Tag: TEDWomen

Video of My TED Talk

Last December, I delivered a talk for TED. In fact it was the first ever TEDWomen and was a great event. I met  many amazing, dedicated men and women whose work is to help women around the globe. The editors at TED just released the video of my talk.

Writing the talk took over a month. It began as long  speech, and I spent weeks pairing it down to the six minutes I was allotted.  I also worked with a very talented coach, Trisha Bauman, who helped be understand many new (to me) key elements for successful public speaking and performance.  While I have given numerous talks over the years, this was the first one that I felt I should memorize. In fact,  memorization really frees you up, and allows you to connect with the audience and with what you are saying much more naturally.

The audience at the conference was wonderful. In fact you can hear me laughing with them because I was so taken aback by their loud spontaneous laughter. It was great. Many of the other  talks were (rightfully) serious, and I sense that the audience was looking for relief, which I provided. While many of the other speakers were serious with touches of humor, I was humorous with an underlying note of serious.  My favorite way to be.

I just returned from giving a talk at the first ever TEDWomen in Washington, DC. It was an amazing two days, and I wrote about it today on my blog. There you will find a slide show of many of the speakers and of the exhibit I curated. Many thanks to Pat Mitchell for inviting me to speak at what for me was a life-changing event.  And I met some amazing people.  My hope is that this will bring more awareness to the issues concerning women, and also increase  the number of speakers who are women at TED conferences in the future. I also wrote a blog for The New Yorker on my talk.

TEDWomen Conference

I met Pat Mitchell, head of the Paley Center, last year. She is a  warm, engaging, creative powerhouse, and I am so pleased to have become friends with her. She invited me to participate in the first TEDWomen conference she, The Paley Center and TED are producing December 7th and 8th in Washington, DC. I am curating an exhibtion of international cartoonists on the subject of women, tenatively called: The Folly, Fun and Flexibility of Women. I also am scheduled to give a short talk in the first session.

Here is an interview with Pat on Huffingtonpost.

It’s about ideas. It’s not an exclusive event for women!