TEDx@TEDGlobal | June Cohen | What makes a great TED Talk

June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media, asks, and answers what makes a great TED Talk, what are the elements of a great TED Talk, and what makes a TED.com talk. Watch it and find out!

What is a great TED Talk?

What are the elements of a great TED Talk?

What makes a TED.com talk?

(Laughter)

If you're thinking about that you'd like
some of the talks from your event

to make it to TED.com,

what are some of the filters
that we look at

to come to that decision?

Fortunately, they're really the same,

what makes a great TED Talk
makes a great TED.com talk.

But I want to talk through that
with you in a way you can think about both

as you're booking speakers
and working with them.

The first thing to thing
we think makes a great TED Talk

is "Tell us something new."

Many of us at TED come
from journalistic backgrounds

and you can almost think about TED
as a biannual magazine on stage.

We really think
about what is new out there.

What are the new, different ideas
we haven't heard of before?

Sometimes is the topic.

There are speakers at TEDGlobal this year,

who are here claiming
that plants have brains.

I haven't heard that before.

That's a really interesting perspective.

Sometimes is a really
new angle on an old topic.

For example, about climate change.

We had Al Gore four years ago,
that was a really definitive talk

that climate change
is a fact, it's a problem.

To talk about climate change,
you need a new angle.

Think about having a material scientist,

or a photographer
who photographs icebergs.

Someone telling the story in a new way.

We think about this for TED.com:
is this new, fresh and relevant?

One of the great, amazing things for us

in working with the TEDx community

is that you know your communities
and there are so many stories,

ideas, issues and people
that are local to you

that could be presented and brought
to an international audience

in ways we've never heard of before.

You're the eyes and ears
in your own regional areas,

and we're so excited
about bringing those new ideas in.

The second thing to think about

is evoking contagious emotions.

One of the things we consider
for talks on TED

is "Are these talks spreading?"

Are people sharing them with each other?

Do they have a viral nature?

When you think about viral videos online,

obviously people first think
of kitty videos, and pranks,

that you want to share because
they surprise you or make you laugh.

But there are other kinds
of contagious emotions.

People want to share something
when it is emotional.

When something brings a lump
to their throat,

or kind of brings butterflies
to their stomachs,

they want someone
next to them to share it.

But they also share things
that teach them something new.

If you get an aha! moment from a talk,
you want to share it, let others know.

Or if you've learned
something important, that feels urgent,

you want to pass that on.

Not every talk needs to inspire

this incredible desire to be shared
with somebody else,

but many of the great talks do.

The next thing to think about
is to tell a story.

This is so fundamental
to every great TED Talk.

It's not just relaying facts,
it's not just a lecture.

A great speaker takes you on a journey,

they tell you a story,
they pull you along with them.

It doesn't matter whether
it's about bacteria or architecture,

fish or climate change.

You're pulled in
and you go along with them.

That doesn't mean that every person
has to describe their talk as a journey,

but it should take you somewhere.

Part of telling you a great story
is being personal.

A great story tells you
something about the speaker.

It doesn't need to be confessional,
you don't want to know everything.

But you want to feel them
inside the story.

A great talk that has
a personal story at the center.

That personal story could be about
their passion for certain kinds of fish,

or something from their childhood
that brought them to an insight later on.

But the personal story, I think, is how
we relate to an individual TED Talk.

We may not know anything
about the subject matter,

or we may not even think we care about it,

but we can relate
to that personal storytelling.

You can also think about it
as a personal story with an idea inside,

or an idea that has
a personal part at the center.

This is an odd thing to say...

My sister-in-law is a rabbi,

and she says she uses TED Talks
all the time for "sermon fodder."

And she believes every TED Talk
is kind of a secular sermon.

It's kind of teaching you something,
it's giving you a lesson.

It's giving you a way to think
about your own life and journey.

That's very subtle,
I don't tell any of the speakers that,

it's not part of our speaker prep,

but it's an interesting lens
on what makes a great talk.

One more thing about the personal.

You want to guard against people
going too far in that direction

and just a quick example.

One of the trends we have to fight at TED

is every speaker wanting
to replicate Jill Bolte Taylor's talk.

Bolte Taylor was the neuroscientist
who observed a stroke from the inside out.

Incredible talk,
our most popular of all time.

But it's very unique,

and people sort of misinterpret
what was great in that talk.

It's great because it has science
combined with emotion,

draws in your left and right brain.

It's an incredible story.

She shows a human brain,
she almost cries.

It's an incredible journey,

but often people will interpret that

as just the part
about her crying at the end.

They'll forget about all the other pieces
that went into it along the way.

Guard against that.

(Laughter)

The next piece
is don't lose the audience.

I've found this image by searching
for the word "'chase" on Flickr.

But my idea is often times,
speakers who are such experts

in their own area,

will kind of race ahead of the audience.

Many of the speakers that we bring
are experts in their own field

and are used to addressing
people in their own field.

Scientists that talk to scientists,
businesses to businesses audiences.

Architects and artists are sometimes
the biggest culprits.

They all use the jargon of their own field

and that's incredibly alienating
to the audience.

One of the things you want
to talk through with the speakers

is this idea that they are speaking
to a general intelligent audience.

That's something you can help them with.

When you're inside your field,
you don't know what your jargon is.

You don't know words like
"postmodernist structure"

is not really accessible
to the average audience.

That's something you can help
your speakers with, reviewing their talks,

helping them understand.

"I went to college
and I don't understand that word."

Or "I'm tracking with you,
but you really lost me there.

Can we think of another way
of explaining that?"

That will be really helpful to them.

Often times we'll see talks
that are such interesting topics

but they are just addressed in a way
that the general audience can't follow.

It's just too specific for us to use.

The next thing is start strong.

For us, this has to do both with editing
and also with the talk.

On TED.com, we think you all know,

or maybe some of you might not,

we edit, of course, all the talks
that go on to TED.com

No talk was as perfect on the stage
as it was when we put it online.

We really work to bring
the speakers' best selves out,

while staying extremely true
to what they actually delivered.

But we edit out their "umms,"

if they trip or spill water on themselves.

All these things have happened
and won't appear on TED.com.

What we also do, and it's really important
in TED Talks' success,

is we edit the very beginning.

We don't begin with the opening remarks,
the "hello," "Thank you for having me."

Or even their opening jokes,
people like to have one.

But their opening joke distracts.

We edit the talk so that it begins
right where it takes off.

We do that online because people online
are very vulnerable to distraction.

We all know this.

You start watching a video,

and at the beginning
there's a host's introduction,

something slow, and you don't mean to,
but you just got distracted.

You start an email, or a web search,
and you're just gone.

So we start our talks that way
and we edit them that way,

but it's good to keep it
in mind for the talk itself,

when you're hearing the person rehearse.

We've had speakers at TED who wanted
to read two paragraphs out of a letter

at the beginning of their talk.

Or start with something
that really doesn't grab us,

but two minutes in,
they get really interesting.

It's just something for you to think about
as you're helping the speakers,

to start on something
really compelling and interesting.

Another thing to think about is focus.

18 minutes is a very short
period of time, as you know.

And there are talks even shorter.

There is time for one idea.

Only one idea.

And it's so hard for most speakers,
and I'm guilty of the same thing.

They want to tell everything.

Or they want to have multiple ideas

and get them all in 18 minutes.

And they do that either by rushing
through things or leaving things out,

or simply just by not quite making sense.

Or not fulfilling
the potential of the talk.

The more you can focus in, the better.

This one is particularly for TEDx talks
coming onto TED.com

In curating most of your events
you always want a mix

of local and global ideas.

One of the things with many
of the TEDx talks we've looked at

is that they can often be very local

without addressing the audience in a way
that can be expanded beyond that.

And we have this issue at TED as well
as we work with speakers.

I think that many of your events
will have local talks

that are really interesting
to the people in the room,

to the local community.

But those talks aren't
quite appropriate for TED.com.

For the ones we'd use, we want
to be able to extract wider.

If it's a local idea,
have it presented in a way

that a wider audience can see relevance.

Part of the things that go into that
is being aware of regional knowledge.

If you're talking about something local,
if there is an issue in Houston

or a new building going up in Sao Paulo,

everyone in the room might know
that this is happening,

but just helping the speaker
give a sentence of context

about what it is they're talking about

will help the talk transcend the room

and move into and be applicable
to the wider world.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't be
covering certain local ideas,

but should think about it with an eye
towards the people who aren't in the room.

And this is something we've really had
to train ourselves on in TED.

We are not addressing
a thousand fairly wealthy people

in a room in California anymore.

We're just not.
We're addressing the world.

And that really shifts
how we think about the program.

Our obligation to be broad,
our obligation to diversity.

And to think about things more deeply.

I'll give you one example

of a talk that really
made us rethink things.

We often had audience talks at TED,

both at TEDUniversity and on stage.

One talk that was just great in the room.

People like to show vacation photos
and we've had a couple of talks like that.

One of them was about a trip
that someone took to North Korea,

and his perspective
and what he learned in this trip.

It was fascinating
to the group in California

that was listening to it.

But it really sounded a bit offensive
once you put out to a global audience.

And it wasn't actually
that there was anything...

There's nothing wrong with the talk
in the context it was given,

but it really had the wrong tone

once you've opened it up
to the wider world.

That's the type of thing
you have to think about

when thinking about taking talks
from TEDx to TED.com.

That they're going
to a much wider audience.

Finally, I think the biggest secret
to the success of any TED Talk

is practice.

It's rehearsing.

It's working with the speaker
from the first moment

that you talk to them
and getting them used to the idea

they're going to have to practice
and rehearse to get it right.

There's sort of heartbreak,
with both TED and TEDx Talks...

"That's such a good talk, but it's not
the best that person could give."

They had a really good talk in them
but they didn't quite get it out.

And honestly, the difference
between a medium talk and a great one

is often just practice.

It's having the person commit
to actually rehearsing.

This is something that speakers
will often resist. Also our speakers.

And I'm sure this happens
with your speakers.

They feel they're above it
or they think it's kind of silly.

Or they think they don't need it.

Everyone needs to rehearse.

It was interesting when we did
the Cannes advertising festival,

one session was for TED
and Hans Rosling was speaking.

He's the Swedish professor.

Global health issues,
statistics on the screen,

he narrates them crazily
and he's a fantastic speaker.

He has five talks online.

I think he has more views
than any other speaker on TED.com.

The other speakers were furious with me
because I had put him on first.

So they all had to follow him.

But one of the things they noted to me

is how much he rehearsed.

From the second we opened up the room
and we were still setting it up

for hours and hours, he had
this table and all these props.

He kept going over it for hours
with a countdown clock.

Moving the things around, practicing,
getting his phrasing right.

And he's one of the most
successful speakers on TED.

So that's one of the things
you could really integrate

into your own practice
as a TEDx organizer,

and really impress on your speakers:
the best talks are produced by practice.

That is what I had to share
with you today.

I'm incredibly impressed
with all the work you're doing,

and so looking forward to seeing
all of your talks come in.

And to talking to you over the next week.

Thanks.

(Applause)