Parmesh Shahani returns to the acclaimed conference as a Senior Fellow, and shares notes from his Vancouver diary.
I still remember my debut TED experience. It was 2009, the first year that the global conference had begun its Fellows programme, and I was one of the lucky few selected. This was also the first time that the conference was being held in India. Sitting in the humungous Infosys Mysore auditorium, surrrounded by my amazing group of other TED Fellows like digital innovator Rikin Gandhi, Olympic sailor Rohini Rau, the Ambulance Access for All founder ShaffiMather and the youngest school headmaster in the world, 24-year-old Babar Ali, my mind exploded with ideas and possibilities.
Together, we heard stories of micro-revolutions from each other, as well as from the main stage speakers that we became instant fans of, like Anupam Mishra, with his deep knowledge of India’s history, or Sunitha Krishnan and her fierce bravery and commitment to creating a more equal world for India’s young girls. It was TED India that sowed the seeds of cross-pollination in my mind. My work since then has been all about dot-connecting. However, after the initial enthusiasm of being a TEDster, life took over and though I managed to attend the offshoot INK regularly ever since it began in 2010, and even hosted some of the early TEDx events in India, I never made it back to the main arena.
Flash-forward to 2017. The TED conference has shifted from California to Canada and the empire has expanded into several different initiatives — an annual million-dollar prize, the celebrated TED website with videos that have had more than two billion views and an institute, to name just three. Our TED Fellows programme has also grown from its fledgling days. There are now 414 Fellows from 87 countries, whose talks have collectively been viewed more than 145 million times. But the main news is that I have finally returned to the fold after being selected as a Senior Fellow.
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