“What does it mean to be a leader and be authentic?”

So began a two and a half hour round-table discussion with 12 business leaders immersed at TEDActive in Palm Springs, Calif. last week. Simulcasting the Long Beach, Calif. TED production for over 500 learners from all over the world, TEDActive is designed for in-depth conversation and stimulating projects.

Slipping away from the official TEDActive events for an evening, the 12 of us engaged for a night more unique and interesting than I think any of us had expected. It was a Jeffersonian Dinner.

Sharing my thoughts at Le Vallauris restaurant for our Jeffersonian Dinner at TEDActive 2011. February 28 - March 4, 2011 Palm Springs, CA. Photo by Michael Brands / TED.

You get 12-15 of the most interesting people with which you would like to have a conversation seated around a table with the goal of thoughtful discussion around a few big questions. Mix in some great food and an express desire to hear one person speaking with 12 minds focused on one discussion, and you have just what Thomas Jefferson intended with his famous Monticello dinners of transformative connections.

When John Miles, the Chief of What’s Next at a great values-driven organization, Integritive, pitched me the idea to help curate the group, of course I was all in.

The question posed was quite appropriate as we had heard that day both Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company, and Ingrid Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, face the test of being authentic and leading a global public corporation begun in what seems like another age as their company’s products and the needs of the world struggle to align.

Whether it was MIT Media Lab cognitive scientist Deb Roy analyzing media and social network behavior to give us “a telescope into our own behavior,” or Al Jazeera’s Wadah Khanafar professing the power of social networks and universal values, or General Stanley McChrystal responding to the changing needs of leadership with more transparency with his troops, the TED conference illuminated the reality: the evolution toward authenticity is undeniable.

Our discussions didn’t end at dinner and were carried back to the TEDActive venue around the fire pits and bar. Over the next several days many attending that night commented on the elegance and engagement from the Jeffersonian Dinner format. TEDx organizers – the many amazing individuals that have contributed to put on local TED-style events all over the world – who were part of the dinner commented on including the format into their events or even doing it monthly salon style in their areas.

Posing for a picture to conclude the inaugural Jeffersonian Dinner @TEDActive 2011

So extremely thankful for a great week @TEDActive, especially for the thoughtful leaders who ventured to experiment with the Jeffersonian format, I showed up as a student with my pack full of what I know and added in the knowledge from each of you. Knowing that authenticity means you make mistakes and being proud to admit you’re wrong.

Still learning,

glen.

Also check out these great blogs, articles and sites:

• The Jeffersonian Dinner Format
• Thinking Bench: The Wisdom of Authenticity and Leadership amidst the Social Data Revolution
• Wired: TED 2011: This Week at the TED Industrial Complex
• Nilofer Merchant: Is TED Elite?
• Daily Beast: The Coolest Talks at This Year’s TED Conference
• WorldBlu: Bringing Authenticity to the Workplace

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.

I wrote my first TED Notebook — the reflections on the notes I took throughout the TEDActive experience in Palm Springs — blog entry about Daniel Kahneman. It started with this…

Happiness talks are a crowd favorite at TED, which is probably why Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioral economics kicked off the event with his questions:

“Are you happy in your life?” or “Are you happy with your life?”

You can read the full post here, and as of today, TED has made the talk available to watch. Highly recommended. Definitely a Top 5 and probably my favorite TED 2010 talk.

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 TEDActive Experience

Grabbed a blanket and went to Dolores Park on our day off Monday for President’s Day. Along with me came my TED notebook. Time to reflect and digest the powerful week I shared with some amazing people during the TEDActive experience in Palm Springs.

After scribbling on a pad for 2 hours, I realized there are simply too many outstanding insights to share in one entry, so I am breaking it up into a few morsels of intellectual nourishment…

Jake Shimabukuro really set the tone for me for the week. His amazing ukulele performance redefined what I knew about this tiny but powerful instrument. Check out his performance of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

Happiness talks are a crowd favorite at TED, which is probably why Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioral economics kicked off the event with his questions:

“Are you happy in your life?” or “Are you happy with your life?”

Kahneman outlined two selves:

1. Experiencing self = lives in the present
2. Remembering self = keeps score and maintains memory

These two selves are often in conflict with one another, and we put so much weight of our happiness on our remembering self when we actually spend most of our time with the experiencing self.

Ultimately, happiness of both selves comes down to spending time with people we like.

My experiencing self couldn’t get enough of the fascinating thinkers and doers at TEDActive. Definitely people I like.

And as I flipped through my notes on Monday, my remembering self couldn’t help but smile.

Another journey has begun…

Update: March 1, 2010

Daniel Kahneman’s talk is now available on TED.com

Jake Shimabukuro’s performance is finally available on TED.com

Picnic basket lunch @TEDActive

Connecting and having amazing conversations with just about everyone you bump into are all part of the TEDActive experience. The meeting is designed all around this concept. During lunch yesterday, we were given picnic baskets full of food and formed groups of six on blankets on the sunny lawn outside the conference center.

Or during the inevitable fireside chats as you stop to warm-up from the cold desert nights. It was Day 0 when I ran into Dominik, @dswviper. I had met him a few weeks earlier on Twitter. His excitement for TED boosted my anticipation, which was as high as anything in recent memory.

Dominik is from Germany and is part of an incredible group of translators that have translated TED.com talks into over 80 languages as part of the Open Translation Project. Together they’ve translated over 4,700 TED talks including those from @AnwarKing from Sudan who is so fun to chat with and is a rockstar for translating over 160 talks.

What the world needs now (this year’s TED theme) is to spread more of these ideas. Thank you translators.

For a truly unique, infectious perspective on TEDActive, check out Dominik’s blog http://bit.ly/ddbrTn

From USAToday article 'Friends' no more?

It’s the morning after giving my TEDYou talk on the importance of finding a space and  time to reflect in the whitewater of our 140 character world. I woke to open my hotel door at TEDActive to see a front-page story in USAToday about social networking sites becoming too consuming for some users.

The article quoted Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist with Intel:

“This always-on lifestyle is being pushed as desirable, (but) there’s a deeply rooted human need to have downtime,” says Bell, director of user experience at Intel’s Digital Home Group. “Perhaps tuning out of social networking is just a way of recalibrating that need for downtime.”

“We’re starting to ask, how does all this (technology) truly fit into our lives?” she says.

While the article points to a few users exiting the social space completely, I cannot deny the great benefits of the systems. Leading up to TEDActive, being able to connect to those going to Palm Springs on a Twitter list started by @ptrcksmth and then actually meeting many of them here has been an incredible networking tool.

Having @integritiveJM know about the pre-Super-Bowl corn hole game @mojointeractive was a perfect ice-breaker.

And leaving the iPhone in the hotel room to engage with the community is how these tools can enhance our lives, not dictate them.

Are you being tossed around by the 140 character world? Or is it a powerful tool to improve your life?

Now back to meeting more incredible people @TEDActive.

Shot by uglyagnes at the Noah Purifoy Art Site in Joshua Tree

Hi, I’m Glen. Welcome to The Thinking Bench – a respite and place of reflection from the whitewater of our 140 character world.

With this blog, I plan to share with you my thinking bench ideas and hopefully inspire you to find your own thinking bench. Creating this blog is motivated in part by a talk I’ll be giving this week at TEDActive.

I’m extremely excited to share a story with such an incredible group of thinkers and doers during the TEDYou portion of TEDActive at the Noah Purifoy Art Site in Joshua Tree.

My story is titled: The Thinking Bench — An essential idea for the 140 character world

The Thinking Bench is a story of solace and endless imagination in the instant feedback, always now, data streaming 140 character world. It’s an essential renewable resource for our minds and our spirits.

It’s a simple but powerful idea that grows ever more indispensable as our lives get further swept up in the rapidly changing, increasingly fragmented 140 character world.

Now off to Palm Springs for TEDActive.

More soon. Start thinking…