Disclosure: Notes from Session 2 of TEDNext 2024

Session 2 of TEDNext 2024 was dedicated to unlocking the possibilities within everyday struggles and covered everything from recycling glass bottles to combating perfectionism. Speakers presented in a format new to the TED stage, speaking for exactly five minutes, with prepared slides that automatically advanced every 15 seconds. Developed and perfected by Ignite Talks over the past 16 years, this format forces speakers to remain concise and deliberate in their presentation, providing a delightful and engaging experience.

The event: Talks from Session 2 of TEDNext 2024, presented by Brady Forrest, co-founder of Ignite Talks

When and where: Tuesday, October 22, 2024, at Pullman Yards in Atlanta, Georgia

Speakers: Joshua Schachter, Franziska Trautmann, Jane McGonigal, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, Jon Youshaei, Y-Vonne Hutchinson, Elise Hu, Jenny Hoyos, Snow Raven

Watch TEDNext 2024 on TED Livecheck out more photos from the event and learn more about it attending a future TED conference

Performance: Dance theater and film production company HEAVY BOOTS specializes in live performance and cinema and composes challenging physical works that speak to the human condition. In this performance, seven dancers rotated like cogs across the stage in a mesmerizing experimental dance, which evoked somber feelings of human strength, wonder and vulnerability.

The conversations in short:

He shares his accidental journey to viral fame, digital pioneer Joshua Schachter reveals how short snippets of intentional errors in his robot-generated plotting art led to millions of views (and hilariously strong reactions). By turning frustration into creative success, he playfully shows how quirky, unexpected art can captivate audiences around the world.

Then Louisiana born Franziska Trautmann learned that her state was dumping nearly 300 million pounds of glass annually while simultaneously losing a coastline football field to erosion every 100 minutes, she transformed an epiphany from a college wine night into Glass Half Full — an innovative startup that repurposes landfill-bound glass in sand for coastal restoration projects. What started as a shoddy operation in a fraternity’s backyard has grown into a large-scale environmental solution, turning more than eight million pounds of glass back into sand to date, proving that the best ideas just need people who are willing to take that first step.

As a futurist who helps people prepare for hard-to-imagine possibilities, Jane McGonigal thinks we overuse words like ‘unthinkable’ and ‘unimaginable’. She takes the audience through three hypothetical scenarios and shows how we can all foster the ability to think creatively about the future – and feel prepared for anything.

Money for international development rarely reaches the people it aims to help, says the founder of Ideas Beyond Borders Faisal Saeed Al Mutar. He highlights the inefficiency and corruption of the current aid system and proposes a new model that operates like a business, providing local entrepreneurs with direct investment to build their communities locally.

It invites us to move away from a quality over quantity mentality when it comes to art making and video making Jon Youshaei shares his struggle with perfectionism in the early days of running one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube. Inspired by artists like Mozart, he explains why focusing on producing more instead of achieving perfection can pave the way to creative success, even with the flops and failures.

The majority of traditional DEI practices are simply performative, says one workplace inclusion expert Y-Vonne Hutchinson. She reflects on the global crises that have led to both the development of and resistance to DEI programs, and explores what a diverse workforce actually needs to feel supported: compassionate discussions and tangible support.

As ‘beauty filters’ spread on apps like TikTok, journalists and TED talks daily host Elise Hu says we have entered the age of the “technological gaze” – an algorithmically driven beauty standard that people internalize and strive to meet. She shows how digital beauty standards shape expectations in the real world, and explains why we should instead embrace diversity and reject the idea that dignity is tied to appearance.

Social media creator and “Queen of YouTube Shorts” Jenny Hoos has sparked her curiosity about strange questions, such as, “Can you cook faster than a fast food restaurant?” – into a winning formula for 60-second stories, earning her millions of views and proving that great storytelling is less about length and more about structure. Through her experiments (like racing to cook a hamburger in her mom’s car while going through a drive-thru), she’s developed a simple yet powerful approach that works whether you’re creating viral videos or just more compelling stories tries to tell in your daily life. to live.

“Listening is one of the most powerful gifts the universe has given people to connect with nature,” says music producer and singer Snow Raven. Through songs inspired by her ancestors, the Sakha people of Arctic Siberia, she embodies the calls of various animals in an invitation to reconnect with the universe within us.

Watch TEDNext 2024 on TED Livecheck out more photos from the event and learn more about it attending a future TED conference