TEDxWallStreet ended their first TEDx event with a bang—or rather, a ding: by ringing the bell that signals the end of trading at the New York Stock Exchange.
State of the X: Stats on TEDx and TEDxTalks in April
April was a landmark month for TEDx. Along with TEDxSummit in Doha, Qatar -– to which we brought 669 TEDx Organizers representing 90 countries and 1200 event. Check out the TEDx stats for this month:
TEDx events by the numbers: April
- 385 TEDx events happened around the world
- 290 cities hosted one or more TEDx event
- 77 countries hosted one or more TEDx event (Added El Salvador this month!)
TEDx events by the numbers: All time
- 4106 events have happened around the world
- 1100 cities around the world have hosted one or more TEDx event
- 130 countries have hosted one or more TEDx event
The community managed to host nearly 400 more events and create more than 1,000 talks. Check out the TEDxTalks stats for this month:
TEDxTalks by the numbers: April
- 1,075 new talks added to the TEDxTalks library
- 3.26 million views of the TEDxTalks YouTube channel and the TEDxTalks website
- 9 talks featured on TED.com
- 2.28 million views of those TEDxTalks featured on TED.com in April
TEDxTalks by the numbers: All time
- 15,270 TEDxTalks
- 38.1 million views of the TEDxTalks on the YouTube channel and the TEDxTalks website
- 158 talks featured on TED.com
- 72.2 million views of the TEDxTalks featured on TED.com
The huge number of talks in our library can be overwhelming, but if you focus on just a few, you can uncover surprising connections. Here are two that were featured on TED.com in April:
How we connect with others has deep impact on our own well being. Michael’s Norton’s research shows precisely how by spending money on other people we can make ourselves happier. He explains at TEDxCambridge:
Happiness, however, is only one aspect of a fulfilling, examined life. Brenda Brathwaite designs games not to entertain, but to help players forge deeply personal connections with history’s darkest moments. At TEDxPhoenix, she shares how interactive games can pull often abstract history lessons out of the past:
Tasting TEDx
There are so many moving parts that TEDx organizers have to keep track of -– crazy speakers, troublesome venues, disappearing volunteers and demanding sponsors- – so I’m a bit wary of adding something else to the list. But after blogger Mme. Fromage’s brilliant challenge to think about how our TEDx’s will taste, I can’t resist.
It’s food. Everyone eats and most people enjoy eating. And food has a great way of bringing people together. And given that our TEDx events are about bringing people together, how we feed our guests is a powerful — and underused — tool.
It’s so easy to go with the standard catering at the event venue – you pay, they serve and clear up. However, we can be more thoughtful.
Here are some zero-calorie ideas that I came across at TEDxSummit that you could think about:
- The first idea was to involve small, locally-based and independent food and drink vendors. One Australian TEDx invited local burger and coffee trucks to be at the event and sell delicious burgers. It was a win-win for everyone: People got fed with great food, a local business built awareness with the TEDx organisers while at the same time building awareness of what they do.
- It can be even smaller: at TEDxSabanciUniversity in Istanbul, they had tiny sculptures of the speakers made out of sugar paste, which they then gave to the speakers as thank-you gifts. The sculptures were made from photographs of the speakers by the friend of a local coffee shop owner.
- TEDxDelft integrated a sponsor into their tea break; the European Patent Office served a range of patented food products. So their guests got to eat something unique, and built a relationship with the sponsor.
- In 2011, TEDxKraków decided to test out a holistic approach to feeding guests and contacted a group of local organic farmers in the spring before the event to sow the food we were going to eat. They also invited a Danish chef to be a speaker. As she won’t talk about food without serving it, a Danish lunch was part of her talk. She drove from Denmark with a colleague and some typically Danish ingredients, the TEDxKraków team hired a catering kitchen and some people to help, and lunch was a beautiful Danish-Polish collaboration. The experiment worked on many levels: Not only was the food great, but the process meant that the young Polish cooks who helped prepare the lunch were also exposed to new ways of cooking and thinking about food.
Written by Ewa Spohn, TEDxKraków
Guide: How to find great speakers who are TED Fellows
At this week’s TEDxSummit, Tom Rielly gave the TEDx’ers a little gift from the TED Fellows program — by premiering a brand-new guide to finding great speakers who also happen to be Fellows. In the downloadable guide, each TED Fellow, past and present, gets a page to list everything they’re passionate about and ready to give a talk on, as well as links to past video so you can show your curation team.
Rielly hopes the guide will be helpful for anyone looking for creative, unusual, well-trained speakers. Download the guide as a PDF and browse!
