The road to TED: part 5 – the announcement

December 28, 2011

by LIOR ZOREF @lior

11/15/2011

The FEDEX guy just dropped off another package at my home from TED.

I opened the box carefully and in it was a marble slab etched with the Ten Commandments for TED speakers.

These are the TED Commandments:

It was wrapped with a lot of packing peanuts and a small note stating that the packaging materials are biodegradable. The peanuts can be put in water and they will dissolve 🙂

So I took a few peanuts and put them in a glass of water. Hocus Pocus – they do dissolve.

Cool!

11/16/2011

Today another package came in from TED. What’s next? Everyday a new surprise…

Intrigued, I opened the packaged and found inside the book with Steve Jobs’ new biography.

Attached to it was a letter from Chris Anderson, a TED curator. He wrote that Steve Jobs never spoke at TED but it is harder to find a more important person in the community surrounding TED which has changed the three worlds TED represents: Design, Technology and Entertainment.

Indeed.

11/24/2011

Today I got approval to tell I was going to speak at TED (Finally).

Actually, I haven’t been this excited for a long while. Especially from the comments you have written (link to the Facebook thread, link to the blog post).

Thank you all. You have no idea how excited I got from your feedback.

12/2/2011

Since telling about TED I am surrounded by so many new experiences.

First of all, the remarks get from everyone and everywhere.

For example, yesterday my neighbor Miriam walked in. an old charming woman in indescribable measures. She came with her daughter, both of them with bright eyes with excitement that I, the neighbor who helps Garden every now and then, is about to speak at TED.

In ted.com there is a section called TED conversations where anyone can create a discussion surrounding an idea or a question.

I wrote there of the process I am going through and that I was looking for examples of people using wisdom of the crowds.

Then, suddenly, my phone starts vibrating extremely and suspiciously. It buzzes every other second, again and again in a way which never happened.

I just finished making pizza and all I wanted was to do was to think of dietician while biting in to this juicy (spicy) pizza in front of me.

But the phone kept buzzing and receiving messages in a wild rate, so I put the pizza down trying to understand what’s going on.

TED’s Facebook page, which has 1.6 million fans, decided to invite all the TED fans around the world to help me build my TED talk:

This lead to 150 shares, dozens of twitter messages, and most importantly – hundreds of messages from fascinating people from around the world.

A pastor using crowd wisdom to build his Sunday mass, a mom who raises her child using crowd wisdom, the U2 fan club manager who uses the wisdom of the bands fans, and many many more.

I gazed at my pizza standing there all alone while I stand there with my mouth open and unable to eat.

My TED talk will be just a few short minutes, but the journey I am experiencing on the way there is long, wonderful and exciting. It is just as important as the TED talk itself and I breathe and admire every moment and every experience.

This is fun…