TED’s mission of “Ideas Worth Spreading” now reaches far beyond the yearly conferences, encompassing a variety of projects and initiatives that leverage the power of ideas to change the world.
Opportunities
The launch of TED Conversations marked a major step in TED.com’s evolution as a social platform. Through the popularity of TEDTalks—which have surpassed 700 million views—TED.com has amassed a vast global audience of engaged, intellectually curious members who are eager to participate in meaningful conversation and action. TED Conversations capture the passion of these visitors and get the entire community—speakers, fellows, translators and global audience members—talking, brainstorming and collaborating in real time. Discussions focus on topics like education, sustainability, collaborative innovation, creativity, psychology and philosophy.
Partner Conversations on TED.com: TED’s partners have the unique opportunity to take part in a facilitated conversation. These sponsored conversations allow organizations to: ask a question, and tap into the expertise of the TED community. The TED team works with each partner to craft your opening statement, find related TEDTalks for context and keep the conversation on the front page of the platform. TED Conversations are also easily shared through Facebook and Twitter to spark a larger conversation with your social network. GE and Shell have had some of our most successful partner conversations to date, each seeing hundreds of thoughtful, long-form comments.
Conversation categories: TED Conversations are divided into three categories: Questions, Debates and Ideas. By asking a question, you can tap into the expertise of the TED community. By proposing an idea, you can elicit constructive feedback. And by initiating a debate, you can lay out a key issue for spirited discussion.
Time limits on conversations: Whether it’s one day or one month, TED Conversations are assigned an expiration date to keep the discussion current and on-topic. Designed to promote participation among time-scarce users, including TED speakers and conference attendees, the conversations end on a pre-set date, at which time the conversation’s host can neatly summarize the discussion with a closing statement.
Link conversations to one of the 1300+ TED Talks: Community members can ask a question, debate an issue or propose an idea that was sparked by watching one or more TEDTalks – and then tag their conversation with that talk. The conversation links to the talk, and while it is live it appears on the talk’s page as a forum where engaged viewers can discuss the idea they just learned about. This allows a thoughtful exchange among an interested community with a shared experience and knowledge base.
Tagging by subject: To help our users find the conversations they want to engage in, we’ve created a search function for specific topics like: “architecture,” “alternative medicine” or “clean energy.” Hosts tag their conversations with the appropriate subjects to make them findable.
Popular TED Conversations include:
- A question about whether it’s possible to find your life’s passion after 40
- A debate on how we might reinvent the concept of government.
- An idea to bring media arts education online and create a collaborative learning experience.
If you follow only one link from this blog in your life ... this [TEDTalk] is the one to choose.
Steven Levitt
best-selling author of Freakanomics