TEDActive Explained (Sort Of)

Posted by Dana on 02.23.2010 at 1:47 pm

I have now tried and erased about 10 opening sentences to this post.  Here’s why – it’s difficult to sum up TEDActive in a sentence or two.  So let me just start with this…TEDActive rocks.  Or as Sarah Silverman would say “TED is fancy”.  (She said quite a few other things, too – but we can talk about that later).  Okay not sure what TED is all about?  Well, there was a whole talk on just how to explain what TED is to people who ask.  Once that’s online all your questions will be answered.  In the mean time here is my take:

TED is a conference where the world’s foremost thinkers of things talk about the things they have thought and the audience of thinkers think about the thinking and talk about it.  TEDActive is the same thing only more active.  Hence the bean bags (see picture below).  Okay that’s not exactly it.  TEDActive is a simulcast of TED for people who like bean bags and sushi.

But seriously folks, working for Better World Books, I have gotten to run event bookstores at a multitude of conferences and festivals and TEDActive was truly awesome (did I mention the sushi – or the Bollywood dance lesson?).    We brought around 100 titles with us to the conference and were given an absolutely beautiful space to display them.  Check it out!

And, while we were busy hawking our wares at the store, we had the pleasure of being able to listen to talking thinkers…which was thought provoking and um cool.

We also got to eat More cupcakes, meet neuro-scientists (you know who you are) and drink slow, intelligent coffee from Intelligentsia.

So – if you missed the thinking or talking or talking about thinking – you can still read what the thinkers think in their thoughtful books by checking out our online TEDActive bookstore.  Great titles, great prices, and FREE SHIPPING in the US as always ($3.97 per book worldwide).

Oh – and before you run off,  check out books by some of the TEDActive attendees:

– Dana Barrett, BWB Blog Editor

Have your say » | Tagged Company News, David Eagleman, Do More Great Work, Michael Bungay Stanier, Palm Springs, Sarah Silverman, Sun: forty tales from the afterlives, Tara Hunt, TED, TED Active, TED Active Bookstore, TEDActive, The Whuffie Factor