TED: Dave Eggers Talk

TED is an annual conference about ideas worth spreading, held in Monterey, California. TED started in 1984 and stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and Vagueness.

People get together and watch lectures (or "talks" if down "with" ""the"" """"""lingo""""""). Attendees get all excited about how inspiring this conference is, and how they're going to take those ideas and majorly change the world. In sum, it's totally like college but with fewer keg stands.

In 2005 TED introduced a prize portion where three individuals are each given $100,000 and granted a "wish to change the world." So far as I can tell, this is something like winning the MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, only 5 times smaller. One of the three winners this year was Dave Eggers.

Dave is best known for writing his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000). In it, Dave talks about becoming his 8-year-old brother's legal guardian at the age of 22, following the sudden deaths of their parents. Or perhaps Dave is best known for founding the publishing house McSweeney's. And being witty. And pulverizing Chuck Norris solely with his intellectual genius. So many accomplishments, I forget.

Anyway, Dave won and here he is presenting his idea worth sharing. The delivery in this talk is awesome. I was secretly afraid that Dave Eggers would only be funny on paper, but as it turns out he is also funny in person. I love this talk. It's super long by interwebs standards, but a totally worthwhile use of 24 minutes you were going to waste on YouTube anyway.



(From K.C.)