The beauty and power of clean energy surrounds Palm Springs home of TEDActive

With less than a week away before the start of TED 2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder and after spending a few hours Sunday with several of the Bay Area TEDActivators including my co-host Leigh Rowan, my excitement for the week compelled me to share my favorite talks from TED 2010.

Just three topped my list which I wrote about last year:

1. Behavioral Economist Daniel Kahneman on Happiness
2. Jake Shimabukuro’s Ukulele Performance
3. Bill Gates’ Most Important Wish

Looking forward to seeing everyone Sunday in Palm Springs. Those unable to attend can follow along at home with the TEDActive Bay Area Twitter list.

glen.

The post TED Notebook: My Favorite Talks from 2010 appeared first on The Thinking Bench.

Bill Gates from TEDActive

Last week I tweeted about one of my Top 5 TED talks from this year when it was posted on TED.com: Bill Gates giving an extremely persuasive speech about climate change and energy.

This is a man with no political agenda and only the desire to give his wealth away to most benefit humanity. So when he consults the preeminent experts in the world and puts his peer-less reputation + remarkable intellect around such a significant issue, I think it makes sense to listen.

When he puts solving this problem at the top of his wish list over picking the next president or over finding a vaccination for anything, this most definitely is one video worth watching.

You can also view his slides on Nancy Duarte’s blog where she gives Gates a much-improved thumbs up review on his presentation style. His great execution was quite surprising, which is something I spoke about with one of Nancy’s colleagues during the break  at TEDActive. The slides were quite stunning. Did he do them in Apple’s Keynote? ;-)

I met Nancy last year at MacWorld, and after a fascinating talk she gave on storytelling, I bought her book, slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. It’s a terrific book and immediately improved how I approach the visual communications of my presentations.

So as I watched each TED talk from my cozy beanbag in Palm Springs @TEDActive, I not only listened to the remarkable content of each presenter, but I also watched with the eye of a student of strong presentations.

This presentation by Bill Gates is in my Top 5 of this year’s TED talks.

The post TED Notebook: Bill Gates’ Most Important Wish appeared first on The Thinking Bench.