fifthculture’s blog

Hello all,
If you are looking to join the conversation on TED Tuesdays, you can find it on my other blog kingsofsimulcast.blogspot.com. See you there.

Don

TED Tuesdays will resume in New York at my new place of magic, Grey. Anyone in New York is welcome to stop by, just call for details (obviously it will be Tuesdays, but due to my still somewhat transient lifestyle, I can't promise every Tuesday).

In anticipation for lighting this candle, I give you this:

Here's the video folks.

Ambitious. Inspiring. Difficult. World Changing. This is Jehane Noujaim's Pangea Day. As all of you know, I have a passion and belief that communication can change the world and that those of us lucky enough to work with words and images have a real responsibility to do just that. Jehane Noujaim and the TED community is taking a historic step in that direction. Two years ago, Jehane introduced the idea of a global day of film to the TED audience in the form of a TED Prize wish. On May 10 2008, Pangea Day will become a reality. On that day, a live four-hour program of films, speakers and music will be video-conferenced to New York, Dharamsala, Rio, Cairo, London, Jerusalem and Kigali.

I am extremely proud to be associated with a community that does this. And while I can't help with the money or the incredible amount of logistics involved in pulling this off, I can do my part by spreading the word and so can you.

For the next 24 hours, the Pangea Day video will be featured on YouTube's homepage. View it here, rate it, pass it on.

Note that I am not embedding the video here today. I will embed it tomorrow. Today please go to YouTube.com and view it there.

XOXO
Don    

Sorry for the absence. As many of you know I am in the midst of transitioning jobs and cities back to Seattle. More on that to come. This is the last TED Tuesday I will do in Detroit. I have missed blogging about the last two since TED Global, mainly because of the upheaval that commenced upon my return. Another thing I haven't been able to do is blog about day four of TED Global. It was a great experience my friends and frankly all my attempts to sum it up seem like purple prose, and I will not subject you to that.

Anywhoo, this week we watched Bill Stone's inspiring and stunning presentation from this year. I think everyone was pretty shocked by his announcement at the end of his talk. The interesting thing to me is that in the last twenty years or so, we have lost sight of what a true explorer is and I think that has an important impact on our world view. Bill reminded us that exploration is going where none have gone rather than where few have gone and in relation to his last announcement, doing what none have done and few would dare. If Bill is able to do this (you'll have to watch the video to find out what the announcement is), he might just inspire the world in the way all great explorers have inspired the world in the past. Check it below.

"We the willing have been doing so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."
    – Seyi Oyesola Inventor, Physician

Gazelle, I killed you for your skin’s exquisite touch,
for how easy it is to be nailed to a board weathered raw as white butcher paper.
Last night I heard my daughter praying for the meat here at my feet.
You know it wasn’t anger that made me stop my heart till the hammer fell.
Weeks ago, I broke you as a woman once shattered me into a song beneath her weight,
before you slouched into that grassy hush.
But now I’m tightening lashes,
shaping hide as if around a ribcage, stretched like five bowstrings.
Ghosts cannot slip back inside the body’s drum.
You’ve been seasoned by wind, dusk & sunlight.
Pressure can make everything whole again,
brass nails tacked into the ebony wood,
your face has been carved five times.
I have to drive trouble from the valley.
Trouble in the hills.
Trouble on the river too.
There’s no kola nut, palm wine, fish, salt, or calabash.
Kadoom.
Kadoom.
Kadoom.
Ka-doooom.
Kadoom.
Now I have beaten a song back into you, rise & walk away like a panther.
    – Yusuf Kumanyaaka’s “Ode to the Drum”

That, my friends, was today in a nutshell. Today was about practical solutions and something else, something more ephemeral, transcendent. Under the heading practical solutions Seyi Oyesola pointed out that there is no system in place in most African countries for events such as accidents or chronic illness. His talk was titled "Beyond HIV and Malaria" and in it he stressed the need to get healthy, not just focus on HIV and AIDS. One of the most relevant quotes about this idea came from the next speaker, Ernest Madu who said "The way to ensure poverty is to kill the parents." According to Seyi, the average life expectancy in most African countries is 47 compared to 78 in Europe. According to Ernest, in eight years non-communicable diseases will be the leading cause of death in Africa. Seyi showed the despicable hospital conditions in West Africa and then his hospital-in-a-box which won the British Invention Show's invention of the year award in 2005.

The last session of the day was titled "The Campfire" and that was a great description of it. One of the presenters asked us to imagine a world without stories. It would be meaningless. It is the stories of life that give meaning to life. The standout from this session was Chris Abani from a talk standpoint. For a great write up on Chris go to http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog/

Vushi Mahlasela closed out the session with truly amazing music. He sang in English and Zulu. He brought a great session to a fitting end.

Also check out this essay from speaker Binyavanga Wainaina.

I love you all more than I can say.

Don

http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog/
http://whiteafrican.com/
http://www.webaddict.co.za/
http://jenbrea.typepad.com/africabeat/
http://bankelele.blogspot.com/

And more to be found here.

The above blogs have wonderful, informed dialog about Africa and give a great insight into TED Global.

Heresy describes as "one of the most important projects I've ever heard of." It's the Genographic Project from National Geographic. From the site: "Where do you really come from? And how did you get to where you live today? DNA studies suggest that all humans today descend from a group of human ancestors who – about 60,000 years ago – began a remarkable journey. Follow the journey from them to you as written in your genes." Check it out here.   

Only half because I got sick for the second part of the day and had to go lie down. Sorry guys, but I was in no shape to even pay attention. I will try to be coherent, but I am trying to do this quickly so I can get back to bed.

OK, let's start this post with a puzzle from Jay Walker: What job could a person perform with only a cell phone and a fluency in English? Jay posed this question to the group by way of talking about capital tools. If you have a bicycle, you have a job. If you have a sewing machine you have a job. Bicycles and sewing machines are capital tools. So is a cell phone. If you have a cell phone you have a job, but what is it? Sure you could make calls for people and charge over what your minutes cost you, but that isn't really a job. Jay believes that if we solve this problem we can create 10,000,000 new jobs. Taking all entries. I'll be happy to pass them along to Jay.

Some very strong speakers this morning starting with Eleni Gabre-Madhin who in her bio states that her goal is transform the lives of millions of small farmers in Ethiopia so that they may empower themselves and lift themselves out of poverty through the market  – establishing the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange. Eleni was a great example, I think, of classic principles brought to bear on a large scale problem, taking advantage of available technology. She started by saying that markets don't happen by accident and to have an agriculture market that is more than subsistence farming you need to build an infrastructure designed to equalize the swings between harvest time when farmers are forced to sell low and the lean times when they are forced to by high. Eleni talked about the beginnings of the Chicago Board of Trade as a similar situation, but she went further, integrating through technology (V-SAT) all of the pieces of information necessary to build a system of warehousing and futures trading so that farmers "won't go to market blind."

Idris Mohammed, a private equity pioneer, who said that energy is the next big job in Africa. Idris had a lot of charts that were small and hard to follow. But he started with a great statement about language. "Language is a problem. We use words like poverty reduction instead of wealth creation. I'm interested in making Africans rich." Some of the numbers that I was able to follow: average African electricity usage is 150 kilowatt hours vs. 14,000 kilowatt hours in the US (that's per week I think). The investment needed is 70 billion. Currently Africa receives 2 billion in private equity and 35 billion in aid. Idris said that Bono should be talking to the G8 to create a fund to create jobs around bringing energy to Africa. I had the opportunity to ride to the hotel from the airport with Idris. I asked him what form of power (fossil fuels, wind, hydro), he said that most likely it would be fossil fuels. It seems we can't avoid creating problems even when we are solving them. Both options are grave.

The first TED Tuesday when I get back will be Jacqueline Novogratz from a few years ago. After that we'll discuss her eloquent and passionate talk here "The Education of a Patient Capitalist." I found Jacqueline to be the most moving speaker so far and frankly I just don't have the energy to do it justice, so for those of you in Detroit, look forward to that.

That's it for tonight.

Love and kisses,
Don

Wow! A great start. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect from TED Africa. I don't understand all of the problems, or the cultures. But today has been a great learning experience. Actually all the days have been great learning experiences.

I flew over from Amsterdam with Euvin Naidoo who was the first speaker of the conference. Our plane conversation centered around investment in Africa. Today he revealed that five African stock markets are yielding the strongest returns in the world.

That provided a perfect springboard for Andrew Mwenda, a journalist and social critic (read troublemaker – my kind of guy), and passionate speaker. Andrew is so outspoken he spent some time in prison for his comments about the Ugandan government. So, as it turns out, according to Andrew, all of us bleeding hearts from rich countries are doing the absolute wrong thing by giving aid to African countries. Andrew asked "has anyone in this room benefited or had a relative who benefited from aid?" A surprise answer came from Bono (all I could make out of the comment was "bullocks," but Bono would elaborate a little later). Andrew continued to say that the key to economic development was investment in viable business opportunities, that, as his TED bio states, "economic development comes from activities of self-interested individuals in the marketplace."

Carol Pineau, producer and director of "Africa, Open For Business," seconded Andrew's points by presenting three of Africa's great business success stories. I thought Carol showed her true passion for storytelling when explaining why she wanted to tell the "Africa,  Open For Business" story. She said she wanted to tell a story that no one else was focusing on, but was more important for Africa than following refugees around. That story was an optimistic story of opportunity. Carol found a truth that the rest of the journalist community is ignoring. Shame on them. Carol is absolutely right. Sharing stories of success may not be as sensational as death and refugee camps and it may not sell papers in our "if it bleeds, it leads" news culture, but it will do more to breed more success than anything else.

OK, so you gotta love Bono if for no other reason than he's absolutely genuine. Bono is not a great public speaker (there, I said it), but there is no doubt he cares and believes with all his might in what he is doing. Bono started by referencing the Marshal Plan's role in Germany and then said that government aid allowed him to get an education. Bono was obviously taking a position contrary to Andrew and Carol, but he tempered it during the Q&A by stating that we should only invest in aid that we know works. Bono threw out a stunning number: 3,000 kids a day day from malaria. That's almost 11 million kids a year. Bono said that if we knew 11 million kids were going to die as the result of global warming next year, we would find a solution and we would hear about it in the news. His point was simple –anyone who doesn't think this is a crisis is off his or her rocker.

To be fair after the discussion with Andrew and later when Bono answered questions, I got the impression that there were a few disagreements, but the two were not so far off from each other to reach common ground. Of course I could be wrong.        

The day also included a talk by Zeray Alemseged, the paleontologist who discovered the 3.3-million year old bones of a three-year old hominid. This is significant because it is the only infant remains ever discovered.

The day closed with the brilliant filmmaker Newton Aduaka. He showed some scenes from his film "Ezra" and two of his other works. Not only does he shoot beautiful film, but he truly understands acting. The performances in his film are truly magical. Check him out if you can.

One other big thing today, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor sent a message to TED in which she praised the goal of TED Global and pointed out the similarities (and some of the differences, in a good way) between TED and the G8 Summit.

Sorry, no photos. I'll post those when I have a better connection.

More to come...