When Naheed Nenshi spoke at TEDxCalgary, he was a university professor. Now, he’s the mayor of Calgary.

In May of 2010, just a month after giving a TEDx talk, Nenshi launched a successful campaign for mayor—one dubbed the “purple revolution” because of his aim to bring together conservative red and liberal blue. He won the election by a commanding lead, becoming Canada’s first Muslim mayor in the process. In 2013, the former consultant and media commentator—whose academic research focused on civic engagement—ran for re-election. This time, he captured 74% of the vote with the Toronto Star describing him as “wildly popular.”

Nenshi traces his decision to run for office back to being asked to give a TEDx talk.

“I was doing research on neighborhoods in Calgary and how they were becoming more segregated—by income, by age and by ethnicity,” he says. “I thought that the TED environment would be a great way to present some of my research, visually.“

Hans Rosling: The best stats you’ve ever seen

Nenshi was inspired by the talks of Hans Rosling. “He did a great talk in 2006 which used visualizations to talk about poverty and health and development in a way I’d never seen before,” says Nenshi. “I thought, ‘Can I do a mini-version of that?’”

Nenshi worked hard to create maps that illuminated the problems that arise with increasingly segregated neighborhoods. He also crafted a powerful, conversational talk that underlined the idea.

It worked—his talk was a hit TEDxCalgary, which was held in late April of 2010. “The analytic lens he put on our city was fresh, new and hadn’t been heard,” remembers curator Rahim Sajan. “People surrounded him during the breaks.”

But the talk really began to take off when it was posted on YouTube.

“It became quite the phenomenon online. The filming was done from the most unflattering angle possible, so I try not to look at it myself—but it was huge,” says Nenshi. “To this day, I still see people tweet it, and say, ‘Before he was mayor, he had some interesting things to say.’”

About three months before TEDxCalgary, the then-mayor of the city had announced that he wasn’t seeking re-election. Nenshi had started talking to assorted community leaders, trying to convince them to run for office. “I kept striking out,” he says.

However, after his TEDx talk went online, the tone of these conversations changed. “People would say, ‘Politics isn’t for me, but why don’t you do it? I saw the TEDx video. You clearly have a lot of good ideas about the development of cities,’” he remembers. “I kept saying, ‘No, no, no. I’m a professor, I’m a consultant.’ I thought of myself as the ideas guy—the person who would try to influence the people in office—not as the guy actually shaking the hands and kissing the babies.”

Still, Nenshi started toying with the idea of running for mayor himself. And in late May, about a month after his TEDx experience, he decided to make his campaign official. However, the team of advisors he’d assembled to consider the run thought he needed an alternative strategy to the traditional press conference.

“We didn’t have enough time to put together a typical campaign rally, with balloons and streamers and hundreds of people in a room,” says Nenshi. “So on a Thursday morning at 9 a.m., I sent out a Twitter and a Facebook message saying, ‘I’m running.’ Then, for the entire day, we gave a 45-minute exclusive, one-on-one interview to any media who would talk to me.”

This strategy meant that instead of a single story about his campaign, each reporter focused coverage in a different direction. Nenshi felt that this gave a rounder, more realistic introduction to him as a potential mayor.

Nenshi was surprised by how many of the people he met through TEDxCalgary jumped in to help with his campaign. Sajan became one of his key volunteers, and co-organizer Jonathan Perkins became Nenshi’s fundraising chair. “Many, many, many people who were in the theater that day came out to assist, whether it was knocking on doors, or delivering leaflets, or helping us think through policy,” says Nenshi.

Attendee Chris Hsiung (who’d later become TEDxCalgary’s creative director) teamed up with singer Amy Thiessen, who’d performed at the event that year, to create a music video for Nenshi’s campaign. Meanwhile, one of the guys who filmed the TEDxCalgary talk, Gordon McDowell, took on the role of documentarian.

“At one of my campaign launch events, a fellow showed up with a camcorder in his hand, and a couple of little Flip Cams and T-bolt clamps that you would get at the hardware store. He approached the volunteer on duty and said, ‘Can I film the candidate’s speech?’” remembers Nenshi. “I didn’t know who this guy was, so I asked him, ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘I filmed you at TEDx. I was so inspired by what you said that I decided to get more involved. So I’m filming different candidates.’”

These recordings helped Nenshi’s campaign get traction online—vital, since there were 19 candidates in the mayoral race.

“At the end of the campaign, it became clear that there were only three candidates who could win. The public was clamoring for a debate between us, but the other two candidates kept refusing to do a three-way debate,” says Nenshi. “So Gordon took all his video of all the 34 debates we’d had already, and he spliced the three of us into a YouTube video. Citizens could watch, so they could compare and contrast. He created a virtual debate.”

For Nenshi, election night was surreal. While he’d analyzed many of them over the years, he’d never been personally involved.

“Our campaign headquarters was too small for the election-night party, so we booked a bar,” says Nenshi. “When you’re a candidate, you have an army of scrutineers at the polling stations and the moment that the polls are counted, they phone in with results. The candidate usually knows what’s going on before anyone else. However, I was at this hot, sweaty bar saying thank you to the volunteers. I was surrounded by people. I didn’t have any access to the scrutineer numbers.”

The bar was loud, and Nenshi couldn’t hear what was being said on the television screens overhead. “I see my campaign manager being interviewed at campaign headquarters, looking awfully happy for the fact that I was trailing badly in the early results. Then I see my sister looking very emotional,” he recalls. “I had been a pundit before and sat on lots of election-night panels, so kind of knew how to read things. One poll came in, and it showed the results changing significantly. I was still in third place, but very close. I realized that was the first of the polls from that actual day that had been counted—everything up to that moment had been advance polls.”

He had a strong intuition about what was about to happen. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. The next data release is going to show me in the lead. I’m going to win. And I’ve got about three minutes to figure out what I’m going to say, because this bar is going to collectively lose its mind.’”

Nenshi turned to a friend, and mouthed to him the words: I think I won. Nenshi remembers, “He points at his phone, and says, ‘I know! They’ve been sending me the numbers!’ They sent them to him, but not to me.”

As expected, the next update had Nenshi in the lead. He stayed there until the election was called.

A look at the Calgary skyline. Photo: iStockphoto

Sajan remembers the excitement of that night well. “I was ecstatic—over the moon,” he says. “I had never been involved in politics before, other then in student government, and what an introduction to politics it was! His election was a watershed moment for our city and I remember walking on cloud nine. As a TEDx organizer, I felt incredibly good that our work had been a small force in his election.”

Nenshi says that the through-line of his campaign was getting everyday people involved—and that he’s pulled that idea into his mayorship.

“Politicians talk to citizens in sound bites, but citizens are actually very keen on engaging more deeply. They want politics in full sentences,” says Nenshi. “All the stuff I talked about [in the campaign]—about how we could do politics in a different way, about talking to people like functional members of the conversation, about taking bold steps that let people into the decision-making process—in the almost three-and-a-half years since I’ve been mayor, people have responded to that.”

Another core part of his mayorship has been rolling back the segregation of Calgary’s neighborhoods—the theme of his TEDx talk. “We want to continue to develop mixed communities. That means that new suburban neighborhoods are being built to accommodate people at different life-stages—at different levels of pricing,” he says. “And our work in redeveloping existing neighborhoods is aimed at redevelopment without gentrification, to make sure that the neighborhoods remain welcoming to people from a variety of backgrounds.”

Calgary’s city government is enormous—according to Nenshi, because of its uni-city structure, it is actually the 10th largest city government in North America. As mayor, Nenshi leads 17,000 employees.

“I learned very early on that when we started talking about openness and cutting red tape and allowing people to do their jobs with the focus on citizens, the front-line employees totally got it,” he says. “It was almost like the weight had been lifted off their shoulders.”

Sanjan, for one, has been very impressed watching Nenshi lead the city. “From his push toward a more walkable city to zoning changes that allow for more holistic neighborhoods, he has stayed true to the spirit and tone of his talk,” says Sajan.

That said, Sajan still apologizes to Nenshi for the quality of his talk video. “I know the sound was not very good,” he says, “We know what we’re doing much better now.”

For 3000 years, the story of David and Goliath has seeped into our cultural consciousness. This is generally how the tale is told: a young shepherd does battle with a giant warrior and, using nothing but a slingshot, comes out victorious. But is this really what the Bible describes?

Malcolm Gladwell: The unheard story of David and Goliath

In today’s talk, Malcolm Gladwell — whose new book is titled David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants — takes a closer look at this classic story, digging into the details which are easily lost on a modern audience. Overall, he asks: was David really the underdog in this fight? It all begins with a closer look at that sling (which is not the toy slingshot we might picture), and at the five rocks David picked up to use in it.

“The term ‘David and Goliath’ has entered our language as a metaphor for improbable victories by some weak party over someone far stronger,” says Gladwell in this talk. “Everything I thought I knew about that story turned out to be wrong.”

Fascinated to hear more, the TED Blog called Gladwell to unravel why the underdog story has such resonance and why rethinking David and Goliath is important now. (As a bonus, we also asked him what pasta sauce he prefers.) An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

How were you first introduced to the story of David and Goliath?

My mother read me biblical stories at night. And it’s funny, this was not my favorite — my favorite story was Daniel in the lions’ den. It’s a similar kind of story — at least, it’s a seemingly impossible encounter that turns out differently because of one party’s faith. I was drawn to these kind of stories from the very beginning.

What made you decide to zoom in on David and Goliath? What showed you this story was something you wanted to explore further?

I started with it because it’s the original myth, right? It’s where the whole idea of underdogs comes from — it’s all shaped by this extraordinary, memorable encounter between these two guys thousands of years ago. So originally, I just wanted to kind of reference it, and then move on. But the more I thought about it, the more interesting it became. I began to dig around and I just uncovered all of these fascinating facts — both about David and about Goliath — that really radically changed my understanding of what happened that day in the Valley of Elah.

What was the radical change?

Well, I don’t want to give away the talk, but I will say this: that Goliath is not what we think he is in a profoundly crucial way. The thing that makes Goliath seem strong is the source of his greatest weakness. This is something that was hinted at in the original accounts of the battle of David and Goliath, and that has been confirmed more recently by modern scholars. And David is also not what you think he is. Part of what’s fascinating is how many scholars, particularly Israeli scholars throughout history, have been fascinated by this story and written accounts of what exactly David’s weapon was. And we now understand that his weapon was not a child’s toy. It was a devastating weapon. So devastating, in fact, that the minute he decided to use a sling against Goliath, the tables were turned. He’s not the underdog anymore.

Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we’ve done it for, I think, too long.

Why does the way we’ve traditionally told this story have such appeal?

The appeal of the story is the boy gets the giant, right? The outsider against the insider. So that remains unchanged in the retelling. But I think what we did was that we were content with a certain explanation of the story. It seemed to us more romantic to imagine that David’s victory was wholly improbable whereas I think that any contemporary of David’s — had they been watching the duel that day on the valley floor — the minute David takes out the sling, they would all have said David was the favorite.

The closer you read the biblical account, the more you realize that the authors of the original account have a pretty sophisticated understanding of what’s going on. There’s all kinds of references to Goliath that do not square with the unsophisticated way we’ve read that story. We’re a long way from ancient Palestine. We have lost some of the nuances that would have been obvious to someone in that era.

Why do you think the idea of the underdog has such appeal?

Because it makes the world seem just. If the strongest win all the battles, there’s no hope for the rest of us, is there? If the same people who have all the power and all the money and all the authority are also going to win every contest, what’s the point of going on for the rest of us? So the underdog story gives all of us who are not on top hope. Occasionally we do get to come out on top. I think that is profoundly true, that’s what the underdog is all about.

Which do you think is stronger: the desire to root for the underdog, or the desire to be with the winning team?

Well, I think this is one of those contradictions that we carry around in our heads without ever fully resolving. We want both. We want to be on the winning side, and we also want to root for the underdog. I think it makes sense. I mean, if I can be in the position of power, I’d like to have that. If not, I’d like to be the underdog, you know? It’s a kind of fallback position that we have.

The underdog winning is the romantic position. Like I said, it’s the one that gives us hope. But the minute we acquire resources, wealth and authority, we want very much to believe that those things which we’ve earned will prove to be decisive in any contest. We begin to increase our faith in those measures of results.

Why do you think it’s important that we rethink this myth now? What is it about our current time that demands it?

This book is really about power. Where does advantage lie? These questions are at the center of everything from the wars that we fight overseas, to the way we educate children, to the way we fight crime at home, to the way we understand disabilities. There’s almost no part of public policy that isn’t touched by this kind of understanding. If you’re trying to build the most advantageous educational system, what does that look like? Well, that definition depends a lot on how you define advantage. If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money. If you’re with David and you think, actually no, having audacity and a fresh perspective are better than being big and powerful, then you might reach a very different conclusion. So I think these are very, very relevant questions for the world we live in.

Can you maybe give an example of something — a corporation, a person, a government — that we define as a Goliath that retelling this story might help us rethink?

Well, the United States. What this book tells you is that Goliaths have more weaknesses than you think. I think that would help people to understand why the foreign policy objectives of the United States have been so difficult to accomplish in recent years. Why we had such a hard time in Vietnam, and again in Iraq and now in Afghanistan? These are countries that we dwarf — they are a fraction of our size. And still, we struggle to achieve our objectives there. I think this book will help people understand why. That just because you’re big and strong doesn’t mean you can do what you want.

We’re very interested in ideas in our office, and are curious: how do you know when you’ve stumble upon something that you want to really dig into?

You’re taking a massive gamble. You’re hoping it pans out. Whenever you start something, you only have a tiny glimpse of how interesting it could be. You’re really acting on faith. And you trust that you could find hidden angles and unlocked doors and all kinds of things that can flesh out that idea. And sometimes you can’t. If you lose your way, you have to fight your way back. It’s complicated, but I have been doing this for long enough now that I think my instincts are pretty good. I don’t worry as much as I did when I was much younger. I know I authors always say that their most current book is their favorite, but this is really my favorite.

Malcolm Gladwell: Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce

I think there’s more fascinating and weird stuff in this book than in my previous books. I’m really happy with it.

This is a question we’ve all wondered since your last talk, Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce. Which pasta sauce do you prefer?

I make my own. I never buy store pasta sauce, but I do like my pasta sauce thick and hearty, so I know which one I would choose if I had to.

Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness

And is there a TED Talk that comes to mind that you’d love everyone to watch at least once?

There are so many. One of the old standards: Dan Gilbert’s talks over the years have stayed with me. I think he has done a better job than almost anyone of making academic work accessible and useful to people. I really think that his talks on happiness have actually changed lives. I think that people who see them, many of them went away and were happier as a result. If you can do that, man, that’s a great thing.

Siyanda Mohutsiwa started a Pan-African conversation with a hashtag. She spoke onstage at TED2016 on Thursday, February 18, 2016. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED

Host Gerry Garbulsky has a feeling that this may be the session with “the most heavy accents” in TED history. The organizer of TEDxRiodelaPlata in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Garbulsky curated each speaker in his session because they’ve given a TEDx talk he loved. With speakers from Botswana, Brazil and Hungary, these ideas are truly without borders.

Recaps of the talks in Session 10, “The Dreams that Define Us,” in chronological order.

How we show our mental state in words. “Historical records let us know how ancient Greeks lived,” says neuroscientist Mariano Sigman. “But how did they think?” Sigman sees the writings of any culture as “fossils of human thought,” and shares a theory from 1970s psychologist Julian Jaynes, who suggested that “only 3000 years ago, humans were what we’d call today schizophrenic,” Sigman recounts. They heard voices from gods and muses, “what today, we’d call hallucinations.” Only later did they realize those voices were their own inner thoughts. But Sigman mapped the words in ancient Greek texts, using an algorithm that clustered words that tend to appear in the same documents and paragraphs. He found that, between the time of the Iliad and Aristotle, the Greeks moved about five times closer to the idea of introspection. Word mapping can give hints at people’s inner life in the present, too. Sigman analyzed the speech of 34 young people at high risk of schizophrenia, and developed an algorithm that could predict who would develop the psychosis. It looked not at the words themselves, but at how fast they jumped between related clusters. “We may be seeing in the future a very different form of mental health,” he says.

Uniting a continent with social media. When her hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar went viral, writer Siyanda Mohutsiwa triggered a discussion of serious African issues. People from across the continent used the hashtag to criticize governments and make fun of stereotypes. Most important, they used it to connect over their shared Africanness. “We had before us, between us, at our fingertips, a platform that just needed a small spark to light in us a hunger for each other,” she says. As the product of two different African countries — her mother is from Swaziland, her father is from Botswana — Mohutsiwa describes herself as a Pan-Africanist by birth. Twitter proved a perfect outlet to express her interest in identity, and she loved interacting with vibrant people from Nigeria, Kenya, Guinea and elsewhere. Now, her dream is for a social Pan-Africanism, for young Africans who have brilliant ideas to stop allowing borders and circumstance to suffocate innovation. “Access to social networks is giving young Africans access to something we always had to violently take: A voice,” she says. “African pain and African aspiration can be witnessed by those who empathize with it the most — other Africans.”

A childlike approach to dinner. We’re taking life too seriously. One object with one obvious utility can be turned on its side for a lot more fun. Musical instrument maker Linsey Pollak stands on stage playing a bagpipe made of a rubber glove. “We can choose a different way of looking at the world,” says Pollak. With that he takes out a large carrot and says, “Let’s use a little bit of childlike curiosity.” He slices off the top and tip of the carrot, drills through it to make a tube and six thumb holes, then sticks a funnel and mouthpiece on either end, and voilà. An instant new use for dinner.

That thing Linsey Pollak is playing? It’s like 65% carrot. He performed at TED2016 on Thursday, February 18, 2016. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED

Giving checkmate is always fun. From a young age, Judit Polgár’s parents wanted her to be a genius. They got their wish. By age seven Polgár was playing chess against 15 opponents simultaneously — and beating them all. “Chess became a native language for me,” she says. At age 12, she represented Hungary as part of the women’s team at the Chess Olympiad, winning the gold medal for the first time. Afterwards, world champion Garry Kasparov said he had no doubt Polgár would become the number one female player in the world, but he doubted she would ever be able to challenge him. Years later, when Polgár got her chance to face Kasparov, she proved him wrong. Polgár is regarded as the strongest female chess player in history, and she retired from competitive chess in 2014. Now she has a new dream: to see chess taught in every elementary school worldwide. To Polgár, chess is not just game or sport — it’s a real educational tool.

What happens when children lie? For the last 20 years, Kang Lee has been playing guessing games with children all over the world. For science! The developmental researcher studies what happens physiologically to children when they lie—because apparently, they do it a lot, starting as young as two years old, and are really good at it. (We shouldn’t worry, says Lee, as the ability to lie requires skills of empathy and self-control, which all functioning adults need.) He says that his research shows adults can’t guess whether children are lying—but he’s working on a way to change that: he uses transdermal optical imaging to study and predict subtle blood flows of the face, which are hidden below the neutral expressions of lying children. What he’s found is that when we lie, blood flow decreases in the cheeks and increases in the nose. The tool could have other sweeping applications, says Lee, for education, health care, marketing, even dating.

The real colors of our skin. As a girl, Brazilian artist Angélica Dass felt confused about color. “I was made of flesh, but I wasn’t pink,” she says. “My skin was brown, and people said I was black.” As an adult, Dass wanted to create a visual system to catalogue all of the world’s many, many skin tones — and so she created Humanae, “the pursuit of our true colors.” Read how this Pantone for skin tones took shape in a full recap of her talk.

Every kid has tried to lie … Kang Lee studies why and how. He spoke onstage at TED2016 on Thursday, February 18, 2016. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED

The number is 110: One hundred and ten past and new TED speakers are part of our newest conference, TEDSummit, happening in Banff, Canada, 26–30 June 2016.

And you are invited to join us!

Some of the most popular TED speakers of all time, including Dan Pink, David Gallo, Esther Perel, Kelly and Jane McGonigal, Pico Iyer and dozens more will be joined by brand-new voices including food innovator Josh Tetrick, forest biologists Suzanne Simard, environmental writer Emma Marris, energy experts Joe Lassiter and Michael Shellenberger, blockchain researcher Bettina Warburg, global affairs writer Jonathan Tepperman, empathy scientist Abigail Marsh and more.

About half of these speakers will take the stage to give major TED Talks on topics ranging from advanced digital technologies to climate change to surveillance and transparency … from relationships to brain microscopy … from trust to what humans might look like in 200 years

These 110 speakers will also join — and often lead — workshops and participatory sessions. Look, among the more than 100 sessions, for workshops on the ethics of artificial intelligence, and on the fragility of global megacities … brainstorms on what the TED community might do to help confront the refugee crisis, or on the idea of a female utopia … master classes on social storytelling and on how to think like a scientist … a walk in the woods guided by a forest biologist … even a hands-on genetic manipulation lab.

And there will be planned and unplanned surprises, and of course, outdoor activities in the gorgeous scenery of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

There are a few seats left to attend TEDSummit. You can find more information and apply here.

And here is the full list of past and new TED speakers who have confirmed their participation in TEDSummit 2016 (subject to change):

Alessandro Acquisti, Privacy economist
Esra’a Al Shafei, Human rights activist
Monica Araya, Activist
Tasso Azevedo, Forester, sustainability activist
Julia Bacha, Filmmaker
Uldus Bakhtiozina, Photographer, visual artist
Benedetta Berti, International policy analyst
Alexander Betts, Refugee scholar
Laila Biali, Musician
Rachel Botsman, Sharing innovator
Laura Boushnak, Photographer
Ed Boyden, Neuroengineer
Steve Boyes, Explorer
Jennifer Bréa, Filmmaker
Erik Brynjolfsson, Innovation researcher
Kitra Cahana, Journalist and conceptual artist
Daniela Candillari, Musician
Jason Clay, Market transformer
Angélica Dass, Photographer
Abe Davis, Computer scientist
Dan Dennett, Philosopher, cognitive scientist
Jamie Drummond, Anti-poverty activist
R. Luke DuBois, Artist, composer, engineer
Zak Ebrahim, Peace activist
Hasan Elahi, Privacy artist
Juan Enriquez, Futurist
Helen Fisher, Anthropologist; expert on love
Melissa Fleming, Voice for refugees
David Gallo, Oceanographer
Casey Gerald, American
Anand Giridharadas, Author
Michael Green, Social progress expert
Michael Green, Architect
Brian Greene, Physicist
Johann Hari, Journalist
Sam Harris, Neuroscientist and philosopher
Gary Haugen, Human rights attorney
Lesley Hazleton, Accidental theologist
Celeste Headlee, Writer and radio host
Margaret Heffernan, Management thinker
Hugh Herr, Bionics designer
Erik Hersman, Blogger, technologist
Hays + Ryan Holladay, Musical artists
John Hunter, Educator
Jedidah Isler, Astrophysicist
Pico Iyer, Global author
Meg Jay, Clinical psychologist
Ellen Jorgensen, Biologist and community science advocate
Sarah Kay, Poet
Kevin Kelly, Digital visionary
Matt Kenyon, New media artist
Ken Lacovara, Paleontologist
David Lang, Maker
Joe Lassiter, Energy scholar
Tim Leberecht, Marketer
Monica Lewinsky, Social activist
Rebecca MacKinnon, Media activist
Pia Mancini, Democracy activist
Emma Marris, Environmental writer
Abigail Marsh, Psychologist
Jane McGonigal, Game designer
Kelly McGonigal, Health psychologist
Lee Mokobe, Poet
Robert Muggah, Megacities expert
Michael Murphy, Designer
Ethan Nadelmann, Drug policy reformer
Iyeoka Okoawo, Singer
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Economist
Dan Pallotta, Charity defender
Amanda Palmer, Musician
Sarah Parcak, Space archaelogist, TED Prize winner
Eli Pariser, Organizer and author
Vikram Patel, Mental health care advocate
Esther Perel, Relationship therapist
Dan Pink, Career analyst
Will Potter, Investigative journalist
Navi Radjou, Innovation strategist
Shai Reshef, Education entrepreneur
Usman Riaz, Percussive guitarist
Joshua Roman, Cellist
Jon Ronson, Writer and filmmaker
Martine Rothblatt, Transhumanist
Juliana Rotich, Tech entrepreneur
Louie Schwartzberg, Filmmaker
eL Seed, Calligraffiti artist
Bill Sellanga, Musician
Graham Shaw, Communication coach
Michael Shellenberger, Climate policy expert
Michael Shermer, Skeptic
Suzanne Simard, Forest biologist
Ernesto Sirolli, Sustainable development expert
Kevin Slavin, Algoworld expert
Christopher Soghoian, Privacy researcher + activist
Andrew Solomon, Writer
Malte Spitz, Politician and data activist
Daniel Suarez, Sci-fi author
Pavan Sukhdev, Environmental economist
Ilona Szabo de Carvalho, Policy reformer
Don Tapscott, Digital strategist
Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Documentary photographer
Marco Tempest, Techno-illusionist
Jonathan Tepperman, Editor, Foreign Affairs
Josh Tetrick, Food innovator
Julian Treasure, Sound consultant
Zeynep Tufekci, Techno-sociologist
Sherry Turkle, Cultural analyst
James Veitch, Comedian and writer
Robert Waldinger, Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest
Bettina Warburg, Blockchain researcher

At TED@StateStreet, Patrice Thompson shares how two generations with very different ideals can work together effectively. Photo: Paul Sanders/TED

From anti-jargon campaigns to how Gen X and Gen Y can collaborate, TED@StateStreet highlighted ideas to inspire leaders at every level. This TED Institute event, held in London on November 18, showcased speakers from both inside and outside the financial services company. Throughout, the focus was on innovative thinking in work culture.

Below, quotes worth sharing from each of the TED@StateStreet talks:

“The quality of our conversations matter. Great achievements only come after great conversations.” —John O’Leary, communications advocate 

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We have the rim, the hub and the spokes — we just need to put them together.” —Paul O’Connell, economist

“Big social changes can start with seemingly small, mundane actions.” —Christina Balch, selfie artist

“Imagine if your life were defined by the thing you were most ashamed of. What skills and talents would the world miss out on?” —Alexander McLean, TED Fellow

“What I’d always thought was simply a personal matter, I now see has a ripple effect out into the workplace and community. If I don’t share who I really am, I may be inadvertently contributing to an atmosphere of discrimination.” —Morgana Bailey, Human Resources activist

“Here are three ways to improve your communication: 1) Know your audience. 2) Know what you’re trying to say. 3) Get to the point, and do it quickly.” —Thea Knight, anti-jargon crusader

“No one is denying there’s a global education problem. How can we fix it?” —Todd Gershkowitz, education disruptor

What’s in a name? More than you think, says Cynthia Win at TED@StateStreet. Photo: Paul Sanders/TED

“We have to change the dialogue on immigration. Immigration is a catalyst, a vital force. It is a social good that makes communities more interesting.” —Tim Graf, global soul

“It took me 32 interviews to get one job. The most important thing I learned? Persistence, persistence, persistence.” —Ashwini Mrinal Bhagat, company culturist

“How can companies improve employee engagement across generations? Three ways: 1) Encourage more collaborative projects, 2) Cross-train staff on different roles, and 3) Recognize and reward valuable ideas.” —Patrice Thompson, generational diplomat

“I am drawn to ghost towns. I always wonder, how many ghost towns are we in the process of creating today?” —Abbey Williams, ghost town explorer

“Shakespeare — financier, poet, playwright — should be our inspiration today.” —John Bolton, business imaginist 

“In some parts of Asia, more and more people are adopting Western names for convenience. If we don’t put in the effort to learn the names from other cultures today, will we still see traditionally meaningful names in the next generation?”  —Cynthia Win, name decoder 

“When professional footballers transfer teams, their original team receives a fee. What if companies did the same thing with employees?” —Yusuf Nurbhai, management innovator

“I started off studying to be a doctor. Then I became a poet. Poetry is a less quantifiable way of saving lives.” —Harry Baker, slam poet

In Katete, a community in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, a group of residents watch a test flight of a new drone from Matternet that could, someday soon, deliver test results for newborn babies in their town. Photo: Aris Messinis for Matternet

Drones are the sexy, mysterious tech craze that are often a butt of a joke, a vague solution or an ominous threat. But no matter how flashy, good technology should still solve concrete problems. Amid the hype of getting packages and pizzas delivered in half the time, what if drones could revolutionize transportation networks, connecting people to what they actually need the most?

The health of a community relies on efficient networks. Medicine and medical supplies need to be transported reliably from Point A to Point B. This, in turn, relies on roads to travel on. Sturdy roads, able to endure heavy rains and bad weather, are something many in developed countries take for granted. But worldwide, a staggering one billion people lack access to all-season roads. What that means for people who live in remote villages: a simple rainstorm can turn a dirt road into a muddy and impassable mess, cutting them off from vital goods, services and medicines.

A surprising new technology might make a difference. Andreas Raptopoulos (watch his TED Talk) and Paola Santana co-founded Matternet, a company that adds smart software to nimble drones. Their signature product, Matternet ONE, can carry 1 kilogram of cargo over 15-20 kilometers on a single battery charge.

Matternet has worked with WHO in Bhutan to deliver medical supplies to remote hospitals, and with MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in Papua New Guinea to transport medical tests for tuberculosis.

In March 2016, Matternet started tests, along with UNICEF, in Malawi to see how well drones could deliver medical tests and blood samples from remote villages to labs. They’re working with the Malawian government to see if the drones could reduce the wait times for HIV test results, specifically for infants.

Local children watch the test flights in Katete. Photo: Aris Messinis for Matternet

An estimated one million people in Malawi live with the disease, as of 2014. Testing — and regular medication — is crucial to survival, and yet it takes an average of 11 days to deliver supplies from health centers to labs and eight weeks to return test results. Also, according to Raptopoulos, “More than three-quarters of them are within 20 kilometers of each other or a diagnostic lab.” Using drones could dramatically speed up this process and solve the problem of distance.

The first step to solving a problem is assessing what’s already happening. Paola Santana, who is also the Head of Network Operations and Lead Coordinator for this project, studied Malawi’s current system for transporting HIV tests. “There is someone on a motorcycle or in a car that does a circuit every day. They need to go and select the number of labs where they start in the morning, and by the afternoon, they have picked up all of these samples from these clinics. Then they go to the hospital where these samples are going to be analyzed,” she says. The problem is, though, that these routes are outdated. “These circuits have been created based on data that has been there for a while. So imagine that as populations shift, more people now live in other areas that are not being served every day. Still, the logistics circuit stays the same.”

Young girls watch test flights at the Area 18 Health Center. Photo: Aris Messinis for Matternet

Logistics, she says, need to account for how people are moving, how outbreaks are spreading and how many samples are transported in real time. That way, a regular and efficient system is created, one that can transport tests once a day, as opposed to once a week or even twice a month, which is the current norm.

With this data, Santana and her team clearly understood the task at hand. “The challenge is trying to envision how the system should work that has nothing to do with how the system works today. How do we adapt the flow of logistics to a new technology?”

Working with Malawi’s Ministry of Health, Department of Civil Aviation and Ministry of Transportation, among others, Matternet first mapped the geography of the approved flying area. Then, they entered the data into the software so that any obstacles could be accounted for in determining the safest and most effective routes.

Through the app, a user can select the landing location and command the drone to take off. Because it flies at around 400 feet, a user can also track its course on the app and get a notification when it lands.

This means that in the future, lab technicians could autonomously use the app to send HIV tests from their remote villages to central hospitals, and get the results back in a timely manner.

A lab technician from Kamuzu Central Hospital holds the UNICEF drone, flanked by Jim O’Sullivan, left, Matternet’s electronics lead, and Paola Santana, right, Matternet’s head of network operations. Photo: Aris Messinis for Matternet

Santana and her team were in Lilongwe, Malawi, for a total of two weeks. During the first half of the trip, they worked from 8am to 5pm every day to acclimate the drones to the new geography and make sure they could fly safely over densely populated areas. “The goal was to collect diagnostics from Area 25 Health Center and Area 18 Health Center to the Kamuzu Central Hospital to be analyzed,” Santana says.

As they prepped, Matternet, UNICEF and Malawi’s Ministry of Information hosted hands-on sessions and a Community Demo Day so that the locals could see how the drones work and learn what they’d be carrying. These demos also stressed the importance of HIV awareness, getting tested and taking antiretrovirals.

At Kamuzu Central Hospital, UAV technician Brandon Landry speaks to a group of moms-to-be, showing how the drone works and what it will be carrying: HIV tests for infants. Photo: Aris Messinis for Matternet

Plenty of locals turned out for Community Demo Day at Area 25 Primary School. Photo: Aris Messinis for Matternet

The next week, they conducted the first official test launch. The drone completed a 10-kilometer journey from Area 25 Health Center to Kamuzu Central Hospital, a journey UNICEF calls the “first known use of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] on the continent for improvement of HIV services.”

On the day of the inaugural test launch at Kamuzu Central Hospital, Dr. Peter Kumpalume, Malawi’s Minister of Health, works with drone technician Brandon Landry to get ready for launch. Photo: Aris Messinis for Matternet

Malawi’s Minister of Health, Peter Kumpalume, praised the launch as a huge step forward in the country’s fight against HIV/AIDS. “We are at the forefront of technology. The countdown to ending HIV/Aids has begun and today is another step forward in meeting that goal.”

UNICEF’s Malawi representative, Mahimbo Mdoe, also remarked on the implications for transportation in the country. “HIV is still a barrier to development in Malawi. This innovation could be the breakthrough in overcoming transport challenges and associated delays experienced by health workers in remote areas of Malawi.”

What’s next? UNICEF, the Malawian government and other partners are assessing the results of the feasibility study. This way, they can look at impact before moving on to any subsequent phases.

TED and Wikipedia have teamed up in the spirit of open, accessible knowledge.

“I firmly believe that nonprofit organizations should magnify their impact by collaborating wherever their aims align,” says Andy, one of TED’s Wikipedians-in-Residence.

Andy works as a consultant, advising organizations about Wikipedia, Wikiquote and numerous other Wiki-projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, including a program known as the GLAM-Wiki Initiative. GLAM stands for “Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums,” and it pairs experienced Wikipedia editors with nonprofit cultural institutions — like TED, which fits under the “archive” category of GLAM’s acronym.

What’s in the archive that TED is sharing with the Wiki editors? A collection of metadata around our 2,000+ TED Talks — headlines and descriptions, tags, speaker names and more — which will become part of the Wikidata bank, and can be used to add all kinds of information and detail to Wiki pages.

So TED has hired Andy and his fellow veteran Wikipedia volunteer, Jane, to work part time for six months to help connect TED’s data with Wikipedia. Their goal: to motivate their fellow volunteers to add new articles about speakers and topics that TED covers, and to add new links into existing articles where TED’s data would add knowledge. As well, they’re hoping to inspire people to translate pages. Think of Andy and Jane as the face of TED in the Wikipedia community, liaisons who understand the nuances and sensitivities that come with being a part of such a dedicated and hardworking collective.

This complex-seeming workflow for linking TED’s metadata to Wikipedia, encouraged and assisted by TED’s Wikipedians-in-Residence, is how Wikipedia works — many hands, many lines of communication and many ways to contribute. Based on original diagram by Lori Byrd Phillips; edits by Sacha Vega for TED.

To break down the diagram: TED donates metadata (images, content) to the Wikipedians-in-Residence who then upload this information to Wikidata,  which allows fellow Wikimedia volunteers to easily access these details and update or create articles. In return for the data, Andy and Jane share their expertise with the TED staff through informationals and basic Wikimedia training. Occasionally, the Wikipedians-in-Residence may hold a GLAM event. These events can range from competitions to hackathon-style tasks to further encourage participation with the project.

Andy and Jane are working for and getting paid by TED, which is made immediately clear to the Wikimedia community. “Though they have different approaches, TED and the Wikimedia community both want to make knowledge available, multilingually,” Andy says via email. “I want to help both organizations to do that in partnership, and to help each community to understand the other.”

“The advantage of working in Wikidata is that everyone can work there in their own language,” Jane says. “This enables easy access to information across all language Wikipedias. Central discussions are still in English, but when we link to things, they show up in the user’s own language.”

Why can’t TED just edit Wikipedia on its own? Well, the Wikimedia Foundation has set up protections to ensure that organizations can’t edit their own pages — no matter the intention, good or bad. Giving a business unrestricted access to its Wikipedia page could result in a constantly evolving advertisement, possibly transforming much of the site into a black hole of never-ending marketing copy.

The Wikimedia ethos is about maintaining a collaborative and transparent digital climate. And Wikipedia as a whole is its own galaxy. Collaborating with people who are intimately familiar with its layout and peculiarities, while bringing perspectives from numerous cultures, languages and fields of expertise, allows for an organic cross-pollination of information.

Over time, as speaker pages are created and articles updated, TED’s Wikipedians-in-Residence will be able to identify gaps in TED’s past and present coverage, and reflect back to TED what they see. Meanwhile, they can generate calls to action to the Wikipedia community – via project pages, discussion boards and on their personal profiles – to fill in the lightly covered areas, no matter the topic.

Which suits these volunteers fine. “My favorite part of being a Wikipedian is learning more about what interests me,” Jane says.

There are a lot of kindred spirits among the TED and Wikimedia communities, people committed to the spreading and sharing of knowledge. This collaboration is all about sending a probe into the farthest corners of Wikimedia — finding those who are interested in helping to further TED’s mission of ideas worth spreading.