The Road to the RED DOT: Walking into Light

  A ROAD OF REJECTIONS The best way to think of the TED application process is to visualize it as a college application. Your idea worth sharing and your pitch as well as the talk you build around it is like your college application essay. The application process to various TEDx events is very similar to applying to different colleges. In each case, you the applicant are reviewing the TEDx event organizers by listening to their past performances and the quality of the speakers that have presented on that stage in previous years. At the same time the selection committee at each site is reviewing if you, the prospective speaker, are an ideal candidate for their event. When I started my journey to the TED stage I applied to multiple TEDx events simultaneously. Each TEDx event has a particular goal. TEDx events are curated events. That is to say that the speaker selection is based on choosing speakers with TED-worthy ideas but among all the TED-worthy ideas that make the first cut ...

  Road to the RED DOT: COMMUNICATION “Communication is not simply speaking. Communication begins with connection. When two people have a connection then there is communion…. And heart speaks to heart, communication happens and a community is born. A community is not a collection of bodies in the same space. A community is a collection of hearts speaking the same speech.” …. Ravi R. Iyer, MD   The domain of great speaking contains several vital capabilities that are intrinsic to the experience of life itself. First among these is CONNECTION. The second is IMAGINATION and the third is LANGUAGE and STORY as a representation of experience. These vital capacities are quintessential to the domain of being a healer. The annals of literature are filled with physicians as authors and storytellers. The very definition of being a physician is to be able to connect and care deeply about the stories of humanity. The act of caring requires that you be able to connect to the world of t...

  Road to the RED DOT: THE FIRST TED The first TED event was conducted in Monterey, California on February 1984 as an idea of Richard Saul Wurman, an architect and designer and Harry Marks who conceived a convergence of ideas in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design. The 1980’s was time of tremendous ferment in the domain of representations of knowledge and reality. Companies like Lucas Films, Pixar, Apple, NEXT were creating and expanding technologies that were changing the landscape of how we created, represented, consumed, transmitted, and assimilated information and reality. Despite its prescient notions and star line-up of speakers, the event was a financial bust and a repeat event would not be attempted until 1990. The second attempt was successful, and the TED event became an annual affair in Monterey, California. The first TED events were open to an invitation-only audience and together with their high-ticket price rapidly acquired a cachet as an exclusive netw...

  The Road to the RED DOT: THE FIRST STAGE The first TED stage was not in February 1984. The first TED stage was probably the campfire of Homo erectus nearly 1 million years ago. I’m sure Christopher Anderson may have something to say about that. But in the darkness of that primitive night in the time of sabretooth cats our ancient ancestors huddled for safety and warmth around the campfires of the time and would communicate the saga of the day's events to each other. These were the first lecture halls and classrooms of our species and ideas and knowledge essential to survive the night and the oncoming dawn were transmitted by the fortunate few to the rest of the tribe. The cave drawings that emerged in the times of primitive man would become the first storyboards of humankind. The need for story and narrative to codify and capture experience to be transmitted from one individual to another is the essence of knowledge transfer. In essence, it ensured that one individual’s experie...

  The Road to the RED DOT: AN IDEA WORTH SHARING Ideas are simultaneously the most ephemeral and the single most powerful force in the world. At its birth, an idea is no more than a wisp of smoke. A mere spark of a few electrons hopping across a nanomolecular space between two neurons in a single brain. Of the millions of random thoughts that pass across the neural networks of our brains each day, 1 or 2 stand forth as an idea that captures our attention for a billionth of a second longer than the rest. In that infinitesimally longer lifespan that thought creates a ripple that is larger than the rest and crosses the threshold from a mere wish to a spoken thought. It becomes expressed in language. The crossing of an idea from a mere electrical ripple into the realm of spoken language is a seminal transformation and is the first necessary step to making that idea a manifest reality. But a TED-worthy Idea is more than most ideas. A TED-worthy Idea is more than a wish no matter how p...

  The Road to the RED DOT: WHY TED? July 1 st , 2024   The pandemic of 2020 demonstrated that we at the clinic were so much better at managing our mental health and focus as well as the ability to create a sanctuary of safety for our community. After the devastation passed I looked around at the global detritus and suffering and felt that what we had done needed to be taken to a wider platform. More people needed to hear the message of empowerment and so I decided to write a book. The Reapers Dance: 1000 Days of COVID was written in 60 days and published on Amazon and then I started taking the message to podcast platforms. People, I felt needed to hear the idea of how focus on their immediate reality was capable of shifting the narratives that formed their lived reality. Then in Jan 2024 I decided to apply to take my message to the TED stage. And so, began my road to the Red Dot. What is TED and why is it a big deal? TE...