TEDxChange: Live Streaming a Global Movement

Right now, tens of thousands of people are sitting around in meeting centers or at their home computers, watching a development statistician share surprising insights about the best ways to approach poverty reduction.

In the year and a half or so since the program's launch, the TEDx program has become one of the most powerful platforms for convening groups of change makers in the world. Today, they're taking it to a new level with the first ever TEDxChange program, a collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that is live streaming at 11am EST.

The TEDxChange program marks the 10th anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals, a set of globally-agreed upon goals meant to end extreme poverty, turn the tide on climate change, and generally make the world the place that it could be. While the MDGs have been a benchmark for development programs outside the US, our policy makers have -- as they are wont to do with most global agreements -- viewed them with some skepticism. This program represents a chance to discuss the progress that has been made in the global effort.

The program features some incredible speakers. In addition to Melinda Gates who is hosting the event, TED curator Chris Anderson, child and women's rights advocate Graca Machel, Mechai Viravaidya -- Thailand's "Mr. Condom" who has revolutionized safe sex in the country, and TED's favorite statistician Hans Rosling will all speak in the 90 minute program.

Even cooler than the program itself is the fact that it will be simultaneously streamed at more than 80 independently-organized TEDx events, in places as far flung as Soweto, Tapei, and Tokyo. It is incredibly heart-warming that the group that is convening this massive platform is so powerfully committed to relentless smart.

Last year around this time I wrote a post called "Making the World Safe for Smart: Why TED Matters," in which I argued that anti-intellectualism, and particularly the way it trickles down to schools was an incredibly destructive force. I wrote:

We cannot continue to teach young people that being smart sucks - whatever type of smart they are. We cannot keep perpetuating the lie that "not caring" and "being cool" are the same thing. The challenges we face are too great for us to condition a whole generation to suppress what they're good at and what they care about. More than that, the beauty of the world that comes from discovering passion and talent is the single best force we have to counter a pessimistic, bleary view of things.

The year since I wrote that has seen TED grow into an even more powerful counterweight to that reality, and I believe that is largely attributable to the TEDx program that has allowed TED to be not just an aspirational model but a supportive home for the efforts of those who care about ideas and action.

Check out the TEDxChange homepage here.

Photo credit: TEDxBuenosAires