TED

I’m staying in Mysore now, at the lovely Green Hotel. If you happen to be visiting Mysore, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I am still processing the conference and trying to sort out what it all means, and how what I learned there will change me and my course. The one thing I can be sure of is that it has changed me. The speakers, naturally, were (mostly) all amazing, but what really pulled the whole event together were the attendees. From the moment I stepped out of the registration I was greeted by one warm, generous, and engaging person after another. As the conference proceeded, little networks began to form. One new friend would introduce me to another until I felt I knew every like minded person in the thousand person audience. ...

If you’re just tuning in now, please skip back to the post on Hong Kong, and read the remaining posts in reverse order. If you don’t I’m not sure they would make too much sense. Please leave comments (especially suggestions) in the comments section.

3 days to go. I can’t remember ever being this excited for a trip. I haven’t packed a thing yet, but I spend every spare second thinking about what to bring (and perhaps more importantly what to leave behind). The anticipation of the people I’m going to meet and the places I’m going to see is nerve wracking and thrilling and overwhelming. I’m buried at work. TED related activity, on both the TEDIndia and Jill’s Wish front have created a maelstrom of tasks and objectives. Beyond that I’ve got new and old projects coming out my ears. Come Friday, I will have to find a way to let all of those things go so that I can be free to lose myself in this experience. ...

In a recent comment my buddy Dave asked: “Okay. I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask, even see if you would write a blog post on it. This seems like an opportune time. Why Twitter? I don’t get it. Am I not understanding something fully? It seems like one more digital distraction in my day. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is. But the rate at which people use it makes me think its not going away as fast as I once thought. ...

Bruce Schnier has given a similar talk in years past that I just loved. This one is Dan Gilbert talking at TED Global on the topic of how our ability to estimate risk/odds/value/etc. in our modern context just sucks. I don’t easily stoop to using other people’s content on my blog, so please do cut me some slack on this one. Its just too important to paraphrase!

While I was on vacation, I received word that I had been invited to be a guest at TED India 2009. Tonight I completed the registration and made it official. My tickets are purchased and plans are being laid. When I mentioned to my dad that I was almost certainly going to India, he told me that he had always wanted to go and got this far away look in his eye. I instantly extended an invitation to him, hoping that he would accept, but aware that it was a big lift for him. I was happily surprised when my Mom started to encourage him and he gradually agreed that this was the chance of a lifetime. Of course my parents have this habit of dreaming about things in a way that looks to outsiders like resolve, so I was optimistically skeptical until last week when we bought our plane tickets. ...