoonful is delicious the second not quite so much though but okay you know knowledge actually goes the other way the more you learn the more wondrous the world seems the more you want to know the next thing and so I find that honestly really really exciting and I think the fact that we have the chance now to lead lives that are lifelong learning that's that's amazing and thrilling and it's really I feel so fortunate to be just playing this little part of it yeah it was a great opportunity and a problem to solve for the future imagining what it could be like and I can bet somewhere in the audience someone is willing to be a great TED talk on that I bet that is true haha any closing comments and thoughts one final piece of advice as it relates to the book I the books the book I I mean to you guys here at Google it's extraordinary what you've built it you know it has enabled everyone's work to be completely different from what it could be it's transformed education spittoon sha in ways that no one even recognizes yet the fact that we're in a world where everyone has the Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy in their pocket and actually all they need is curiosity to find out anything you know it's it's absolutely stunning what YouTube is is stunning to me the fact that you can show everyone on the planet what the best people in any given field can do from skateboarding to giving an idea it's it's mind-blowing to me and so you know I know you know you work for a company of immense power and impact but how where that goes you know it's gonna have a huge impact on the world's future and I know you constantly are thinking about this and how to make sure it goes the right way and not the wrong way thank you for doing what you do it really really matters and it's been a real privilege to be here today so thank you of course I wanted to say thank you for what you've created thank you for writing the book thank you for coming to Google it's been our honor and pleasure thank you thanks