Are you one in a billion? I’m almost afraid to say I wasn’t. But that’s changed. It all started when I hit a snag in my research for a management workshop about introverts and extroverts. The idea was to provide insights and tools for supervisors that would help them deal more effectively with both personality types. How could I present the information without putting managers to sleep?
In my conundrum, I reached out to my director, and came away with two words: Ted Talks. Yeah, those informative and entertaining online videos with over a billion views… I’d never heard of them before—and what a resource they turned out to be!
So, if you haven’t contributed to one of the billion-or-so views, it’s time to be enlightened.
Ted Talks are influential videos from speakers across the globe on education, business, science, technology, creativity—you name it. Their marketing tagline is "Ideas worth spreading." The best thing about Ted Talks, besides the interesting content, is that they are free! The web site, www.ted.com, hosts over 2,600 talks that are searchable by topic and date. At only 18-minutes long, you can download talks from You Tube, purchase popular ones from Amazon, and even follow TED Talks on Twitter—and then you’ll also be one in a million, considering they’ve amassed 10.8 million Twitter followers.
My happy ending is that I found several TED Talks relating to my topic. The presenters expressed ideas using data and sources that were exactly what I needed.
Although Ted Talks are quite popular, when I mentioned them to a couple others, they were still in the dark. If you already know about Ted Talks, you might want to visit the site to see what's new. If you haven't heard of them, check them out. I'm fairly certain you will be inspired and encouraged, or at least curious about something you see. Then you can be one in a billion, too!
