Reveal: Notes from Session 2 of TEDNext 2024

Brady Forrest hosts Session 2 of TEDNext 2024 on October 22, 2024, at Pullman Yards in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Jason Redmond / TED)

Dedicated to unlocking the possibilities within everyday struggles, Session 2 of TEDNext 2024 covered everything from recycling glass bottles to battling perfectionism. Speakers presented in a format new to the TED stage, speaking for exactly five minutes with prepared slides auto-advancing behind them every 15 seconds. This format, developed and perfected by Ignite Talks over the last 16 years, forces speakers to remain concise and deliberate in their delivery, offering a delightful and captivating experience.

The event: Talks from Session 2 of TEDNext 2024, hosted by Brady Forrest, cofounder of Ignite Talks

When and where: Tuesday, October 22, 2024, at Pullman Yards in Atlanta, Georgia

Speakers: Joshua Schachter, Franziska Trautmann, Jane McGonigal, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, Jon Youshaei, Y-Vonne Hutchinson, Elise Hu, Jenny Hoyos, Snow Raven

Performance: Dance theater and film production company HEAVY BOOTS specializes in live performance and cinema, composing challenging physical works that speak to the human condition. In this performance, seven dancers spun together like gears across the stage in a mesmerizing experimental dance, evoking somber sentiments of human strength, wonder and vulnerability.

The talks in brief:

Sharing his accidental journey to viral fame, digital pioneer Joshua Schachter reveals how short clips of deliberate mistakes in his robot-made plotter art sparked millions of views (and hilariously strong reactions). Turning frustration into creative success, he playfully shows how quirky, unexpected art can captivate audiences worldwide.

When Louisiana native Franziska Trautmann learned her state was landfilling nearly 300 million pounds of glass annually while simultaneously losing a football field of coastline every 100 minutes to erosion, she transformed a college wine-night epiphany into Glass Half Full — an innovative startup that converts landfill-bound glass back into sand for coastal restoration projects. What started as a scrappy operation in a fraternity backyard has evolved into a full-scale environmental solution, with more than eight million pounds of glass transformed back into sand so far, proving that the best ideas just need people willing to take that first step.

As a futurist who helps people prepare for hard-to-imagine possibilities, Jane McGonigal thinks we overuse words like “unthinkable” and “unimaginable.” She takes the audience through three hypothetical scenarios, showing how we can all foster the ability to think creatively about the future — and feel ready for anything.

Money for international development rarely makes it to the people it intends to help, says Ideas Beyond Borders founder Faisal Saeed Al Mutar. Highlighting the inefficiencies and corruption of the current aid system, he proposes a new model that operates like a business, empowering local entrepreneurs with direct investments to build their communities locally.

Inviting us to shift away from a quality-over-quantity mindset when it comes to making art, video creator Jon Youshaei shares his struggle with perfectionism in the early days of running one of the fastest-growing channels on YouTube. Inspired by artists like Mozart, he explains why focusing on producing more rather than achieving perfection can pave the way to creative success — even with the flops and failures.

The bulk of traditional DEI exercises are simply performative, says workplace inclusion expert Y-Vonne Hutchinson. She reflects on the global crises that have led to both the development of and backlash against DEI programs, exploring what a diverse workforce actually needs to feel supported: compassionate discussions and tangible support. 

As “beauty filters” proliferate on apps like TikTok, journalist and TED Talks Daily host Elise Hu says we’ve entered the era of the “technological gaze” — an algorithmically driven standard of beauty that people are internalizing and striving to meet. She shows how digital beauty norms are shaping real-world expectations, explaining why we should instead embrace diversity and reject the idea that worthiness is tied to appearance.

Social media creator and “Queen of YouTube Shorts” Jenny Hoyos has turned her curiosity about oddball questions — such as, “Can you cook faster than a fast food restaurant?” — into a winning formula for 60-second stories, earning her millions of views and proving that great storytelling is less about length and more about structure. Through her experimentation (like racing to cook a burger in her mom’s car while going through a drive-thru), she’s crafted a simple but powerful approach that works whether you’re making viral videos or just trying to tell more engaging stories in your daily life.

“Listening is one of the most powerful gifts the universe has given humans to connect with nature,” says music producer and singer Snow Raven. Through songs inspired by her ancestors, the Sakha people of Arctic Siberia, she embodies various animals’ calls in an invitation to reconnect with the universe within us.