Cet article est proposé par Emily Lara Rosales

Have you ever heard of TED?

These three letters stand as the acronym for Technology, entertainment and Design.

Need another clue?

TED started as a conference in 1984 in California. Originally, it brought together a happy enlightened few coming from either of the fields mentioned above. It has now become a huge global community based on a simple idea: sharing ideas worth spreading.

The aim of this community is quite simple: “We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives, and ultimately, the world”. Simple and ambitious, actually. But definitely not impossible: the community has been growing ever since the first conference. They have expanded the content to new topics, such as global issues, the arts, business, and they have developed new extensions to the physical annual conference (which, by the way, is almost always sold out a year in advance). It is more specifically the web extension I wish to present in this post: The TED Talks.

The TED conference aims to bring together, for four days, the “greatest thinkers and doers of the world”, and get them to give their best presentation ever in maximum 18 minutes - the “talk” format. Truly challenging. As the whole world could not attend to the event, the idea of a website gathering the best talks’ archives came up quite early as a necessity. Launched in April 2007, it now offers more than 200 videos, and is continuously enriched. Taking the original idea all the way, these invaluable pieces of video can be freely watched, shared and reposted. And, according to the basic principle that a good idea can come from anywhere, anyone, anyhow and at anytime, TED Talks is a work in progress where every human being can submit his worth-spreading-idea and contribute to what may be one of the largest and most inspiring global projects.

I could say much more, but I’d rather not. Instead, here is a random sample.

And for the rest, just go and have a look yourself.

• Want to see/hear/read a short fairytale made only with emoticons? See Rives’ talk here :

rives_tells_a_story_of_mixed_emoticons.html(click on the link to watch video)

• Want to know the real secrets of success in 8 words? Have a look at Richard St. John’s talk :

richard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success.html(click on the link to watch video)

• Want to get an idea of why we crave love so much? See Helen Fisher’s “The brain in love” talk :

helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_love.html (click on the link to watch video)

To discover more about TED Talks : www.ted.com