When TED Lost Control of Its Crowd

http://hbr.org/2013/04/when-ted-lost-control-of-its-crowd/ar/1

by jnazario • 13 years ago

145 82 13 years ago

GuiA• 13 years ago

The "vortex math" talk was removed from TEDx Charlotte's website, but there's a copy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oRnhrOf0r0

iansinke• 13 years ago

The fact that he was reading his entire presentation verbatim should have tipped everybody off in the first minute or so. Nobody who's "at the forefront of the most advanced mathematics ever known to mankind" needs that much notes to talk about it. Shoot, I've never had a prof that needed that kind of help... and they're teaching 2nd year courses.

onli• 13 years ago

"The saying is that mathematics is the language of god, but until now, no one has been speaking gods language"

"What we have is the great unifying field theory, with it you can create and exhaust free energy, end all diseases, produce unlimited food, travel anywhere in the universe, build the ultimate supercomputer, artificial intelligence, and obsolete all existing technology."

All in the first minute. I don't think it was really necessary to take the presentation-style into account...

jmyc• 13 years ago

> The fact that he was reading his entire presentation verbatim should have tipped everybody off in the first minute or so

His presentation is utter nonsense, but whether he reads verbatim has nothing to do with it. Someone presenting valid results could just be a poor public speaker and/or nervous.

electronvolt• 13 years ago

I've had an algebra professor who lectured by preparing notes for the class and then reading them and writing them on the board verbatim. After particularly difficult proofs he'd sometimes turn around to look at the class, to see if anyone had their hand up, before moving on.

Said professor has made serious contributions to modern algebra and is probably about as close to "the forefront of modern mathematics" as anyone. Not everyone who's good at math is good at lecturing.

marshray2• 13 years ago

You mean the Timecube guy is all wrong and really it's a vortex?!

Wouldn't you love to see those two in a gloves-off debate?

potatolicious2• 13 years ago

I'm generally of the opinion that TEDx needs to end entirely. TED is a single organizer, not a movement or a cause - its primary contribution to the world is that of exacting, high-quality curation in a world where everyone has a soapbox.

TED's usefulness to people is the trust in the brand and the trust in their curation quality - if this is lost TED's main mission has failed.

In my opinion, TED has already lost this trust. There was a time where a TED link was a must-click and a must-watch. I cannot remember the last time I bothered clicking on a TED link - it must be at least a year now. It is perhaps not too late to regain this trust - but they need to cut loose the forces that are preventing this.

TEDx is a dilution of the TED brand and the organization would IMO be better off without it, and the brand is TED.

I do believe that high-quality curation, especially when it comes to deep knowledge, is a valuable thing - but would-be curators should have to earn the trust their audiences places with them, not ride off TED's coattails.

gmu34• 13 years ago

I don't mean to come off the wrong way, but did you even read the article? Most of it was about past transgressions and what they've done to tighten the brand. Maybe you're been away too long. I also somewhat reject your characterization of their mission, because their mission first and foremost is about the spread of ideas. TEDx has irrefutably made TED more popular and mainstream and thus more effective as a vehicle to spread ideas. Yes quality is important, but even with TEDx, the process to become a "TED link" is extremely curated:

"Indeed, open as TED is, pieces of its ecosystem are highly managed. For example, while 25,000 TEDx talks have been produced so far, as of the time of this writing only 228, or approximately 1%—the best of the best—had made it to TED.com for broad-based distribution and endorsement. People who complain that TED is not curating its content are ignoring how selective it is when posting TEDx content."

scott_s• 13 years ago

I only made it to the third page - if the article makes a sharp turnaround of what TED is doing, then it's seriously burying the lead.

Quality is not important for TED, it is everything. And like potatolicious, I no longer bother with TED talks because their brand has been poisoned for me. It's a perception problem.

potatolicious2• 13 years ago

> "I don't mean to come off the wrong way, but did you even read the article?"

IMO, there is no way to say the above and have it come off the right way. It falls into the same bucket as "with all due respect..."

> "Most of it was about past transgressions and what they've done to tighten the brand."

Yes, and my contention is that it will never be enough. This is not a unique problem - large, spread out organizations are almost universally unable to consistently maintain a high quality bar. The difference is that for TED the quality is the product.

There is IMO no way for TED to reign in its TEDx partners to an extent that will restore the trust in the brand. To do so would basically involve TED taking over the curation of the content, in which case we're talking about an expansion of TED, not a franchising of TED (which, despite being non-profit, is what's occurring right now).

> "I also somewhat reject your characterization of their mission, because their mission first and foremost is about the spread of ideas."

No, it's about the spread of some ideas - as they say themselves, ideas worth spreading.

If our goal was to spread ideas without curation, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr, etc are all doing a far better job. TED's mission, both explicit and implicit, is to highlight particularly poignant people and ideas.

It is also how they rose to fame in the first place - they didn't predate Vimeo or YouTube, and they certainly haven't predated the format of the academic talk. What they did do was have razor-sharp curation and the ability to assemble a lot of great content in one place.

> "TEDx has irrefutably made TED more popular and mainstream and thus more effective as a vehicle to spread ideas."

TEDx has increased the profile of TED, it has also decreased its reputation dramatically. As I've pointed out above already, quality is core to the raison d'etre of TED.

> "People who complain that TED is not curating its content are ignoring how selective it is when posting TEDx content."

And yet kooks still make it. Nobody is saying that TED is sitting back and doing nothing - is that that they are either not doing enough, or that the structure of TEDx makes their task all but impossible.

abraxasz• 13 years ago

I don't think we need another vehicle for the "spread of ideas". We have the internet for that. Everyone and their dogs have a blog on which they can detail the minutiae of their crackpottery. The reason I used to like TED is that they curated new and solid ideas that may have buried in the internet noise. In other words, they filtered out the noise and gave me the signal.

What now? Well, browsing a random TEDx video is about as informative as watching a random youtube video. Except that you can't listen to Pink Floyd on TEDx, too bad.

Sorry if the tone is a little annoyed, no harm intended..

groby_b2• 13 years ago

Those might be the 228 best ones - they're still often horrible presentations. TED presentations used to be a big deal, and they were extremely well rehearsed.

That's not the case any more. While the material covered is occasionally great, the pain of listening to a bad speakers makes it not worth my time.

Add to that the fact that _nothing_ is a must watch when it covers hundreds of hours, and the days of "It's a TED talk, it'll be worth watching" are gone.

rdl2• 13 years ago

Making TED videos available online accomplished the mainstream/popular idea.

TEDx has done nothing but cheapen it. There are non-public ways for TED to identify promising new speakers for TED; no need to have something like TEDx.

I don't mind a conference like TEDx existing; it should just have zero connection to TED. TED is a premium, curated brand; TEDx is anything but.

smackfu• 13 years ago

It's a lot easier to destroy a brand than to save it, no matter how much the TED organizers think they "turned around opinion".

nolanguage• 13 years ago

I agree entirely. In the case of TED the thing they are "selling" is their curatorial expertise. Nice stage, website, etc, but some of the talks would be great filmed in a shed. In that case, if we doubt their curation the value vanishes.

It's not clear to me why an enterprise like TED would feel growth offered any upside at all (and yes, I read the article). Smallness and exclusivity are virtues, and thanks to that great website the world certainly is not lacking for ways to access their ideas.

If they really only care about motivating and inspiring people then why not offer small grants for others to start their own independent, unaffiliated TED-like events. These events might even thrive without the scarlet letter X -- denoting second-class citizenship in the World of Ideas.

jemaddux• 13 years ago

I agree entirely. Great base. Not sure that it scales well.

donretag• 13 years ago

For me, when Amanda Palmer did a TED talk, it was the definitive point that they jumped the shark.

clicks• 13 years ago

You're talking about this TED talk -- http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking.htm...

What's wrong with it? I thought it was a great TED talk, she makes great points about new and emerging forms of artist-fan relationships and its advantages.

groby_b2• 13 years ago

She makes completely untenable points, mostly. Read here for a great write-up: http://madartlab.com/2013/03/13/amanda-palmer-and-the-privil...

In a nutshell - it's much easier to rely on donations once somebody else (in Amanda's case, her label) has done the hard work of making you famous. If you're an artist with at best local fame, as most artists are, charge for your music.

rye• 13 years ago

I stopped caring about TED talks when it became clear that people were more interested in promoting themselves rather than 'ideas worth spreading'.

Too many posers looking for that epic photo of them on-stage with the head mic attached.

gmu34• 13 years ago

Yes. I hate when they have a recently released book and the talk is basically just to promote it, and then often if you read the book it has no additional material.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

One of the few exceptions to this annoyance I feel as well is Lessig's ongoing talk-athon regarding govt corruption.

No amount of attention-whoring is overkill for this subject, especially when considering that Lessig could easily make 10x the amount of money he is making now by going to some white shoe law firm.

s_baby• 13 years ago

TED is forcing the speakers into promotion mode. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hwLMBdnbXk

smutticus• 13 years ago

I came here to post this video. Anyone wondering how TED should change its ways needs to see this video.

dkarl• 13 years ago

This used to be a reflection of narcissism, but now it's been beat into the head of anyone who wants to do anything worthwhile: you have to be a promoter; otherwise, don't bother.

Put another way, it used to be that when I saw people saying, "Hey, look at this!" with nothing worthwhile to look at, I assumed they were narcissistic assholes. Why else would they be trying to get me to spend my time on attention that is obviously not worth it? Now I wonder if they're just normal people trying to master a necessary skill. First learn to make people pay attention, and if you're good at that, then do something worthwhile. Otherwise it doesn't matter what you do.

I don't think that's true or ever will be true, but I think there are people who believe it, people who suck at marketing themselves but put all their energy into it instead of something they're good at because they've been taught to believe that marketing savvy is a prerequisite for contributing to society.

joecurry• 13 years ago

>> "they’re setting up ones that feature “experts” in pseudoscience topics like “plasmatics,” crystal healing, and Egyptian psychoaromatherapy, all of which were presented at TEDxValenciaWomen in December 2012. That conference was described by one disappointed viewer as “a mockery...that hurt, in this order, TED, Valencia, women, science, and common sense.”

Wow. I'm ashamed to have put 'curated TEDx participant' on my resume. Removed.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

>Wow. I'm ashamed to have put 'curated TEDx participant' on my resume. Removed.

Depending on what kind of organization you're applying to, that can still be useful.

illuminate2• 13 years ago

MLMs? Homeopathy clinic? Scientology knockoff?

jdmitch• 13 years ago

TEDx talks have lacked credibility from the beginning as far as I'm concerned, but what I find disappointing is that the main TED talks are increasingly just motivational nonsense. There are some very engaging speakers, but the actual ideas and content are often questionable. I find some of the perspectives on and from "developing countries" particularly patronizing and poorly contextualized. But most people I know find them inspiring and invigorating, and I hate to rain on anyone's parade so I always keep quiet. I just find (many, not all) TED talks make me want to laugh at how implausible/naive/over-the-top the ideas are. Just sayin' ...

rm999• 13 years ago

The Onion does a really good series called "Onion Talks" that satirizes the vapidness of TED talks. They also capture the audiences' "inspired" reactions pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s

ben1040• 13 years ago

This is great. I cracked up at this, and this particular one is also likely to be the only Onion content that is not only age-appropriate for my toddler but also educational.

juskrey• 13 years ago

Absolutely agree. But, actually, that is not TED who is getting worse, just some of us are getting wiser. I remember these times when I was myself seduced with every other motivational and (pseudo)science speech. Now, working with very serious things, I am seeing total bullshit around every other corner, mountains of life-threatening bullshit in those areas which seemed untouchable great science to me 10 years ago.

I even do not bother to watch and read TED-like sources nowadays (unless they are seriously threatening my field).

Shivetya• 13 years ago

Like many other successful venues it can too be co-opted. At times when watching videos there I just left because I knew it was agenda speaking. There are many great videos that currently overshadow the not so great.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

Could someone volunteer to grab a screenshot of the Quora thread in question?

Those gated communities are driving me crazy.

codezero2• 13 years ago

http://www.quora.com/TEDx/Is-Randy-Powell-saying-anything-in...

It's not gated if you add share=1.

astrodust• 13 years ago

Don't people go to jail for things like that?

xyzzy123• 13 years ago

Thanks for the link. I just read that and discovered the "turbo encabulator" (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=turbo+encabulato...). I am enjoying this a lot more than TED.

dudus• 13 years ago

If you want 45 minutes of pure nonsense don't worry about his TED talk. Go straight for his videos on YouTube.

eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNHvyTIRVjY

xk_id5• 13 years ago

This guy seems to be even more confident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN2LBO8wig8

eamsen• 13 years ago

That's apparently his teacher. Watching this is more painful than watching Max performing an impromptu trepanning on his right temple with a power drill; at least his madness had an end.

rdl2• 13 years ago

The standard for every TED talk should be "if I've never heard of TED, and this is the first talk I've ever seen, I'd be amazed by both the talk and enough reflected glory on TED that I'd want to watch more, discuss it with others, etc."

Not many of the current TED talks live up to that, let alone TEDx. It's possible I've become more cynical, but if I watch pre-shitification TED talks I generally feel that way, and if I watch current TED talks, I rarely feel that way (although there are exceptions still).

(possible exceptions for the musical/entertainment sessions at TED, which mainly seem to be there for the in-person attendees, not video, and for talks which are sequels of earlier talks -- in which case it might be that you have to watch them in order for it to be reasonable, like the Bill Gates talks)

afreak• 13 years ago

The whole malarkey with TEDx I have found is that organisers in their respective cities are vetting the topics and attendees while at the same time are coming from backgrounds that make me question their ability to make decisions.

Case in point is TEDx Vancouver, which is organised by those with social media connections. In order to just attend, you have to justify why you should and the organisers themselves how much worth you are to be within the crowd. Of course, this par for the course but it is a bit obtuse for me to see myself having to be judged by people who are good at pulling the heart strings of others and are capable of having a significant amount of Twitter followers. Do I need to have a high follower to followed ratio in order to be good enough?

It gets worse here of course because now TED (as in "the TED") has moved itself from Southern California to here in Vancouver. Everyone started to beat the drums and say that the city has become relevant once again since the Olympics, but of course everyone then fails to realise it's a $7,500 event that you have to buy into. Then again the cost for some tickets during the games did come close to that amount in some cases.

Some amazing stuff comes out of TED, but with the mayor and social media all getting excited about it, it's becomes apparent that this event is just a way for those who can go to wave their phalluses around as a sign of their "status" in the world.

TED can be a good thing but the way it is approached by those who are not speaking is just downright deplorable.

tekromancr2• 13 years ago

I am glad to see that I wasn't the only one who thought the Vortex Mathematics thing was a joke.

xk_id5• 13 years ago

I'd be worried to know you had any doubts.

tekromancr2• 13 years ago

I didn't have any doubts that it was stupid. I had doubts that the person performing the talk was genuine.

Florin_Andrei• 13 years ago

> When it was founded, in 1984, TED (which stands for “Technology, Entertainment, and Design”) brought together a few hundred people in a single annual conference in California. Today, TED is not just an organizer of private conferences; it’s a global phenomenon with $45 million in revenues.

So, whenever a forum grows beyond a certain limit, junk starts to creep in.

Not a surprise at all. I've seen this happening over and over and over again - newsgroups, mailing lists, forums, social media, etc.

Once the fat middle of the bell curve sneaks in, quality takes a necessary dive.

3dptz• 13 years ago

With few exceptions the quality of talks, for which I was drawn to TED in the first place, has been in free fall for years.

5 or 6 years ago almost every TED talk was a gem for anyone with a single engineer, science or technology fiber in his/her body.

Becoming more famous is what did them in. Needing to push out more talks on shorter and shorter intervals. Shifting more and more from spreading ideas (i.e. technology), to telling stories and making people feel better or worse. And more importantly promoting whatever product/service they are connected to.

It has become an event where people think they need to be, regardless of interest in actual topics. Something which is reflected in the generic nonsense which is their comments section.

Also, if you are a self proclaimed "thought leader" you are a douche bag.

xk_id5• 13 years ago

This is TEDx. I do not expect to be intellectually impressed, because I know what that tiny "x" means. On the other hand:

a) I was intrigued from the beginning regarding TED's decision to allow this kind of events. I was kindof expecting it will blow in their face, sooner or later.

b) I did find Powell's talk thoroughly entertaining.

Now, what about the infamous Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight? It overflown with neuroscience misconceptions and outdated, non-scientific metaphysics. Seeing it on TED was a genuine and huge intellectual disappointment.

xk_id5• 13 years ago

I haven't studied his vortex mathematics thoroughly, but it seems the "universal numerical pattern" he identified is completely biased towards the decimal base?

jordigh• 13 years ago

All he did is "discover" a generator of the group of units of the integers modulo 9, namely, 2. Mod 9, the powers of 2 are 2, 4, 8, 7, 5, 1. The remaining three numbers modulo 9 he joins in a triangle.

This is all.

xk_id5• 13 years ago

I see what you mean :D

X43• 13 years ago

I've not seen the video, but I am always eager to hear about research that opens new perspectives to Maths, even when it's wrong. It may serve as an inspiration or is a waste of time, but that's the cost of advancements in science.

If you know links to papers or theories of other people that are worth looking into, let me know. I can't tell if the theories of Mr. Powell have any merit or foundation. But I'll find out myself after seeing the longish video.

Benoît B. Mandelbrot, Ken Ono and Srinivasa Ramanujan's theories put new perspectives into our understanding of Maths that goes way beyond what most people understand. Even those advanced in Maths have difficulties grasping it.

This is my opinion, but I think the research of these and other important people reveals a Fractal nature in Maths and Physics. What's missing is the link to Chemisry and Biology. There are relations to fractals and all nature sciences we don't know about.

Yes, I've actually read the books and papers from these people. Yes there were a lot of parts I had trouble understanding, but ideas are easy to grasp, their Mathematical proof is not.

PavlovsCat• 13 years ago

I am always eager to hear about research that opens new perspectives to Maths, even when it's wrong

Sarah Silverman held just the TED talk for you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci5p1OdVLAc

jpxxx• 13 years ago

No, stop, this non-thought does not advance science. It's nonrigorous garbage that's designed to go down smooth without much effort. At best it's fanciful noise, at worst it's a cultural nerve toxin.

X43• 13 years ago

I am curious on what you people think about the Constructal theory. Please let me know. http://www.constructal.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_theory

kragen• 13 years ago

It sounds like nonsense.

socalnate12• 13 years ago

If you think of TEDx as simply a wider funnel for TED.com content, I think it has been a great success.

I'm surprised to see the HN community so vociferously opposed to TEDx. We are all basically reading a news website that operates with a similar principle (wide funnel, with a method to route the best content to the top for wider distribution).

libian2• 13 years ago

yea but we are not paying $6000 reading things on HackerNews. If you are paying that much money to attend / support a talk, it better be delivering great quality.

socalnate12• 13 years ago

TEDx events are not very expensive, often they are free for attendees.

TED proper is very expensive, and has consistently high quality. The question here is if TEDx is hurting TED or not.

kalethrowaway• 13 years ago

Ah, but we already knew TEDx =/= TED

illuminate2• 13 years ago

It's still the TED brand and gains credence from the connection (to give to snake oil peddlers, sincere or not.)

icelancer• 13 years ago

Who is "we?" You and I?

Great. Now how about all the other people who see it?

dagw• 13 years ago

When TEDx hit my town last year, basically everybody I knew called it the "TED conference" when talking about it. I even did it myself even though I technically know better. Also all the promo material the organizers put up made it look like a TED event and made no attempt to explain what TEDx was or how it differentiated from TED.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

When your community is getting schooled by a thread on reddit and a Forbes blog post, I think it's pretty clear you've hit rock bottom in terms of credibility.

mvkel• 13 years ago

What people need to realize is TEDx has very little to do with TED itself.

Anyone can hold a TEDx event as long as they're convincing curators. They license the TED brand. They can choose anyone as a presenter; the quality is inherently lower because of this. It's not the fault of TED per se, or its main organizers.

That said, let us not forget that this year's TED featured dolphins talking to elephants via Google Hangout. It's all about taking risks!

When TED Lost Control of Its Crowd

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