I feel like great TED Talks are ones that are a little bit subject to interpretation, that do provoke further conversation - and potentially controversy.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Usually, TED only invites the most accomplished and famous people in the world to give talks.
In case you're unfamiliar with TED, it is a series of short lectures on a variety of subjects that stream on the Internet for free.
It's weird: you do a TED talk on something, and people think that you suddenly have a lot of answers around the topic.
For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it's a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it's changing the world, like if 'This American Life' suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders.
A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.
I haven't done the profoundly impactful work many TED speakers have.
Republicans prefer straight talk to politically correct talk!
Now Speaker Gingrich says interesting and insightful things. He can explain them well. On many occasions he also says outrageous things that come from nowhere and he has a tendency to say them at exactly the time when they most undermine the conservative agenda.
Having seen TED from a distance, I always thought if ever there was a place for someone like me, the outcasts, people who maintained who they are despite being told what they were, it was TED.
I look at myself more as a storyteller than a screenwriter, as pretentious as that may sound, but that's what really attracts me to TED Talks. For me, the really effective ones are being presented by expert storytellers.