Are you ready for TED-y?

I've been fooling around with some notions sparked by an excellent article in The New Yorker (7/16), "Listen and Learn," by Nathan Heller.  It's a description of TED, a loose organization for Technology / Entertainment / Design. 

Broadly speaking, it's about problem-solving – defining problems accurately and devising approaches toward solution, then implementing them in the outside, or real, world.

I'm automatically suspicious of groupthink, but maybe professional artists and writers are self-selected against teamwork.  I sign the painting or put my name on the spine and take responsibility for its success or failure.  And then go on to the next one.

This TED business, though, is pretty attractive in spite of its distinct nut-like flavor.  There are a lot of broad assertions not examined at leisure, a certain amount of arm-waving and (to me) intimidating nonstop enthusiasm – but there really is something here, and I want to look at it more closely.

I've fiddled with it for half a day and have to get back to finishing the novel, but wanted to fix it in my mind for continuing, a couple of weeks from now.  Here's the (unfinished) map of it, for LJ people.

 There's an entertaining demonstration of a basic tenet, having to do with the relationship between happiness and creativity, that really rang bells for me: 

youtube.com/watch?v=GXy__kBVq1M

Here's the blurb -- Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard.

A lot of fun.  Maybe very useful.

Joe