[MUSIC PLAYING] GOPI KALLAYIL: Good afternoon. It's my pleasure,
privilege, and honor to welcome, to the Googleplex,
Chris Anderson, head of TED and the author of the new book
"TED Talks-- The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking." Chris Anderson
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,
goes no indication in his background
of, eventually, a career revolving around
technology or public speaking. In 2001, his foundation acquired
a 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 up powerful
ideas in thousands of videos, on 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's had 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. [APPLAUSE] CHRIS ANDERSON: Thank you. Thank you. 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 are here under a bit
of a misapprehension. 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 our countrymen
had to say about it, just how enthusiastically
they had reacted. And this is what I read. [LAUGHTER] Ouch. Even worse was what
happened the first time I stepped onto the TED stage. I'm just going to show you
a picture from back then. If you're feeling squeamish,
please cover your eyes right now. Now, 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, a 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 turning this bug into a feature. And so my argument became,
listen, if this awkward plunker right here can
somehow find a way to occasionally give a talk
that is 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'd
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 once-a-year
private conference. And 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 you
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 actually feeling
pretty sick about this. And 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 by a pass
to the next year's conference. And suddenly, I'm like,
this is going to be OK. What on earth happened? How did that happen? Well, it certainly
wasn't the t-shirt. I think there were a few
basics that happened. 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,
despite-- 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'd
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. It was the key to
collaboration and innovation, couldn't be allowed to die. And in fact, I was
therefore going to convert TED to a nonprofit,
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 a speaker, it's not to entertain,
or 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 theirs,
an idea about something that matters. Because if you can do that, you
are changing their world view. 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 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. And here he is in action. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -It is an honor to once again
sponsor this domestic violence awareness month resolution. I want to commend
Judge Green for working with me on this issue. [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: 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. [LAUGHTER] I mean, this poor kid, this
kid stands for all of us in much public speaking, right? I mean, whether it's politics,
business, church, university, so much of it is boring. And so nothing happens. There is no actual
communication. 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 in sight. 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 dangerous weapons, lethal weapons called
smartphones or laptops. Once those are out and use,
your chance of being effective are gone, you know? So you kind of have to try and
grab people from the start. I want to show
you Maysoon Zayid. She's a comedienne. 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. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -My name is Maysoon
Zayid, and I am not drunk, but the doctor who
delivered me was. [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: Boom. Right? Brilliant. She owned us with
a single sentence. BJ Miller, from San
Francisco, began a talk about redesigning death
with a whole lot of life. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -Well, we all need
a reason to wake up. For me, it just
took 11,000 volts. [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: That's
a wonderful man, a wonderful talk. Artists can do this too. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -You want to 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 in on
canvas, I painted it directly on top of the man. [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: 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 or so of speaking, 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. At first, they
need to find a way of trusting you a little bit. Well, how do you do that? Well, you can do it lots of
ways, anecdotes, bit of humor, a 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 syncing up. So don't give your talk with
you eyes buried in your notes or out into some middle space. 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 came under a
mountain of fear, obviously because
of the humiliation she had suffered
in her early 20s. Now, a single story, in
her case, worked its magic. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -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. [LAUGHTER] [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: So
that single story told Monica that the
talk was going to be OK. And it told the audience that
this was going to 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 Ernesto Sirolli. He wanted to give a talk
about the power of listening, the importance of listening. And so he started with a story
about what happens when you don't. The setting here is a
fertile valley in Zambia and a development aid
project that went wrong. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -Everything in Africa
grew beautifully, and we had these
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 Zambians, look how easy agriculture is. When the tomatoes were nice,
and ripe, and red, overnight, some 200 hippos came
out from the river, and they ate everything. And we said to the Zambians,
my god, the hippos. And the Zambians
said, yes, that's why we have no agriculture here. [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: 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, 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 you're 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 to fit together. Let me describe science
writer Jennifer Kahn to you. She came to TED. She wanted to explain this
hard topic, CRISPR, right, and what that was. It was a 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. You think you get it. You tell an example. And then it really lands, and
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 persuader
Dan Pallotta in action. He was trying to
persuade us that we should rethink how much we pay
people who work for nonprofits. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -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 $50 million selling violent video
games to kids, go for it. We'll put you on the
cover of "Wired" magazine. But you want to make a
half a million dollars trying to cure kids
of malaria and you're considered a parasite yourself. [APPLAUSE] [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: I mean,
if you can pull off a rhetorical home
run like that, people are going to remember your
talk for a very long time. Now, the stakes can
be high at a talk. And so many speakers
assume it's OK just to come and wing it-- a
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, 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 going to do
something a little cheeky and show you some
before and after footage of Tim Urban in action. So this 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. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -So the thing about--
don't want to 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 both have the same cause. So the next 72 hours is a blur
during which I wrote 90 pages and ran, full speed,
diving head first, to hand it in just
at the deadline. And I thought that was
the end of everything. But a week later, I get a
call, and it's the school. And they say, is this Tim Urban? And I say, yeah. And they say, we need to
talk about your thesis. I say, OK. And they say, it's the
best one we've ever seen. [LAUGHTER] That did not happen. [LAUGHTER] It was a very, very bad thesis. [END PLAYBACK] CHRIS ANDERSON: 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. 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
a little nerve-wracking, and they'd rather
have a lectern. Maybe they've got things
they need to refer to. We used to be not
OK with that at TED. I'm now fine with it. Some of the speakers
still look up and connect. Or you could walk a bit
if that helps you think. Sometimes it's good
to take a moment just to pause between walking
so that a point can land. Actually, sitting is fine too. 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 10 years ago
that something happened, and this is 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 a
kind of a gimmick. I see it now as public
speaking's 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 the 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 writing letters to the editor or
preparing written resumes. I think they're going to present
themselves directly on video. I don't know what your
theory of change is. I do believe that a single
idea can change the world. I mean, I do, but not, not, not
if it stays in a single mind. 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 tool of looking, standing, waving
arms, persuading, where people can feel the passion,
and the emotion, and why it matters,
and feel 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. And 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 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. 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
with other people with you. And by the way, it
doesn't have to be this amazing new algorithm,
or some scientific discovery, or whatever. I actually think
this also applies in natural human settings. A 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-- [CLEARING THROAT]--
clear your throat, find the courage to
stand, and speak. I very much hope you do. Thank you so much. [APPLAUSE] GOPI KALLAYIL: So
thank you, Chris. It was both hugely
entertaining and fascinating and very thought-stimulating. And you started off
by saying that one of the most important
things in a talk is a powerful idea you
want to communicate. And one of the most
powerful ideas I 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's now global. So many of the people
in this audience-- not everyone-- wants
to be a TED speaker, but pretty much
everyone wants to be an 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 the journey? CHRIS ANDERSON: Well,
especially here, in a room full of
brilliant technologists, it's, don't forget the
human side of this. 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 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 syncing up. And so it's possible
to forget that and to just assume that if you
email someone an obvious point that, duh, it's done. No, persuasion, 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 a lot of the time. It's in there, but
it needs teasing out. So that means 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
a social species, and we're worried
about humiliation. But you can get past that. GOPI KALLAYIL: But the
problem, as you indicated, is nobody teaches this formally. You said we should
have it in schools, a form of communication. So it is not formally taught. And you arrive, as
adults, in a workplace and realize that, I'm not
that effective at getting my ideas across. So how does one
learn it in the midst of their career-- besides
reading the book, of course. CHRIS ANDERSON: Well,
that would help. I thank you. No, I think you learn by
doing and by starting small. I mean, literally giving
a talk to your smartphone in your bedroom is a good start,
because you will learn things about yourself. And you'll 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 can have a dinner party,
invite people around, and make a case or tell a
story effectively, then you can public speak. But it all comes from repetition
and from taking it seriously. It's definitely not easy to--
without real preparation-- to just stand up and speak
from a few bullet points. A few people can do that. Usually, that goes
horribly wrong. GOPI KALLAYIL: And this
is where, in the book, I think, one of the
most important points to make is the
need to practice-- CHRIS ANDERSON: Yes. GOPI KALLAYIL: --and rehearse. CHRIS ANDERSON: I think so. I think so. Obviously, it depends on
the stakes of the talk. But do the calculation. Say there's 100 people
coming to listen. Who are they? How much time are they
investing in this? Well, it's worth your putting
in a fair fraction of that time to prepare. It's only fair. If you're going to account for
100 person-hours of humanity's time, you better put in a few
of your own in preparation. And if the talk's
being recorded and it's going to go out to
another 5,000 after, well, multiply that up again. So I think that's part of
it, is just being respectful of the time that's out there. GOPI KALLAYIL: So you
say that even before you start practicing, you
should have something worthwhile to say that makes
it meaningful for the listeners to spend their time. And most people struggle
with, how do I identify. What is it that I
want to communicate? What is my life's mission? You know, articulating,
do you have a formula for unearthing that? CHRIS ANDERSON:
Definitely no formula. So the trap, right,
is that 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 TED Talks star, but without the actual
content that matters. But here, no one
would be in this room if they weren't
remarkable in some way. And so 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 deeper into it so that
you can say why it matters. You can explain it. You can give examples. You can show the implications of
it and where it might lead to. That's what makes a talk land. And if you really
don't know what you should be speaking about,
then don't speak until you do. But it is worth having honest
conversations with friends and trying to say-- because
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, everyone's not. You're special. But with an honest friend,
you can figure that out. GOPI KALLAYIL:
With that in mind, I'm going to ask
you a question then. I'll give you the option to
say, I pass on this one if you don't. Since 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? CHRIS ANDERSON: Well,
TED is nonpartisan, but what I will say is this,
is that one of the first rules of public speaking-- if
there is a rule, if one of the first
guidelines, principles-- is to start where
your audience are. 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 of the
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,
for the first time, here's a politician who gets me. That's extraordinarily
powerful, and I think that goes a long way to
accounting for the momentum that he's had. But 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 inspiring and hopeful. There's persuading people to
tap into their better selves. And you know, I think
different politicians out there have different abilities
in both those elements, and also, just in
different settings. So 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. We're in this age where any
citizen can record themselves, and a point they want to
make, and their own passion and humanity. And on a technology like
YouTube or whatever, that can explode across
America and the world, and may well change
how people react. We're all in this. GOPI KALLAYIL: So if that is
the case, in many of the talks or many of the examples that
you just showed us and you talk about in the book,
people talk with the kind of ideas that come
from sociology and the human
condition, psychology. One of the challenges
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 a very
arcane, technical topic and make it come alive? CHRIS ANDERSON: 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 what other people should understand about it. So it's not necessarily all the
details, but the implications and how it fits into the rest
of what's going on actually really matter. So something like AI, it's
such an important topic 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's a vital
conversation that can't just be had among technologists. The citizens need to be
part of this conversation. And so people who can
find a way of saying, this is how you should think
about what we're doing-- the reason why you
shouldn't be terrified about machine learning is this,
or why you should, is this. And find that way or
framing it using metaphors, using whatever means
you can to make it accessible to a
general audience. I think that's really
important, and people need to figure out how to do that. GOPI KALLAYIL: Brilliant. And one of the
stories I really liked in the book that
alludes to that point is Richard Turere's 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 that story where you find a 12-
or 13-year-old boy in the Maasai who also
had a piece of technology. But war is survival. And then you brought
him onto the TED stage. CHRIS ANDERSON: So my colleague
Kelly Stetson and I were on a global tour
looking for new ideas, new speakers to bring to TED. And in Nairobi,
we were introduced to this terribly shy Kenyan boy
who was cowering in the corner. And he grew up in
a Maasai village helping his family look
after their flocks. And they had this lion
problem where they were being taken out by lions. And he'd often been
out in the night trying to frighten
them away with fire. But he used the
power of technology to solve the problem. He taught himself
electronics by kind of dismantling
his parents' radio 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 get-up that flashed
lights at different points, because what he'd discovered was
that what frightened lions was not light, but moving light. And so he built this
device, and it worked. And so instead of villages going
out and hunting down the lions, they were fine. And this invention
spread to other villages. And so we were dying
to bring him to TED, but he was so nervous. And he could hardly speak. And yet when you just took a
bit of time with him and said, piece by piece, tell us,
Richard-- and you would find, suddenly, his face
would light up with some moment of
excitement that had happened. And you go, that's it. If you can say that,
say it that way. You have no idea how
powerfully people are going to respond to you. And so 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 this TED
Talk slotted somewhere between Bill Gates
and Sergey Brin. And he kind of came
up to the stage, and looked up, and spoke. And then he burst into
this million-dollar smile. And the whole audience,
their hearts melted. And at 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. GOPI KALLAYIL: Anyone can do it. 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,
where they come from. And this is one exception. So how do you-- if your concept
is ideas worth spreading, good ideas accessed
in all population, not necessarily among
an elite community-- how do you democratize
TED as a movement. CHRIS ANDERSON:
Well, the criticism's more relevant to the audience
than to the speakers. For the speakers,
we genuinely do try to pull the most
interesting people doing powerful work from
whatever part of the world. Most of the speakers who come
to TED aren't particularly rich. A lot of them, 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 TED does and distribute
these ideas for free on the internet for all time. It's kind of the
Robin Hood model of-- and please don't tell them. Please don't tell them. Don't mention this to Larry. But no, the journey of
TED over the last 15 years has been one of
trying to open it up, to make these ideas
accessible to everyone, because ideas want to be free. They know no borders. They should be shared freely. And that's what
we've sought to do. We bring some fellows
to TED who don't pay. We allow people to organize
their own TED-like events with a TEDx license
that is free. So we're definitely
aware of the importance of that, of democratizing this,
because it is for everyone. GOPI KALLAYIL: And
from that perspective, getting everyone, the
whole world, to be great public speakers is also part
of that mission, I assume. What I'm leading to is, what
led you to write this book. CHRIS ANDERSON: 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
worried about this world where we're all
obsessed by our screens, and looking down the whole time. And we're entering this
sort of text-y world that's sort of exciting
and interesting. But we're worried about the
loss of human connection. And I think the
fact that we can now connect as humans-- you can
look down at your screen, and you can see a
human face speaking, using all this ancient
technology of speech-- I actually find that
really exciting. And I'm stunned
at the possibility of what's happening
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. But it's also kind of
an extraordinary social experiment. Because we're going to
go, in just a few years, to people who never
had the internet to suddenly having anyone in
the world there on their screen. So 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, 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
in language and using examples that are directly,
deeply relevant to them. So let's figure
out how to do it, because there's so much
at stake in this future. And if we naively
believe technology's going to make a better future,
we're probably mistaken. We could easily sleepwalk into
a future that we end up hating. It's all to play for. And I think by putting
a human, a deeply, profoundly, and powerful human,
technology at the heart of it, there's some hope and
possibility in that. GOPI KALLAYIL: And
with those comments, you've just opened
the Pandora's box. So I'm going to ask the
audience, how many of you have a powerful idea that you'd
like to speak about at TED? CHRIS ANDERSON: All right. GOPI KALLAYIL: OK. We've got about eight people. What should they do, Chris? CHRIS ANDERSON: Write to us. Tell us, what's the idea? speakers@ted.com--
make the case. We get a lot of incoming. But absolutely,
we're always looking for the ideas that matter most. And in this room, probably more
than most places on the planet, those ideas probably exist right
now if you could only see them. If I could go away with a
brain scan of everything that's going on in this room right now,
I'd probably know the future. I could. Who's got a question? AUDIENCE: Hi. 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. But he made addresses. And my question is, what would
you have changed to the format, to the style? What would you have recommend
they do differently? CHRIS ANDERSON: Oh gosh, I
wouldn't try, for a minute, to give any advice
to Barack Obama. The level of challenges
that modern government faces are just extraordinary. I think it just goes back
to principles though, of, you have to know
where people are. And it's hard. We all suffer from the
curse of knowledge, where you don't
remember what it's like not to know what you know. It's a bug. And to get round it, it just
takes an intense effort. So 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 there's no slicks. There's no silver
bullet to that's. It's hard. AUDIENCE: Hi, my name's 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 has 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
personalized 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? CHRIS ANDERSON: Great
and complex question. I certainly think that
the traditional business models are challenged. Like, the notion that you
could 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 ad revenue to pay
for their-- salaries, 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
it is actually quite amazing and often unexpected. And that 1% still
dwarfs the total output of the paid journalists, so
it's definitely a problem. And you've seen business
models like "Huffington Post" and many others that basically
tap into the mass willingness to write for free to make
an effective business model. I don't see that, per
se, as 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 that they can filter, and they can provide, and
see the journalistic talent in other people. And so certainly if I was
running a traditional news site, that's what
I would try to do is you've got to
find a way to tap into the extraordinary
willingness of many people to participate. As for the whole
echo chamber bit and the whole
personalization bit, I think the key
thing that's driving that is the fact that
these companies are running algorithms to
find what are the most click-baity stories. And that is having the effect
of dragging the internet down market faster than
1,000 Rupert Murdoch's. It's very distressing, actually. And I think what
many people don't see is-- I think our view
of human nature is wrong. 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 there. The lizard brain is one
thing, and the lizard brain drives that clicking
finger 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
tending to promote much more valuable stories, shall we say. And I think there's huge
power here, actually, in this company, to shape
what happens online, and to understand that
humans are complex people, and to have a
personalisation strategy that is much richer than just what
the damn lizard brain does. 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, OK, 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 not just satisfy that little
twitchy finger of yours? And I think most
people would actually say yes that, yes, please. Save me from my lizard brain. So I think it's all
to be played for. So finally, what I'd say is
that I think journalism, which, at its best, is the pursuit
of truth, right-- I mean, in the knowledge age, there's
hardly a more important thing to do. And I think it's going
to 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 news site which is shutting out all of
the commercial pressures to do stories for
certain reasons. We're going to write
the stuff that actually matters from whatever lens. And I think there's some
great examples of that. There's going to be
a lot more of that. AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. CHRIS ANDERSON: Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hi, my name's Jamie. Just want to say, first of
all, thanks a lot for coming. Great talk. I've been a fan
of TED for awhile. I actually organized
a TEDx event while I was at
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 spoke about
the democratization of TED and being nonpartisan. But one of the
things I have noticed is that there does seem to be a
pretty strong ideological slant to the talks that are
on the front page. And I wonder if you agree
with that characterization and whether you see that as
a challenge or something that needs to be addressed. Because there may
be a risk there of it becoming either kind of
humdrum or some people feeling, in some way, excluded. And maybe the
ideas are not truly challenging you if they come
from a place where there's a lot of agreement already. CHRIS ANDERSON: It's a
great question, Jamie. And first of all, thank
you for doing the TEDx. That's great. I think about this a lot. We want the best ideas
from wherever they are. Speaking personally, there's
not a political agenda. Like, if you could define what
the radical center looks like, then 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
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. 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 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 stop listening
once they think your speaking-- this is tribal. So we want talks that
are just great ideas. So that's the journey
that I think we're on and that I want us to be on. But absolutely, if
anyone's listening to this and you think you're
on a different part of the political spectrum from
what you think TED normally represents, suggest to us,
what is the compelling idea 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're looking for it. It's a conversation. AUDIENCE: Cool, thanks. AUDIENCE: Hello,
my name is John. Do you have any advice for
people whose English is not their first language? And what is TED doing
to bring in ideas from non-English
speaking people? CHRIS ANDERSON: Yes,
absolutely, we're committed to increasingly
getting talks from non-English speakers. There are already quite a few. The TEDx initiative,
many of those events are not held in English. So those talks are being
recorded and uploaded, so they exist. What we're trying to do, slowly,
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 Spanish talks. And so I think we've
done a good job, so far, of translating
TED, in subtitles, into many other languages. We're 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. AUDIENCE: Hi, my name's Zack. I was wondering if you had
any advice or things to say about stage fright, if you learn
to speak with stage fright, or try to get the stage
fright to go away, or whatever it may be. CHRIS ANDERSON:
Yeah, absolutely. I think for me,
the first thing is renaming that fear in your
mind and making it an asset. 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. So that's step one. Step two is to know that, with
rehearsal, your confidence can grow and that it's possible to
just shift that fear from fear to excitement. Feelings are actually
quite similar. Third is just, even on
stage, it can actually give you an extra edge. It can dial up your
energy in the moment. And if you feel like you're
losing it, and you're shaking, and whatever, just have
an honest conversation with the audience. People respond to it. Audiences are
fundamentally supportive. There's other things like doing
some physical activity right before, breathing deep,
all those kinds of things, and having a couple
of escape clauses where you've got
a bottle of water and some notes off to the side. And you can always bring
on a little coughing fit, and go over and have a drink of
water, and remind your notes, and calm down. But audiences actually often
see nervousness as vulnerability and actually rise
to that person. They embrace that
speaker more, so long as you can keep that
authenticity there. So it's absolutely overcomable. 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
can do it, you can do. GOPI KALLAYIL: Thank
you to the audience. I want to close here with
two final questions, Chris. One is, all of the
examples that you showed, many of the examples you
talk about in the book, humor is a big part of it. Making people laugh makes
you endearable as a speaker. And that's also a big
fear for almost everyone who fear that we are
not naturally funny. So how do you bring
humor in when you think that, I'm not a funny guy? CHRIS ANDERSON: Well, I
think I'm not a funny guy. And so what I did-- GOPI KALLAYIL: You're
British, so you've got a natural advantage. CHRIS ANDERSON: What
I did was I found some funny videos,
like Share the Load. And actually, when you look at
several really popular talks on TED, an early moment of
humor comes not directly 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 it 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 vulnerable, telling a story about a
failure of yours or whatever, you can connect with people
in lots of different ways. I would say the only
thing you really can't do in a talk
is come on in kind of a blowhard of, let me tell
you the reasons I'm so great. And I've had such
amazing success over the last few months. I'm just going to tell
you a few examples. Everyone hates that. As soon as people
get the sense this is about you, not about
them, that doesn't work. So it's worth trying to
find the humorous moment, because if you can find
it, it will give you more confidence in 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. GOPI KALLAYIL: So
my final thoughts are on what you've done
going beyond the book. It's not simply a
conference that you created. You created an amazing
institution, a legacy. In an era where the art of
this form of communication is 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 to all
comes with the world. What is your vision
for TED and TEDx? And next five years, what
can we expect to see? Or 10 years? CHRIS ANDERSON:
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 4
billion people are coming online and leapfrogging
straight to an internet where there's video. 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, as much
as I love him, you know? It's something that is
relevant to them now. And it's going to be competing
in this incredible war with who knows what-- all these new
marketing things that they've seen for the first time,
terrorist recruitment videos for all I know. We've got to get this right. And so that plus a
big push in education are the two new
things, and meanwhile, 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 so, but OK. Knowledge actually
goes the other way. The more you learn, the mole
wondrous the world seems, the more you want to
know the next thing. And so I find that,
honestly, really exciting. And I think the fact that
we have the chance now to lead lives that are
lifelong learning, that's amazing and thrilling. And really, I feel so
fortunate to be just playing this little part of it. GOPI KALLAYIL: And that's 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 give
a great TED Talk on that. CHRIS ANDERSON: I bet
that that is true. GOPI KALLAYIL: Any closing
comments and thoughts? One final piece of advice
as it relates to the book? CHRIS ANDERSON: The
book's the book. To you guys here, at
Google, it's extraordinary what you've built. It has
enabled everyone's work to be completely different
from what it could be. It's transformed education's
potential 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, 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 mind-blowing to me. And so I know you know you work
for a company of immense power and impact. But where that goes, it's
going to 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. [APPLAUSE] GOPI KALLAYIL: And
Chris, 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. CHRIS ANDERSON:
Thanks a lot, Gopi. Thanks so much. [MUSIC PLAYING]
