I’ve been wrestling with applying to TED talks, I have a few more days to wrestle, the deadline for this round is Friday.  You can only apply once in twelve months.  I’m told that TED, like everyone else, looks at stats– how much of a following you have on-line, in the world, how many clicks, how many click-throughs.  By that criteria, I’m already disqualified, with well under a hundred watching each of the kids’ animations made by my visionary program.  

On this blahg I get a few readers on a good day, not that I’d mention gratootskyblahg to TED.  I have a small group of followers who seem to be about 50% business people looking for customers.  I am supposed to be a business person, if I’m to be attractive to TED.  My great idea worth spreading must already be out in the world, being discussed to some extent.  Being seen by more than the few hundred who’ve visited this great site.

In the real world I can’t get people to answer my calls, yet.  I think I may be in a better position in six months, when many more people are talking about my great idea worth spreading.  Maybe I should wait to apply to TED then, when I’ve raised my profile.  It’s a shot in the dark either way, who knows?

I stumbled on the farm system for TED yesterday, TEDx.  These appear to be the minor leagues for TED, small stages where people who may think their ideas are worth talking about get to audition, give a little taste of their stuff.  I watched some of these with a sinking heart yesterday.  Several Muslim comics, I watched one after another, addressing audiences in places like Doha, Qatar.  The titles were things like A Kuwaiti, a Saudi and an Egyptian walk into an Iranian Bar, Muslims are Funny, Too, and We All Laugh.  I hope we all laugh, it’s the best hope we have.  I haven’t had a laugh in a while, I was ready, overdue, really.  So I turned hopefully to my young Muslim brothers.

I watched one, an earnest young Saudi guy talking about how he helped bring Stand-Up comedy to the Arabian Peninsula.  As he talked very seriously about comedy, and getting laughs, the camera panned the faces of his audience.  There were a few smiles to be seen as I waited for laughs.  Where are the laughs?  I kept thinking.  None there.  Went to the next one, and the one after that, I smiled, but nothing got a laugh out of me.  A few of these guys had charm, but they were walking a very careful line.  Those who walk such lines are generally not hilarious.

Go to the major league TED talks and you will almost always have something to laugh about as you are provoked by super-bright performers to think new thoughts.  These people are at ease and inspired, they speak easily to the crowd of 1,500.   I was at ease and inspired at my mother’s funeral, even funny, true, but it was a crowd who knew me, and my mother, and appreciated the irreverence, which was a tribute to, and in part attributable to, her.   Forget that little show.  

Forget IBM, TED’s main secret sponsor, forget IBM’s stunning info-mercials at the end of each minor league TEDx Talk.  Forget, as you hear IBM’s genius public relations firm spin out the wondrous story of IBM changing the world with amazing ideas, that at one time IBM’s amazing ideas included keeping track of people an organized government headed by a psychopath murdered by the millions.  

I am in a dark mood lately, no lie.   No laughs here.  Maybe next time.  In fact, remind me to tell you the one about the visionary data company and the visionary purifier of blood.  It’ll kill yuh.