The acronym TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design". It is also the name of a non-profit organization whose mission is to spread interesting ideas via short lectures called TED Talks. The organization held its first conference in 1984 focused on technology, entertainment and design. Since then, the TED Conference has been held every year in Monterey, California, and also in Long Beach since 2009.
Since 2005, another conference called TED Global has taken place in different parts of the world. Since 2009, TED has been offering licenses to organize local conferences called TEDx. More than 5,000 these events have been organized so far, including TEDxPrague, Hradec Králové, Brno, Znojmo and Kroměříž.
Who and what?
All the TED events are based on lectures of approximately twenty-minutes called TED Talks. In the beginning, the conferences were focused only on technology, entertainment and design; however, the topics now covered by TED Talks have significantly expanded. On www.ted.com, there are currently more than 1,500 videos, available for free, showing the speeches of more than 1,300 speakers divided into three hundred topics. Many of them have been translated into Czech. The complete list of TED Talks translated into Czech can be found here.
TED speakers are important figures from the world of science, business, arts, entertainment, and politics. As well as talks given by the frontman of the Irish band U2 Bono focused on providing aid to developing African countries, you can find talks given by e.g., Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg on the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions and Stephen Hawking's talks on space. You can even watch speeches of Nobel Prize winners such as Al Gore.
Do you watch TED Talks? Do you have your favorite topics and speakers? If you have not yet, do not worry. We are preparing articles introducing interesting TED Talks focused on management. See the TED talks tag below.
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