The folks at TED are on fire — hot on the heels of Abreu’s TED Prize speech, here’s the video of the astounding performance. Worth downloading in the high resolution version (go get Miro!) and watching on a bigger screen. In any case, save it for home; don’t give it partial attention at work. Astonishing.
Design
18
Feb 09
TED Prize: Jose Antonio Abreu
Another great event from TED 2009: the TED Prize talk from Venezuelan teacher/conductor Jose Antonio Abreu — while his talk is good & interesting, the scope of his work — building El Sistema to educate hundreds of thousands of youths in Venezuela — is astounding. But the really amazing part of this presentation was seeing, via video, a live concert of the Venezuela Youth Orchestra conducted by one of Abreu’s students, Gustavo Dudamel, who’s now leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was an amazing performance, and then when you consider that the artists are all kids, many of them from very rough backgrounds, it’s even more meaningful. Below is just Abreu’s talk — hopefully the TED folks will get the performance video up, too.
10
Feb 09
Miro 2.0 Released Today
Yay for PCF! Nicholas Reville just announced that the new Miro 2.0 is available today. Tons of improvements, a redesigned channel guide, easier sharing — definitely worth checking out. (Especially with all the new TEDtalks content coming out…)
9
Feb 09
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Outstanding TEDtalk
One of my 3 favorite TEDtalks — really incredible and moving.
7
Feb 09
TED Overload
All the awesomeness fuses in my brain are blown from sheer overload of the awesome, so not sure I’ll be super-coherent tonight — will post more through the week about a bunch of different & great insights from TED.
For now, I want to capture this one thing: on both a personal and professional level, TED is amazing and transformative. It’s chic to be sort of cynical about the conference circuit, glib about how you’ve seen things like this before. But it’s not appropriate in this case. I feel that virtually every interaction & talk over the past 3 days has made me want to become better at what I do, and to do more to change the world we live in as well. It’s made me want to do more at Mozilla, but beyond that to be a more present and thoughtful human, husband and father.
Because my first experience at TED has been one where being smart is cool, where using data is obviously the right way to do things, where science rules, where art transforms. It makes me think harder about what to do at work to have a greater impact, and what to do at home to be a better family member.
It’s as good an event as I’ve ever been to, and especially with all the cynicism in our world today, I think it’s important to note TED as a force that promotes education, science, and art as a way to improve the world.
More soon, as my brain recovers.
ps – everyone here uses Firefox. 
Books & eBooks
Jul 29, 6:54 › Borja: the ebooks have another, IMO, critical flaw which Jul 28, 18:07 › John: Yes, exactly. We have whole rooms that are pretty Jul 28, 18:06 › John: Alfred -- could you send me a screen shot? also try Jul 28, 14:11 › phik: I love my ebook reader, and like you, I almost refuse