Bleary eyed but game we queue from 0800 and this is what we get to enjoy… Adrian Dolby, Organic Farmer I breakfasted with Adrian yesterday and what a charming man – he runs a huge organic farm in the Malvern Hills called Barrington Park Estate Farms. His talk is excellent.  Half a kilo of healthy soil (“the ecstatic skin of the Earth”) contains 300,000 million bacteria and 10km of fungus. Organic farming works if skilled rotation is used, based on clover (naturally created nitrates). What about

Last session of a packed day and we’re off again… Miwa Matreyek, Multimedia Artist (and hear my AudioBoo with Miwa here) One of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure the web will do Miwa justice, but click the link on her name to take a look. Her performance on the TED stage combines shadow play with computer graphics, art and music in a wonderful phantasmagoria which really takes the breath away. Stunning.   Neil Gershenfeld, Physicist, Fabrication Pioneer Some of this one

Inge Missmahl, Analytical psychologist In a tour de force of compassionate activism, Inge shows how she has single-handedly made a massive difference in Afghanistan by introducing psychosocial counselling for a population of whom up to 80% are clinically depressed. The average age in the country is 17, and everyone has been damaged by war: they need to feel heard. Inge’s clinics are now part of the public health strategy and they are transforming thousands of lives a year. Humbling.   Annie Lennox, Singer Yesterday Annie was

Sheena Iyengar Psycho-economist The practice of choice is very different depending on culture. The American model (have it your way) is not necessarily best, though Americans blithely assume that everyone in the world only needs to adopt it to be happy. Three underlying assumptions, each of which can be challenged. 1 – we should make our own choices (but it can be better to defer to family or community) 2 – more options lead to better choices (but Eastern Europeans don’t see Coke v Pepsi as

Here goes for the first of the two full days of TED – four sessions each day, starting at 0830. This is the meat!

This was a classic session! First Matt Ridley, giving a tour de force talk on how ideas have sex… the process is exchange, which is probably what cause homo sapiens to displace the neanderthals and what distinguishes us from tool-using animals. When we trade (which we’ve been doing for 100,000 years) we make room for specialisation, and thus we create a ‘collective brain’, which knows how to make everything – no one person knows how to make anything from beginning to end, but as a collective

2pm and Chris says the magic words: “It’s time for TED!” Bruno Giussani enjoys a huge welcome and hosts session 1 – and we’re off!

I’m getting lots of fascinating connections since my TED talk went live. One I want to share straight away is an excellent online presentation called The Power Of Sound, created by Bob McCurdy at Clear Channel Radio Sales. It was designed to sell radio as a medium, but it has lots of interest to anyone who cares about sound and how it affects people – and it’s beautifully put together with plenty of sound. You can see it for yourself here. Congratulations to Bob and

I’m delighted and thrilled to see my short TED talk go up on the TED website. I had a very warm response from many people to the talk over the four days at TEDGlobal in Oxford – four days which were a huge highlight of my year – and already there are some great comments on the TED Facebook page. Five minutes is a short time to condense a lot of material into, but I managed not to gabble! I’m now looking forward to a

We live so much in our eyes these days that we underestimate and undervalue our most potent and primal sense: hearing. Here are three reasons we should place hearing back on the throne as king of our senses.