Earlier this week the line-up of amazing speakers, performers and attendees gathered for TED2011 in Long Beach California for what is arguably one of the most important events of the year.
Delving into such topics as how the wheelchair-bound can be made to walk, how Google built a car that can drive itself, and how we can solve global hunger or clean up oil spills using a piece of old string and some leftover Plasticine (really!? Yes, really), the seven day conference has become a Mecca the world’s best minds in their respective field.
TED is where the next new big ideas are unveiled. And where, once a year all the people hungry for the next new big idea converge. Jamie Oliver, celebrity chef and standard-bearer in the fight against obesity won the $100,000 TED prize last year after a presenting an emotional talk on the nation’s health and how we can better improve it. And this year, he was back to tell us all how he spent the money. Sadly though, for those of us not fortunate enough to be there, we’ll all have to wait for the video to be edited and posted online (soon, hopefully).
Though whilst you wait with bated breath, what we can see, is the brilliant and rather exciting talk from JR, the Parisian street artist who won the prestigious TED prize this year. JR wanted to create a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. And if that sounds pretentious or plain confusing, we recommend you spare 24 minutes out of your busy schedule to watch this.
Meet 2011 TED Prize Winner: JR
See, not pretentious or confusing at all eh? Just plain inspiring – let me know what you think on twitter
