I cosplayed as a Ted talker
I recently was asked by TedX to speak at one of their youth events in Canberra.
I felt like I was larping the entire time, but I did greatly enjoy the coaching process beforehand. It turns out that when you do a TED talk (at least with this TedX org), a coach spends a few weeks with you trying to figure out your true internal motivations. Knowing your true internal motivations is apparently key to giving a TED talk.
I am not going to tell you my deepest darkest secrets, but I have becoming increasingly fascinated by asking my most ambitious friends what their motivations are. This is not a unique take, but at I believe everyone has a mix of “noble” motivations and a mix of selfish or kind-of-messed up motivations. The interesting part to me is who tells me the noble part, who tells me the selfish part, and how much I have to push to get the noble group to admit their selfish motivations. I highly recommend this exercise with your friends, colleagues, or strangers on the street.
Edit: they released a video of the TED talk a couple of years later, which I discovered because someone trying to hire me googled my name and mentioned it. I have been unable to watch the full video, because it’s very difficult to watch a video of my two-years-ago self without cringing. But I’ve been told I should put a link here for posterity. If you, dear reader, ever mention this to me I will be incredibly embarrassed and take it down, so let’s pretend this never happened.