Last night I had the pleasure to go to a fantastic ‘unofficial’ TED conference organized in San Francisco. For those who don’t know what TED is, let me save myself some typing and quote Wikipedia:

TED (short for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a U.S. private non-profit foundation[1] that is best known for its conferences, now held in Europe and Asia as well as the U.S., devoted to what it calls “ideas worth spreading”.[2] Its lectures or TED Talks, widely disseminated on the Internet, are subject to an eighteen minute time limit.

TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event, and the conference was held annually from 1990. TED’s early emphasis, consistent with a Silicon Valley center of gravity, was largely technology and design. Its co-founder was Richard Saul Wurman, credited with having coined in 1976 the term information architect. As popularity of the talks has spread, so has the range of subject matter, to cover almost all aspects of science and culture. Those who have given TED talks include Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, the founders of Google, the evangelist Billy Graham and various Nobel Prize winners.[3]

TEDxSF was hosted by the wonderful California Academy of Sciences, and the main stage was inside the planetarium – indeed a very interesting setup for watching some amazing speakers.

The theme of this particular instance of TEDxSF was “Courage and Resilience”. The speakers represented those who had persisted through some of the most difficult times anybody can imagine, and many of them went on to achieve great things.

But with TED the theme can never be revealing enough – the fact that TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, doesn’t even make justice to the breath and diversity of the speakers and their stories.

We had the pleasure to hear entrepreneurs, who not only had to struggle with their own financial survival for years, but also with disbelief and sometimes betrayal portrayed by the VC’s that backed them. Within this topic, we got to hear Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster, who go later kicked off as the CEO of his own company (and replaced by a fast-moving sequence of other 6 CEO’s). Jonathan, however, did not succumb to this event, he went on to found other startups, including socializr, and his own night club in the city of San Francisco. Although he didn’t have the fortune to produce another hit as big as Friendster, Abrams remains as the “godfather of social networking” and I am sure he will continue on to great things.

The second speaker in entrepreneurship, was Charles Huang, the co-founder of Red Octane. For those of you who don’t know, Red Octane is the startup gaming company that created the ever popular game “Guitar Hero“. After the successful launch of the first in a series of games, Red Octane got acquired by the beefy amount of $100 Million dollars (a bargain considering that they bootstrapped the company and their total revenues as of today broke the $2 Billion barrier). Although Charles and his brother ended up creating the third largest franchise in video games history (after Mario Bros. and Madden NFL), VC’s were reluctant to see the potential of their endeavor and failed to recognize the paramount opportunity. The brothers had to take a second mortgage in both of their homes in order to be able to release the first version of the game to stores. Initially, only 3 brand stores in all of the USA, agreed to put the game in their shelves.

A second group of speakers could only be referred as fighters. Speakers included Captain Paul Watson and UFC fighter Nate Quarry.

All the TEDxSF videos will be available in about a month, but I was able to find the one for Captain Paul Watson, so I will let him introduce himself, rather than pollute his talk with my own interpretation.

Part 2
Part 3
Bonus: Southpark episode about Whale Wars

Nate Quarry grew up in a Jehovah’s Witness house, which forced him to live in a sheltered “bubble”. He was not allowed to interact with outsiders, including something as trivial as participating in organized sports. Until the age of 24, he had never participated in any serious sports. But after watching an airing of the ultimate fight championship, he decided that is what he wanted to do. That week, he went to the closest gym and fought everyone there, and he got his a** kicked. But he pronounced that he would be back again and again until he could beat everyone there – so he did… A few years later, after his father passed away, Nate decided that it was time for him to pursue his dreams. With only $3000 in the bank and a daughter to take care of, he quit his job and became a top UFC fighter. Quarry made it to the championship final, where he got knocked out in the first round. To make it worse, he got diagnosed with a degenerateness condition affecting his back. True to his resilience, however, Nate Quarry came back from the ashes, after a dangerous back surgery, and today he continues to fight in the UFC.

It is clear (from this angle) who would win in a fight

There were two more speakers, David Shenk, author of “The Genius In All Of Us” and other three best sellers, and Celina Realuyo, who works as a counter-terrorist in Washington DC. Additionally, we had the pleasure to listen to two beautiful musical performances by Loop!Station and Bhi Bhiman.

This was overall one of the most interesting events to which I’ve had the pleasure to attend. I sincerely recommend anyone who is interested in meeting fascinating individuals to go to a TED event near your location.