If you don’t already know about TED Talks, it’s sufficent to know they are AWESOME and cover a world of subjects and topics from the best way to tie your shoelaces to the latest information on cutting edge technology (the first conference in 1984 included unveiling the brand new Apple Mac).  If you want to know more, I’ve included loads of info after the video.

I’m a HUGE fan of these informative, interesting and thought provoking talks (never longer than 20 minutes) and often do a sort of wiki-links thing following random talks and subject hopping losing hours and learning loads!

I decided that I wanted to keep a better track of my favourite talks, and also that I wanted to share them with my lovely readers, who are by definition, intelligent and have enquiring minds.  So this is the start of a new monthly feature – TED Tuesdays!

So, here’s a starting point for you, one of my favourite talks that may well change how you work with your google searches and social media….

Extra Info about TED

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and began in 1984 as a conference to share ideas across a broad range of subjects.  It became a regular conference in 1990, and gets speakers in a vast array of fields (including scientists, philosophers, musicians, religious leaders, philanthropists, and many others) to give some of the best talks in the world.

Lucky for us, their tag line is “ideas worth spreading” – which means all their talks, since 2006 are shared on TED.com and YouTube for free.  That’s currently over 2,400 talks on every possible subject from Adventure to Wikipedia.  Which is just as well as a ticket to the conference will set you back a cool $17,000 this year.

This is just a starting point.  Along with the sister conference; TEDGlobal, TEDx events (free under a licence to be organised by anyone, anywhere), TEDMed (medical and health based talks), TED Radio Hour (using several talks to theme an hour discussion on a single topic – my new favourite podcast) and TED Open Translation Project (which is translating TED talks into 110 languages to improve accessibility) there are literally thousands of talks on top of the core talks.  There is also books, studies, blogs, newsletters…..

So.  Look out for my favourite talks each month and let me know – what are YOUR ideas worth sharing?  I’d love to know what you think of this talk – let me know in comments!

*yes, it’s a ‘how I met your mother’ reference.