We covered the arrival of TED in India earlier, and now they are looking for TEDIndia Fellows.  A message from TEDIndia organizers:

Organizers of the TED Conference announced they would begin the search for 100 TEDIndia Fellows to participate in the TEDIndia Conference in Mysore, India, following upon the successful TED Fellows program launch at TED2009 this past February in Long Beach, California. The TEDIndia Fellows program will accept applications for fellowships from April 20, 2009 through June 15, 2009.

The TEDIndia Fellows program is a part of the larger TED Fellows Program, a new international fellowship program designed to nurture great ideas and help them spread around the world. This year, organizers will select 100 promising individuals from around the world to attend the very first TEDIndia Conference. At the end of the year, organizers will select 20 individuals from a pool of the TED, TEDGlobal, and TEDIndia Fellows to participate in an extended three-year Senior Fellowship, bringing them to six consecutive conferences. The principal goal of the program is to empower the Fellows to effectively communicate their work to the world.

Benefits of the Fellowship include conference admission, round-trip transportation, housing and all meals. Fellows will also participate in a two-day pre-conference with the opportunity to present a short talk for consideration for TED.com, elite skills-building courses taught by world experts, social opportunities and surprise extras.

The TEDIndia Fellows program will have international representation with a distinctly South Asian majority, with approximately 75% of the Fellows representing the South Asian region, and 25% representing other regions of the world. South Asia is defined as including the countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. For the global pool, applications will also be sought from the other five target regions: Africa, Asia/Pacific, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, with consideration to the applicants from other countries.

The program seeks remarkable thinkers and doers who have shown unusual accomplishment, exceptional courage, moral imagination and the potential to increase positive change in their respective fields. The program focuses on innovators in technology, entertainment, design, science, film, art, music, entrepreneurship and the NGO community, among other pursuits. Applicants are generally between 21-40 years of age, though anyone over 18 and over 40 may apply. They must also be fluent in English; though moderate fluency will be accepted on a case-by-case basis.

The program was inspired by the TEDAfrica 2007 conference in Arusha, Tanzania, in which 100 fellows participated in a first-of-its kind gathering that featured trailblazing, entrepreneurial individuals vested in creating change on the continent. The TEDAfrica fellows brought with them new perspectives, enormous energy, enthusiasm and ovation-generating talks. Propelled by their energy, TED decided to develop the full-scale TED Fellows program, which debuted at TED2009 in Long Beach, California.

“TED2009 was a transformative experience for me, and several of my peers,” said Pragnya Alekal, TED2009 Fellow and now TEDIndia Fellows Coordinator. “For the first time, we were in a supportive community of enthusiastic innovators, all working to make the world better. And after only two months, so many new collaborative ventures and initiatives have come out of it.

“I want to share TED with other people; I want more South Asians to experience what we Fellows experienced. I would like the world to know about the genius brewing in this part of the world, and I look forward to them meeting their counterparts from around the world. I believe this will be an important launch pad for everything that is good for the future of India, South Asia, and the world.”

For more information about how individuals may apply for a TEDIndia Fellowship, please visit http://www.ted.com/fellows/apply. TED Fellows may apply or be nominated by another individual. To nominate a candidate, email the full name of the candidate and their contact information to fellows@ted.com.

About TED

TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. And in fact, the event is broader still, showcasing ideas that matter in any discipline. Attendees have called it “the ultimate brain spa” and “a four-day journey into the future.” The diverse audience — CEOs, scientists, creatives, philanthropists — is almost as extraordinary as the speakers, who have includedBill Clinton, Nandan Nilekani, Bill Gates, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ashraf Ghani, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Bono, Sir Richard Branson, andStephen Hawking.

TED was first held in Monterey, California, in 1984. In 2001, Chris Anderson’s Sapling Foundation acquired TED from its founder, Richard Saul Wurman. In recent years, TED has expanded to include an international conference, TEDGlobal July 21-24, 2009 in Oxford, UK; media initiatives, including TED Talks and TED.com; and the TED Prize. TED2010, “What the World Needs Now,” will be held February 9-13, 2010, inLong Beach, California, with a simulcast event in Palm Springs, California.

CONTACT: Laura Galloway for TED, +1-213-948-3100 or +1-212-260-3708, laura@gallowaymediagroup.com

The inspirational, energy-filled, and fun TED conference is heading to India this year.  From November 4-7, 2009, TEDIndia will take place in Mysore and bring together speakers and delegates that are reinventing India.  The huge success of TED makes its arrival in India even more exciting.  At TC-I, we covered a few TED talks here, here, and here.

A little background on the TED conference:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). Attendees have called it “the ultimate brain spa” and “a four-day journey into the future.” The diverse audience — CEOs, scientists, creatives, and philanthropists — is almost as extraordinary as the speakers, who have included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Nandan Nilekani, Jane Goodall, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck and Bono.

The India conference will answer questions like:

• Which local innovations are destined for global impact?
• Who are the young thinkers and doers capable of shaping the future?
• Can there be economic advancement without environmental destruction?
• Can a pluralistic democracy survive in the face of rising fundamentalism?
• Can we make money and be good? Really?
• What should we learn – or fear? — from China’s investment in Africa?
• Do we have enough water for everyone?
• How do we keep our youth challenged and our aged healthy?
• How can anti-poverty solutions be brought to scale?
• Is there wisdom to be found in traditional medicine?
• Which other ancient traditions can illuminate modern life?

This will be an event that any social innovator in India will want to attend – register to apply here.

The Summer Olympics takes place every four years. So does another, lesser-known event: the Copenhagen Consensus Conference (CCC). The forum involves a group of established and renowned economists discussing the world’s problems, and then prioritizing ways to address those issues. A 2005 video from TED Talks features Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, who explained the rationale behind CCC. He called the project “the defense for boring problems,” and noted that the solutions are prioritized without concern of making us, or the media, “feel good.”

Comparing the list from 2004 and 2008 shows a shift in priorities. The top four in 2004: Control of HIV/AIDS, Providing Malnutrients, Trade Liberalization, and Control of Malaria. In contrast, 2008 shows the top four as: Micronutrient Supplements for Children, The Doha Development Agenda, Micronutrient Fortification, and Expanded Immunization Coverage for Children.

The list is made with a global viewpoint – so to think about it from India’s perspective is interesting. Would the priorities still be the same for India? Also, keep in mind that this prioritization occurred from the economic mindset. I’ve always had an issue with this, since that means that a cost-benefit analysis is going to occur – which in turn means that everything must be quantified. But do the numbers always tell the full story, or is it a neat and packaged way to explain things?

In the video about the 2004 list, Mr Lomborg explains why these were listed as “good” projects instead of, say, climate change. Climate change, although picked up widely by the media, is very expensive given the little impact money has – according the video, spending $150 billion per year would postpone global warming by only six years. On the other hand, spending $27 billion over eight years on controlling HIV/AIDS would avoid 28 million new cases of the disease. Liberalizing trade would supposedly bring $2,400 billion dollars into the world, half of which would go to the Third World and help lift millions out of poverty very fast – but, as Mr Lomborg points out, movies aren’t made about trade, and it doesn’t necessarily make us “feel good.”

The approach is realistic. Everything can’t be given a top spot, and eventually, one has to decide where to send funds, spend time, and make investments. CCC puts emphasis on making sure that spent dollars go a long way. But it also depends on the value you place on using an economic framework to make your decisions – which is where I get stuck.

And even if I take the economic approach, how can we truly quantify everything? What about the negative consequences (for example, would trade liberalization always lead to a good outcome for a country like India)? Do consequences come with a quantifiable price? While I find some priorities agreeable – especially the ones with health, malnutrition, and education – and I do support making choices from solid data, it’s hard to swallow when large-scale decisions can be made solely based on those figures.

So maybe I am someone that likes to “feel good,” after all. But is that a detriment to finding effective solutions?

Here is a video from TED.com featuring Paul Collier and his approach to addressing the bottom billion.

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AMD, the only real competitor to Intel’s effective monopoly on microprocessors, has established an ambitious initiative to provide internet access to 50% of the world by 2015. Here is the video of Hector Ruiz, AMD’s CEO, on the project titled 50×15.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.526799&w=425&h=350&fv=bgColor%3DFFFFFF%26file%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fmovies%2FHectorRuiz_2007G_high.flv%26autoPlay%3Dfalse%26fullscreenURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fflash%2Ffullscreen.html%26forcePlay%3Dfalse%26logo%3D%26allowFullscreen%3Dtrue] from www.ted.com posted with vodpod

Here is an interesting video on social networking and the advent of open-source economics. This is a trend that I believe will have significant positive effects on the social entrepreneurship scene.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1104575&w=425&h=350&fv=bgColor%3DFFFFFF%26file%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fmovies%2FYochaiBenkler_2005G_high.flv%26autoPlay%3Dfalse%26fullscreenURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fflash%2Ffullscreen.html%26forcePlay%3Dfalse%26logo%3D%26allowFullscreen%3Dtrue] from www.ted.com posted with vodpod

Can films promote peace?

2006 TED Prize winner, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, certainly believes they can. And so, on May 10, 2008, known as “Pangea Day,” several cities across the world – Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro – “will be linked via satellite for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program will be broadcast – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones.

So what exactly is Pangea Day?

Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film. In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.

The 24 short films to be featured have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from over one hundred countries. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person’s eyes.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a sampling of one of the videos released by Pangea Day – Kenyans singing the Indian national anthem:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAWarHi0OgE]