10 Best Alternatives to TED Talks
TED talks are great, but there is a time when they all seem too similar or just tedious to do. If you still want to have smart and engaging conversations from time to time, but TED is enough for you, here are some alternative ways to improve your brain.
10.99U
99U, previously 99 Percent, conducts a variety of conversations on a variety of topics – from creativity to topics related to career. From this wonderful speech about why the failure is usually a sign that you have opened for myself something new in the understanding of the importance of creating opportunities for themselves, without asking permission , performances 99U full of brilliant speakers people, which you have never heard of at traditional technical conferences. and the points of view that we even shared from time to time. The video above is one of the classics where financial expert Ramit Sethi explains how to charge a fee equal to your value .
9. Moth
Moth is less lectures and more personal stories that you can rally, empathize and learn from. The site and series of conversations on it range from topics such as peace and faith to the story of the worst surprise party ever. There are few sublime concepts here, no tech blocs selling stories of devastation or contradiction, and instead, real people tell stories that we can relate to in a sincere and understandable way.
The site’s story archives are vast and rich , and The Moth Radio Hour brings you a podcast to keep up with new ones or find old ones you might like. Their YouTube channel is jam-packed with videos, but most importantly, their website. Expect to see names like Louis S.K., Sarah Jones (like the video above), Salman Rushdie and others, but not limited to people with names you would recognize.
8. Light it up
In Ignite, presenters get 20 slides and 5 minutes, and the slides automatically advance every 15 seconds, whether the presenter wants it or not. The goal is to condense an idea into a small chunk that’s fun, fast, and equally memorable in just a few minutes, resulting in truly impressive, engaging, and enlightening conversations that you won’t see anywhere but under this kind of time pressure. … For example, we shared one of the famous conversations about how to buy a car so you don’t screw up . Another fan favorite is ” Fuck you home.” “
The most recent one, Refugees Have Fun Stories Too, is fun and inspiring and is featured above. A few more must-see appearances are The Art of Professional Wrestling , which generally breaks down the fight for what we really know, and Granny Was a Hacker , which pays homage to the often overlooked but a very important series of short stories in the history of modern computing. If you want to be a little lighthearted check out “How the hell did Matt getall these people dancing with him?” Visit their website or their YouTube channel .
7. Conference on gel technologies
The Gel Conference is actually a conference about creating positive, good customer experiences for businesses, but you can still learn a lot from the presentations. While conversations focus on the creative process or building a business and user experience, you can still learn a lot about the nature of great work or doing great things.
For example, Margaret Purvis, President and CEO of Food Bank For New York City,explains in her keynote how important it is to understand the community you serve before you assume you know what is good for them, and Guy Trotti, founder of Trotti + Associates,explains in his keynote the importance of design even in the construction of things like lunar bases, space stations and other structures that exist in extreme conditions. In the conversation above, the musician (admittedly I’m a fan) and DNA project creator j.viewsexplains how dedication and sharingevery step of his creative process helped him create and write a new album. And all this is only from the 2016 conference.
6. PechaKucha
Founded by a couple of Japanese architects who wanted short, simple and inspiring presentations, PechaKucha started out as an open- air event in Tokyo where young designers could meet, communicate and share ideas. Since then, it has expanded to more than 900 cities, offering viewers around the world a “20 images in 20 seconds” format. As with Ignite, presenters speak and the slides automatically advance whether they like it or not, and are tasked with delivering a short, impressive message in the time they receive – and some of them succeed.
From “Who Killed the King” by Kostya Kimlat to “The Magic of Ray Libre ” by Flavio Silva, each of these presentations proves that you don’t need minutes after minutes, or God forbid hours, to talk about something or tell a story. Sometimes 20 seconds is enough. Above is Shannon Downey’s Do It That Way, the story of how she and her friends had a drink one night, took a picture with a Captain Picard figurine, and then created a Facebook fan page for this. The rest is history.
5. The Veritas Forum
The Veritas Forum may not be for everyone, but if you are interested in theology, atheism, agnosticism, religious theory, and debate of all forms, this forum is for you. Blending a litany of religious scholars and theologians alongside skeptics, philosophers and secular speakers may seem like a recipe for bitter disagreement, but it is actually a series of collaborative negotiations aimed at finding philosophical truth for all involved.
From the speech of Megan Sullivan from the University of Notre Dame, which asks whether a belief in God irrational, compared with the report of William Tate at Washington University in St. Louis about compassion and faith after Ferguson , if you discover an open-minded and ready to By doing so, test your confirmation bias, you will get an expanded perception of not only your own beliefs, but also the beliefs of others, which can only be of great benefit to everyone. Above, for example, is Charles Lee’s story at Stanford University about why happiness seems so elusive .
4. IdeaCity
Something from Canadian TED, IdeaCity is a little more informal, a little more inspiring and open, and broader in terms of the topics and ideas presented. Led by Moses Znaimer, each three-day conference is a parade of forward-thinking entrepreneurs, leaders, community activists, academics, journalists and more, and each talk will make you smarter than you started.
IdeaCity’s discussions range from how to improve your memory, from the Guinness World Record holder for the best memory to a practical explanation of what neutrinos are and why they are so confusing to physicists, presented by a Nobel Prize winner.The aforementioned performance belongs to Laura Dekker , the youngest person to sail solo around the world. You will find topics in Social Science, Physics, Mathematics, Pop Culture, Medicine and Health, the list goes on – in fact, on their video page you can sort by topic or tag to see specific presentations in the categories that interest you, orvisitSeetheirYouTube channel tofind out more.
3. PopTech
PopTech is a global community of experts, entrepreneurs and so-called “thought leaders” that aims to exchange information outside the industry. The goal is to drive innovation by bringing people from different backgrounds together to share ideas and get inspiration. Of course, “innovation” is not easy, but getting people to talk about big ideas is always great, and PopTech has such conversations in droves. Topics cover a wide range of topics, from science and medicine to public policy and education.
For example, this talk by journalist Katherine Schultz about the power of fallacy sheds light and serves as a harsh reminder that we do things wrong all the time, and sometimes we are even wrong about what it means to be wrong. Milton Garces’ talk on “infrasound”, in which we hear crazy stories like “this is how the earth sounds” or “this is how the oceans sound,” is actually a very interesting take on the science of audio that people just don’t hear. Above is a 2012 video where Eben Upton , founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, explained how an entire generation of kids are learning to program (and all of you readers are learning to hack) using this tiny, incredible, accessible, card-sized computer.
2. Conversations on Google
You may not know this, but Google regularly hosts employee and guest talks on a wide variety of topics on its campus. Sometimes it’s inspiring and informative, in the spirit of TED and other great conferences, and sometimes it’s just a workshop on how to get the job done better or how to use a certain kind of tool. In many cases, however, these conversations are extremely interesting and worth checking out.
For example,this talk by Dana Schultz on minimalist baking is worth watching if you really want to learn how to bake bread, cakes, and other delicious items without stocking up on tons of equipment or ingredients. Then there was the case ofRyan Reynolds stopping at Google to chat about Deadpool , or when Bill Nye was giving Googlea talk called “Indisputable,” which I think you can understand from its title. Above is a conversation with Conan O’Brien when he logged into Google to give a talk. Check out their YouTube channel to find out more.
1. Big thinking
Big Think videos are always instructive and interesting. People like Neil de Grasse Tyson and Bill Nye talk about scientific and intellectual topics, while Mary Aiken and Glenn Cohen discuss social and psychological topics with a focus on technology. These topics are often broad, but always informative. We’ve also highlighted several Big Think videos, such as why meditation should be a “routine maintenance” for your brain, and the concept of resilience and how to improve it.
The beauty of Big Think videos is that they are always great and are presented directly by leaders in a particular field or experts who have researched related topics – and they are presented on camera, usually not in front of an audience. This video above from Charles Duhigg, whose work we covered earlier on Lifehacker , shows how to improve concentration through mental model building .