Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

I'm generally of the opinion that TEDx needs to end entirely. TED is a single organizer, not a movement or a cause - its primary contribution to the world is that of exacting, high-quality curation in a world where everyone has a soapbox.

TED's usefulness to people is the trust in the brand and the trust in their curation quality - if this is lost TED's main mission has failed.

In my opinion, TED has already lost this trust. There was a time where a TED link was a must-click and a must-watch. I cannot remember the last time I bothered clicking on a TED link - it must be at least a year now. It is perhaps not too late to regain this trust - but they need to cut loose the forces that are preventing this.

TEDx is a dilution of the TED brand and the organization would IMO be better off without it, and the brand is TED.

I do believe that high-quality curation, especially when it comes to deep knowledge, is a valuable thing - but would-be curators should have to earn the trust their audiences places with them, not ride off TED's coattails.

I don't mean to come off the wrong way, but did you even read the article? Most of it was about past transgressions and what they've done to tighten the brand. Maybe you're been away too long. I also somewhat reject your characterization of their mission, because their mission first and foremost is about the spread of ideas. TEDx has irrefutably made TED more popular and mainstream and thus more effective as a vehicle to spread ideas. Yes quality is important, but even with TEDx, the process to become a "TED link" is extremely curated:

"Indeed, open as TED is, pieces of its ecosystem are highly managed. For example, while 25,000 TEDx talks have been produced so far, as of the time of this writing only 228, or approximately 1%—the best of the best—had made it to TED.com for broad-based distribution and endorsement. People who complain that TED is not curating its content are ignoring how selective it is when posting TEDx content."

I only made it to the third page - if the article makes a sharp turnaround of what TED is doing, then it's seriously burying the lead.

Quality is not important for TED, it is everything. And like potatolicious, I no longer bother with TED talks because their brand has been poisoned for me. It's a perception problem.

> "I don't mean to come off the wrong way, but did you even read the article?"

IMO, there is no way to say the above and have it come off the right way. It falls into the same bucket as "with all due respect..."

> "Most of it was about past transgressions and what they've done to tighten the brand."

Yes, and my contention is that it will never be enough. This is not a unique problem - large, spread out organizations are almost universally unable to consistently maintain a high quality bar. The difference is that for TED the quality is the product.

There is IMO no way for TED to reign in its TEDx partners to an extent that will restore the trust in the brand. To do so would basically involve TED taking over the curation of the content, in which case we're talking about an expansion of TED, not a franchising of TED (which, despite being non-profit, is what's occurring right now).

> "I also somewhat reject your characterization of their mission, because their mission first and foremost is about the spread of ideas."

No, it's about the spread of some ideas - as they say themselves, ideas worth spreading.

If our goal was to spread ideas without curation, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr, etc are all doing a far better job. TED's mission, both explicit and implicit, is to highlight particularly poignant people and ideas.

It is also how they rose to fame in the first place - they didn't predate Vimeo or YouTube, and they certainly haven't predated the format of the academic talk. What they did do was have razor-sharp curation and the ability to assemble a lot of great content in one place.

> "TEDx has irrefutably made TED more popular and mainstream and thus more effective as a vehicle to spread ideas."

TEDx has increased the profile of TED, it has also decreased its reputation dramatically. As I've pointed out above already, quality is core to the raison d'etre of TED.

> "People who complain that TED is not curating its content are ignoring how selective it is when posting TEDx content."

And yet kooks still make it. Nobody is saying that TED is sitting back and doing nothing - is that that they are either not doing enough, or that the structure of TEDx makes their task all but impossible.

> and yet kooks still make it

Can you please link me to someone you consider a kook on TED.com? The main couple kooks people talk about years later after TED has made changes like vortex math never make TED.com and for good reason.

If you honestly believe less than 1% of TEDx video have any merit, I think that is fairly elitist of you.

If you honestly believe less than 1% of TEDx video have any merit, I think that is fairly elitist of you.

I feel like TED is supposed to be elitist, in terms of the quality of its content.

I agree to a point but don't think 1% is too accepting. In many ways I think the top 1% of TEDx talks exceed the quality of some traditional TED conference talks, because they typically are doing it solely because of the idea as oppose to conference speakers who have other commercial interests, often promoting themselves and/or their new book.

The value of TED over youtube.com, or an academic seminar at any university is their quality of talks and rigorous selection process - or "elitism" if you wish.

I can believe that the top 1% of TEDx talks are better than the average TED talk. Maybe 10% are worth looking at once you have seen most of TED talks, the best online courses, the best Google TechTalks, etc on your area of interest.

But why are the rest of the 90% even there?

Having a few great talks doesn't matter, if there is no way to find them out of the mass of inanity on TEDx or elsewhere online.

While I don't have enough background to personally pass judgement on Allan Savory, Chris Clarke apparently does. It's not the full-on kookiness of vortex math, but apparently he feels that to an ecologist, his TED talk is "full of red flags":

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/east-ca/l...

I don't feel that one counterexample automatically disproves your main point, but it is a TED.com talk.

It is also how they rose to fame in the first place - they didn't predate Vimeo or YouTube...

The first TED talk was in 1984. That predates Vimeo, YouTube, and most of the components of the technology stack that are a pre-requisite for Vimeo and YouTube to make sense.

I don't think we need another vehicle for the "spread of ideas". We have the internet for that. Everyone and their dogs have a blog on which they can detail the minutiae of their crackpottery. The reason I used to like TED is that they curated new and solid ideas that may have buried in the internet noise. In other words, they filtered out the noise and gave me the signal.

What now? Well, browsing a random TEDx video is about as informative as watching a random youtube video. Except that you can't listen to Pink Floyd on TEDx, too bad.

Sorry if the tone is a little annoyed, no harm intended..

lol, but I totally agree with you!

Those might be the 228 best ones - they're still often horrible presentations. TED presentations used to be a big deal, and they were extremely well rehearsed.

That's not the case any more. While the material covered is occasionally great, the pain of listening to a bad speakers makes it not worth my time.

Add to that the fact that _nothing_ is a must watch when it covers hundreds of hours, and the days of "It's a TED talk, it'll be worth watching" are gone.

>"It's a TED talk, it'll be worth watching" are gone

I think this is primarily the issue. It's in part due to just the shear over saturation of the talks these days. It's tough for everything to be "great."

Second, the brand has been diluted to the point that it's tough to know whether or not a talk is worth investing the time. There are videos on how to tie your shoe.. I mean, come on.

There's also a video on how to dry your hands with one paper towel (it doesn't work). Sure, I mean, I guess it's kind of interesting (If it catches you in the right mood, perhaps), but, I mean, "shake your hands a bit before you grab the towel" sounds a little more like something the would pop up in /r/lifeprotips.

Making TED videos available online accomplished the mainstream/popular idea.

TEDx has done nothing but cheapen it. There are non-public ways for TED to identify promising new speakers for TED; no need to have something like TEDx.

I don't mind a conference like TEDx existing; it should just have zero connection to TED. TED is a premium, curated brand; TEDx is anything but.

It's a lot easier to destroy a brand than to save it, no matter how much the TED organizers think they "turned around opinion".

I agree entirely. In the case of TED the thing they are "selling" is their curatorial expertise. Nice stage, website, etc, but some of the talks would be great filmed in a shed. In that case, if we doubt their curation the value vanishes.

It's not clear to me why an enterprise like TED would feel growth offered any upside at all (and yes, I read the article). Smallness and exclusivity are virtues, and thanks to that great website the world certainly is not lacking for ways to access their ideas.

If they really only care about motivating and inspiring people then why not offer small grants for others to start their own independent, unaffiliated TED-like events. These events might even thrive without the scarlet letter X -- denoting second-class citizenship in the World of Ideas.

I agree entirely. Great base. Not sure that it scales well.

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