TED2009 day 4 wrap

Posted on | February 8, 2009 | No Comments

I met with some family last night. And the conversation revolved around TED!

WHO, WHAT, WHEN ,WHERE,WHY, and how did I get to it.

If you follow any of what I have been writing you will know the plot of this story.

What I want to talk about is the power of unconditional interest.

UNCONDITIONAL INTEREST.

This morning as I sat packing my bags, looking at cards from TEDsters and generally putting my belongings into a case to head home I realized that the power of TED was really not all the talks, or the environment, not even the cool people.

Although they all work as part of the environmental catalyst.

What has profoundly touched me is the capacity to create, foster and promote this idea of unconditional interest.

Let me paint the picture.

If you have not been to TED try to imagine a theater, like you would go see a movie in and the popcorn stand and surrounding area.

Now imagine that area filled with 1300 talking people.

Now imagine being able to turn around to any person, ANY PERSON, and starta conversation by simply asking “what brings you here”!

TED was 4 days of telling your story, relating your story to the presentations and then relating your ideas to the whole package!

But what made the whole thing more extraordinary is that the person who might ask you about your story is not simply being polite.  No this person is genuine, curious, interested and engaged.

I call this unconditional interest.

I think, based on 4 days of TED, that this is a fundamental problem in the way we stumble through much of what we do on a daily basis.

We have to buy interest, we have to go to extraordinary measures to provoke interest, seldom is interest simply rolled out like a carpet in front of us.

In short we have to work very hard to create an environment for this to take place, people to be interested in what we have to say.

For me TED was all about the power of UNCONDITIONAL INTEREST.

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