No matter how busy I am or how little time that I think that I have, the one website that I find myself frequently visiting/revisiting is TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and its genesis in 1984 was as a conference that brought together individuals representing those three worlds. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

While I have never had the opportunity to attend one of the conferences, I have been able to reap many of the benefits through their website which makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free, called TEDTalks. TEDTalks began as a simple attempt to share what happens at TED with the world. Under the moniker “ideas worth spreading,” talks were released online. They rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. In fact, the reaction was so enthusiastic that the entire TED website was re-engineered around TEDTalks, with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world’s most inspiring voices.

As of today, more than 250 talks from their archive are now available, with more being added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. With 50 million views since the debuted online two years ago, TED talks have become a powerful cultural force. To celebrate this milestone, they have released a never-before-seen list: the Top 10 TED talks of all time, as of June 2008. You can watch the video below:

The top 10 TED Talks of all time include:

1. Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han: Touchscreen demo foreshadows the iPhone
3. David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
5. Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other “Mathemagic”
6. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
7. Hans Rosling: The best stats you’ve ever seen
8. Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better
9. Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote

I have seen many of these Talks, but a few I had never seen and will be heading back over to TedTalks to watch them. What I like most about them is that they are intelligent, on-point, and full of wisdom and inspiration. They are perfect for getting an idea of what is going on in the world today and more importantly what is possible. If you have some time, I’d highly recommend spending it there.

I can’t believe a little over a week has passed since I was at the digitalNow conference in Orlando. Part of me feels like I just left, part of me feels like it was forever ago. I guess all good things have to come to an end. The true mark of a great conference experience can be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

At the end of each conference that I attend I ask myself the following questions: How were the individual sessions? How were the keynote speakers? How was the space and time managed? What was the quality of the interactions? Did I leave the conference knowing just a bit more about topics that I am extremely passionate about as well as topics I had never contemplated?

Similarly I also find myself evaluating the qualitative aspects of the conference as well. How many of the sessions were thought provoking or really worth attending? How many of the key note speakers would I want to see again? How many new people did I meet? Of those people that I met how many do I plan on staying in contact with? How many old friends was I able to catch up with? How many new ideas did I leave with? Of those how many are immediately actionable? How many can I act on in the future? If I had a choice of paying any amount of money for the privilege of attending the conference how much would I be willing to pay?

From both a qualitative and quantitative perspective I have to say that the conference was a great success. Very rarely do I attend a conference that I am conflicted between session times and across the whole agenda regarding which sessions to attend. This is one of the few exceptions in recent memory. I actually had to plan out my time really effectively and on a few occasions had to chose between two concurrent sessions that I wanted to attend. Needless to say the conference was programmed very well. I have to say the same for each of the keynote speakers. Of the four speakers, three of them (Chris Anderson, Jeremy Gutsche, and Dan Heath) left an immediate impacts on me, and only one left me questioning the relevance of her presentation (I later realized a lot of value from the presentation but will share that in a future post). Even so it was a good hit rate for the keynotes.

As far as the time and space goes, I have no complaints about either. There was a generous amount of time in between sessions to check voice mail, get a beverage or snack and network. The space was well used with a phenomenal ratio of space per attendee. The fact that the conference center was attached to the hotel made running back and forth between my room and the conference quite easily too. Add to all of those facts that we were within an earshot of Disney World and easily accessible transportation made the location pretty magical (pardon the pun) even for those who aren’t huge Disney fans.

The quality of the interactions perhaps one of the most important litmus tests of any conference was excellent. There was a great mix of attendees from senior executives to more junior staff members but all had interesting perspectives and plenty to share. The presenters, panelists and facilitators also represented a broad array of skills and experiences. When mixed together there was the right amount of people with the right kinds of experience so there was never a shortage of people to talk to, things to consider and ideas to glean. I walked out of the conference with a number of great ideas largely related to online communities and because that is my primary focus now, it was just in time. Some of the ideas were simply a result of synthesizing the knowledge that I absorbed by attending the sessions. However, many others were simply reactions (some positive, some not so positive) to something I saw or heard from other participants. There is no one source for ideas so I am happy to take them from where I can find them.

And as far as meeting up with new acquaintances as well as catching up with old friends the event was pretty good for that as well. Granted it wasn’t as well attended as some of the ASAE events where many of the folks that I am closest to (whats up Jamie, Jeff D., Maddie, Zach, Lindy, David, Andy and Jeff C. and a whole bunch more) but there was no shortage of great people here (whats up Greg, Ben, Rob, Andrew and Becky). Suffice it to say, a lively conversation was never far away. I was challenged as much by the conversations that I had after hours as the one’s that I had at the conference but the sum total of all of them contributed to the same end result. I learned a lot about a number of topics, learned some things about a number of great people and learned even more about myself. Without getting into the specifics (perhaps I will save this for another post) it was well worth the price of admission and then some. In fact I’d go so far as to say that any interaction that can return similar thoughts and idea generation guarantees an immediate ROI.

It goes to show that in the right environment with the right people and a common theme pretty incredible things can happen. So how do define a good conference experience? What qualitative and quantitative metrics do you use to measure personal and professional return on your conference investment? Drop your comments below. I am listening!

How often do you have to collaborate with others to think through a new or existing idea? Exploratree was designed to rapidly facilitate the idea iteration process. It’s essentially an interactive mind mapping tool with a few twists.

Using Flash as the engine, Exploratree allows users to create what they call “Thinking Guides” - tools or frameworks for thinking through an issue and considering different aspects or perspectives that can be useful for helping to develop thinking skills. You can use one of their 23 ready-made templates or simply work from a blank canvas to develop your own to add images, text, and shapes that help you develop and evolve your thoughts.

While the application was originally designed as part of the Enquiring Minds project - a three-year research and development program that is run by Futurelab and funded by Microsoft - working alongside teachers and students in two UK secondary schools the project to develop a distinctive approach to teaching and learning that takes the knowledge, ideas, interests and skills that students bring into schools more seriously and enables young people to take more responsibility for the content, processes, and outcomes of their learning, it is now available for more general use.

By using the power and functionality of the application you can create your document and then send it to a friend or group of friends for review/comment, or allow them to log-in to your Thinking Guide to edit and save changes.

I see a lot of relevance and applicability for this application, and others like it, in connecting distributed work teams and allowing them to rapidly iterate through ideas and projects they are working on/through. I can also see a lot of value in using it alone because it’s simplicity and ease of use allows a user to focus the creation or elaboration of an idea or brainstorm as opposed to being focused on the technology used to facilitate the ideation or brainstorming process. In other words it does what it’s supposed to without getting in your way.

If you are a visual thinking (like I am) who is looking for a light weight, web based tool that is feature rich but very easy to use for collaborating or brainstorming, I’d say that Exploratree is worth taking a look at. No download is required. You can try it without registering, or sign up to the service to get your work saved online, all for free. Exploratree: http://www.exploratree.org.uk