I believe that the inspirational advice from a fellow audiencer at my first TED in 1995 guided me to Nottingham next week. For the British Council I will do a gig entitled ”I do not know?!?” Three days ago I asked the crowd to help me prepare for here and now. And indirectly for next week and a fantastic future. The crowd responded. Here is what we put together – together.

(TED will publish a video of the presentation, the slides here does not justify neither the work involved from everyone that contributed, nor the content of their inpsirations)

If you get anything from TED, here is your chance to contribute back! Please help me to present a stunning and inspirational five minute talk a couple of days from now. I therefore ask you to create some material that I might present in less than a minute. Hopefully at least four (4) of you will hear my request, thus giving me one minute to introduce and round up your contributions.

Yesterday I was invited to give a five (5) minute talk at the pre TEDxStockholm conference, which takes place north of Stockholm this Saturday (June 6, 2009). It’s an independet TEDx event, operated under license from TED, that gather a small group of around 40 specially invited persons. These include Klas Hallberg, Janne Gunnarson, Stefan Einhorn, and David Lega who will each talk for 18 minutes. Myself and Björn Jeffrey are limited to five minutes. Behind it all is a concept to disseminate TED.COM via TEDx events. TEDxStockholm is developed by Fredrik and Teo Härén (interesting.org), with help from among others Henrik Ahlén, and the ambition is to arrange the first public TEDxStockholm September 19, 2009.

I have an idea for a talk that I might produce myself, but hopefully yours are more inspirational. The conference theme is ”inspiration”, and I will focus the content around providing the best start in life for our children. The TEDx license implies some limitations, which I do not yet know in detail. But the talks should be in English; they will be recorded; TED reserves the right to republish all material whenever and where they want; hence the materials used must be cleared for that copyrightwise. [Update: It will be Creative Commons 3.0, and by submitting to me I assume you grant me and TED the required rights].

As I begun complentating the opportunity I remembered an idea I in December 2007. It sprung up during a meeting about social media with a small group of members of the Swedish Parliament. One of them, Christer Winbäck, raised the concern about finding time to (mikro)blog and participate in social media. Among other things he for instance ”had to write motions/bills”. I suggested he might outsource that task to his constituents. His response was something like ”have you ever let your audience write the manuscript for your gigs?” Afterwards I published a blog post that I would like to try that. And now it’s time – I hope.

If this works out I am open for your creativity. Please comment or e-mail me (richard.gatarski@weconverse.com) your ideas or material. It might be a video, slides, a manuscript. Whatever that I will be able to present during 55 seconds. Consider the limitations I hinted upon above, and I’ll make a concluding slide listing all contributors. I reserve the right of what to include, and if I at all should fulfill this idea at TEDxStockholm (depending on if I get anything from you). Remember, the theme is ”inspiration” and my focus is ”best start in life for our children”.

Thank you in advance.

(I will announce this post in Twitter, Jaiku, Bloggy, Facebook, PPlist and some other social media outlets, and update it with more links as soon as I have time).

[Update 15:10]: It can´t be a selling, it’s about sharing inspirational ideas. In another forum Gunnar hinted about Swedish Radio’s show På Minuten (On the minute), as a way to cope with the time constraint ;). Plus I added links to some stuff above.

[Update 20:20] Tank you all for ideas, support, retweets and other ways of spreading the opportunity! So far we have recieved a lot of interest and some more or less conceptualized ideas, but nothing complete. Hopefully you will join the crowd and the content will come from you. It would be cool if you posted your idea here as a comment, and published complete contributions somewhere on the web (tagged as ”TEDx Stockholm, crowdsourced”) and include a link in the comment. BTW, the organizers point out [I’ve recorrected this after comments] that the correct spelling is ”TEDxStockholm” (except for microblogs use ”TEDx Stockholm” with the space). Hence I edited this post, including its title.

[Update 21:50] A few minutes ago Johan Ronnestam submitted his contribution (after a couple of e-mail passes). I wish I knew of any web based tool for collaborated storyboarding/scriptwriting, do you? Compare Celtx, whis is a downloadable app for personal use. Perhaps I should setup a wiki. Meanwhile I tentatively work out the script below.

[Update Thursday 15:10] Added my intro text and re-corrected TEDxStockholm spellout.

[Update Friday 23:59] Edited the script, added introductionary quote at top of this post.

[Update Saturday 18:50] Sligthly adjusted the intro of the post and added the slides. I did not really follow the script below, as you will se in the video when it gets published.

Script (kind of) With reservations for rearrangings, additions, and removals pending on what comes in and what you say on the way.

50s, Richard Gatarski speaks: Nicholas Taleb tells how we humans tend to simplify the causes of complex phenomena. Even so, I still believe that the inspirational advice from a fellow audiencer at my first TED in 1995 guided me to Nottingham next week. For the British Council I will do a gig entitled ”I do not know?!?” Three days ago I asked the crowd to help me prepare for here and now. And indirectly for next week and a fantastic future. The crowd responded. Here is what we did together.

55s Ladislaus Horatius: Freeze-dried wisdom
05s switch
30s Joakim Vollert: 5th grader with Phun
05s switch
40s Katarina Graffman: Look at the kids behavior [preview, to be extended]
05s switch
XXs open
05s switch
30s Christina & Stellan Löwing: This is Lisa
05s switch
50s Johan Ronnestam: Act 4 Kidz
05s switch
15s Richard Gatarski speaks: She, at TED5, adviced me to save for my childrens education. I re-thought that into investing in their and their friends future. It’s time to stop ego-shopping and pay back our own parents sacrifices.
We will do it – right! Thank you for having us here.
Us were [slide with credits].