TED Talk, First Draft

I gave a TEDx talk.

I didn’t expect to give one. I was nominated, made it through two selection cuts, and then received a formal invitation to speak.

It was the first publicly recorded speech I’ve done in which the recording was entirely out of my hands. It was professionally shot, edited, and streamed whether I liked it or not. I signed a contract.

We had performance rehearsals and tech rehearsals. We navigated personalities and negotiations. From initial notification to stage performance, the effort took the entire month of September. For me, it was a month of learning.

The first Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) Conference took place in Monterey, California in 1984. Sony demoed the compact disc, Apple demoed the Mac, and Lucasfilm demoed 3D computer graphics, but the venture lost money.

It took six years for founder Richard Saul Wurman to organize a second conference, but this time, TED succeeded. I remember it in the press as an exclusive meeting of the wealthy and elite, the kind of invitation-only event that fostered mystery and conspiracy theories. Sir Ken Robinson spoke before an audience including the likes of Al Gore, and then Al Gore got up and spoke in front of Ken Robinson.

Then between 2001 and 2006, media mogul Chris Anderson purchased and turned TED into a transparent global nonprofit, an annual prize, and an Internet sensation.

I didn’t do a TED Talk; I did a TEDx Talk—an independent event held under a license from TED. The franchise doesn’t offer the same prestige, but it teaches the same lesson—keep your speech under 18 minutes.

I learned to appreciate the amount of editing that goes into some TED Talks. The two organizers of the local event, Corinne and Nikki, had recently witnessed a live TED Talk where the speaker broke her speech into sections. She was so nervous that she had to stop, drink a glass of water, and recompose herself between each section. You see none of that in her final talk.

What looks like a tight, professional 18-minute speech can often take longer to record, not unlike a television sitcom taped before a live studio audience. As long as the speaker gets through the speech, before the crowd, producing under 18 minutes of material—however they accomplish it—the editors can then cut it down to a classic TED performance.

Some people might find this inauthentic, but it’s just the opposite. I wrote recently about how planning and invention are more authentic than spontaneity. Editing an author’s speech performance on video is no different than the author editing the original written speech.

While the most polished thought leaders give the typical TED Talk, TEDx Talks invite emerging speakers, whom we might think of as more authentic in their unpolished nature. Yet the practice and editing provided by the TEDx opportunity is what truly makes their ideas more genuine, and more resonant.

That’s how I looked at the prospect. The theme of my TEDx event was “Upside Down.” I was nominated with my previous blog post “Troll Thyself.” I expanded on it, explaining the course and my teaching more fully, and then adding a closing too. One of the TED handouts reminded me the audience wants a takeaway—a constructive action they could “take away” from my speech.

Of course, I encouraged them to draft.

My final performance was a lesson in its own right. At the technical rehearsal, my speech ran over. The organizers asked me to make cuts. It was my fault—I hadn’t practiced enough to hone my idea down to 18 minutes. I edited on the fly during the final speech and taping. I don’t think you can tell, but I’ll post my full speech here on the blog anyway.

My TEDx Talk was a draft. It turned out to be a good speech, and its one step closer to authentic.