Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Ted@State



Ted was invited to launch a series of public events sponsored by the State Department’s Global Partnership Initiative. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and it began in 1984 as a conference to bring together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The talks and the annual conference now bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes or less!

Ted “Ideas worth spreading”

http://www.ted.com/



Elizabeth Bagley, the Secretary of State’s Special Representative for Global Partnerships, began the event, emphasizing the need for creative solutions in the State Department and the opening of doors to partnership, collaboration and innovation.



Ted Speakers included:


Clay Shirky, a social-web analyst touched on social capital and social networking and how they are changing the way news is reported



Stewart Brand, futurist and author of The Whole Earth Catalog talked about how the world will react to urbanization.



Paul Collier, economist, author of The Bottom Billion talked about post-conflict recovery and the need for a long term approach to prevent conflict. Rather than applying the conventional approach of building political structures, getting peace keeping troops home as soon as possible, and assuming elections will produce stable government; he recommended two complimentary, longer-term approaches to post-conflict recovery:


1. Recognize the interdependence of 3 key actors (UN Security Council, Donors, Post-Conflict Government)



2. Develop three critical things: jobs (for idle young men, especially in the construction sector); improvement of basic services; and clean government (i.e. Accountants without border)



GOAL after 10 years post-conflict: a well developed construction sector, good service delivery, and clean government = politics of hope



Jacqueline Novogratz, pioneer of “market-based” philanthropy and founder of Acumen Fund discussed using a market-based solution called Patient Capital – investing in entrepreneurs in developing countries to bring jobs, goods, and services to the world’s poorest. It falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of foreign aid [from Dambisa Moyo (HKS alum and author of Dead Aid – why aid to Africa is not working) to Jeffery Sachs (advocate for increased foreign aid and former director of the Center for International Development at HKS where interestingly enough, Moyo once took his class)].



Hans Rosling, data visionary, disaggregated regional data (GDP, infant mortality, HIV/AIDS rates) to show its variation within regions and countries, advocating for specialized approaches to public policies and programs, rather than general regional and country-wide policies. For example, a Family Planning campaign in country X will not be able to effectively change behavior unless it has it can be targeted to different populations. [In May, I attended a communication workshop that used Hans Rosling as an example of how to effectively explain complicated topics and he is as fantastic in person as on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w ]