We want to know your favourite TED Talk and asked you to tweet your favourite using the hashtag #favTEDTalk. So we thought we’d better share ours as well…
Melanie Hickmore, Managing Director
In my #favTEDTalk Sir Ken Robinson talks about ‘Bringing on a learning revolution’ this is a follow up to his fantastic 2006 TED talk ‘How schools kill creativity’. He challenges the linearity and one-size-fits-all approach and recognises the organic nature of personal development. Sir Ken talks about the current education system dislocating people from their natural talents and suggests that we should be creating conditions in which children’s individuality can flourish: personalise learning, cultivate creativity and acknowledge and appreciate the tremendous diversity that the human community depends on.
As a parent to a pre-schooler I’ve started looking at the current system and I’m always interested to hear about new ways of thinking, new ways to educate. I find Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talks truly inspiring! He definitely has ideas worth sharing, exactly what we need to bring on the learning revolution and avoid crushing the next generation’s true potential.
“Every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly”. Sir Ken Robinson
Tom Hickmore, Creative Director
I came across Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk ‘Start with the Why‘ while I was attending a branding workshop. I went on to read the book. I love a theoretical tool, and I’m most interested in powerful high-level concepts. If the idea is strong, you can go back to it in its essential form and easily apply it and re-apply it in various contexts. This is what impressed me about Start with the Why. The simple idea it proposes is that people don’t buy what you do, but why you do it. Understanding this at a deep level has transformed the way I carry out my leadership role at Nice Media. Start with the Why encourages you to go back to basics and re-examine what you are selling. This is particularly useful for a service company in which defining the product and how it stands out from the competition can be a challenge. What I particularly like about the Why approach is that it encourages you to plough your own path with confidence.
As someone who trained as a fine artist and still thinks like one, the Why approach is very resonant. Even artists have to market themselves. Both artists and businesses have to create strong identities and present them to the world. And both artists and business leaders have to find the essence of these identities deep within themselves. To get it right you have to believe in yourself and not be distracted by fads and fashions. Start with the Why has helped me realise what Nice Media is all about – “clear thinking for a better world”. Rock on!
Here’s a video I’d previously made about ‘Start with the why’.
Richard Adams, Operations Director
When asked for my favourite there were two that instantly sprang to mind. The first was brought to my attention when I joined Nice Media, and is a firm favourites of our Creative Director Tom Hickmore. With nearly 20m views racked up, it’s definitely a popular choice and Simon Sinek ‘How great leaders inspire action‘ should definitely be viewed by any aspiring business person.
But my favourite TED Talk, perhaps viewed by others as banal and (following some research) often berated as one of the worst ever, is Joe Smith ‘How to use a paper towel‘ Why? Because although it is simple and repetitive, it works. And there’s a genuine reasons to do it, Smith says 571 million pounds of paper towels would be saved each year in America alone if everyone kept to just one sheet per hand wash.
Richard Gibbons, Cameraman/Editor
My favourite TED talk happens to also be the first one I ever watched, ‘Under Bageye’s Watchful Eye‘ by Colin Grant.
Last year I was about to film TEDx Brighton, I’d never come across TED Talks before and I wanted to get an idea of what I was filming. This happened to be the first video that I clicked on, and to be honest my heart sank a little when I saw that it was nearly 18 minutes long! No worries, I thought, I’ll just watch a few minutes instead. That’ll give me the gist.
Eighteen minutes later I was surprised when the video ended, so engrossed had I been. Colin Grant had made me laugh, he had made me reminisce and most of all he had made me think and even reconsider. That’s no mean feat, to turn someone around when they were just on a whistlestop research tour.
Grant’s is a story of separation from his Father who once loomed intimidatingly large, but it is his attitude to this that I find compelling. ‘’Never judge a man until you’re in his moccasins’’, he says, and it is this ability to find respect and understanding of such a once hated figure that I admire most.
Tom Windsor, Production Manager
I love this TED talk from David Byrne on ‘How architecture helped music evolve‘, he’s such a compelling character and makes a great presenter in his own darting, hyperactive way. In this talk he makes some really interesting and insightful observations on how the creation of music is intrinsically linked to and shaped by the architecture in which it’s experienced. He moves from talking about music in terms of physical architectural spaces, through to recorded music and how we experience that within the virtual architecture of media players and headphones.
Francesca Cane, Sales and Marketing Coordinator
To be honest, I’m not sure I have a static favourite; I watch a lot of TED Talks and it changes all the time! But one I watched recently and maybe my current favourite is ‘Violence against women—it’s a men’s issue’ by Jackson Katz: (which is actually a TEDxFiDiWomen talk).
I think this talk encompasses what TED Talks should be: it’s about an important issue, it’s powerful, it’s thought provoking and it is accessibly discussed.
It’s one of the TED Talks that, if I could, I would make everybody watch.
Now you know our favourites, tweet us yours using the hashtag #favTEDTalk.
