TED Tuesdays: Simon Sinek

I first saw this Talk at TEDxRyersonU last year. I’d heard much about it, but hadn’t watched it yet. Since then, this is certainly one of my top 5 TED Talks. The quality isn’t the greatest, but it’s still good enough to hear.

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Simon is so enthusiastic about his talk that you can’t bear to look away. The idea that people don’t buy something because of what it does, but because of the design sounds crazy, but it’s true. And he proves it through stories of some of the greatest companies and people in history. Many people don’t want to hear it, nor believe it, but isn’t that what these talks are all about? To challenge us. That’s what Simon Sinek does here.

Advertisement

TED Tuesdays

After last weekend’s TEDxRyersonU, I was not only inspired to write my own TED Talk, but to share with  my readers some of my favourite talks. There is so much great content on this one site, that it’s impossible to see them all, though, I’m certainly going to try. This has been a bit of a lofty aspiration, so I’m going to dedicate myself to watching it more frequently and sharing my favourites in a new feature called “TED Tuesdays”. Starting next week, tune in here for some “Ideas Worth Spreading”.

Technology Entertainment Design (TED): Ideas Worth Spreading

#FF Thomas George

Thomas is a student at Ryerson University in the Business Technology Management program. He’s not your typical student since he’s done more in the time I’ve known him than most professionals.

Through the co-op program, he’s worked for CIBC as well as StickerYou. He’s volunteered for the TO Tech Meetup and two of the three years of TEDxRyersonU. For the latest one, held this past Sunday, he was the curator. All this and he still has time to support the ITMSA.

I had the pleasure of meeting his parents at TEDxRyersonU and congratulated them both. I told them they should be very proud, because he is truly a gem. Any company that picks him up after graduation will be lucky to have him on board. I wish him luck in his studies and future endeavours. Whatever he does, it will be truly great. I can bet on it. Follow him @TommyGee.

Tommy George, BTM student at Ryerson University

#FF TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

In a previous post, I talked about TED Talks and since TEDxToronto is going on today, I thought it fitting that I give a Follow Friday to them. I have to thank one of my friends who is a nurse for introducing me to TED Talks a few years ago. We were both students and not just at university and it was truly a wonderful thing to behold. Imagine, broadening your mind, one talk at a time. Just 20 minutes (or less) to change the way you might think about something or introduce you to something you may not have known anything about. One of the highlights of this was that it gave my father and I fuel for discussions that I always enjoyed.

The way I explain it to people is that TED is like a think tank, but an open one. You may have to be invited to sit in the audience or pay a lot of money to be a member, but all the talks are made available on their website for free. You can download them in podcasts which I sync on a regular basis to my iPod.

My favourite talk (which is not an easy thing to nail down) was done by Jamie Oliver shown here:

Now, I don’t watch his show all that often, nor am I a cooking connoisseur but it continually inspires me to ask questions. If you’ve ever had me at an event or in a class, now you understand from where it stems.

One of the great ideas that TEDxToronto had for their presentations today was to have viewing parties around the city so that if you didn’t make it into the main one, you could go to one of the satellite locations. I was fortunate enough to attend the one at the Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park. The added value that I got from this venue was that we got our own live presentations, mostly from people from that neighbourhood. So not only did we get the live feed from the main event, we had our own little intimate presentations. Really some seriously talented people. Unfortunately, I had to leave the event early, but caught the rest of the event on my computer from my office because it was running late.

I know that one of the talks from today that I will certainly be putting in front of my father from today for our discussion is the one by Shawn Micallef. Make sure you catch this one when it gets posted. For those who didn’t get a chance to be a part of TEDxToronto today, or TEDxRyersonU next month, fear not! All of them are taped so you can view them later and the quality is amazing. Please give TED, TEDxToronto and TEDxRyersonU a follow today and all of their presenters. And if you haven’t already done so, and I’ve convinced you, get your application in to TEDxRyersonU. Hope to see you there.