It has been suggested that TEDxESCP be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since November 2011.

TED Conferences, LLC

Type	LLC
Founder(s)	Richard Saul Wurman[1]
Headquarters	New York City, New York, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Owner	Sapling Foundation[2]
Slogan	Ideas worth Spreading
Website	www.ted.com
Alexa rank	1,075[3]
Type of site	Academic conference
Registration	Optional
Available in	English, multilingual subtitle, transcript
Launched	1984
Current status	Active

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading."

TED was founded in 1984^[1] as a one-off event and the conference was held annually from 1990 in Monterey, California.^[4] TED's early emphasis was largely technology and design, consistent with a Silicon Valley center of gravity. The events are now held in Long Beach and Palm Springs in the U.S. and in Europe and Asia, offering live streaming of the talks. They address an increasingly wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture. The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, educator Salman Khan, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many Nobel Prize winners.^[5] TED's current curator is the British former computer journalist and magazine publisher Chris Anderson.

From 2005 to 2009, three $100,000 TED Prizes were awarded annually to help its winners realize a chosen wish to change the world. From 2010, in a changed selection process, a single winner is chosen to ensure that TED can maximize its efforts in achieving the winner's wish. Each winner unveils their wish at the main annual conference.

Since June 2006,^[1] the talks have been offered for free viewing online, under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license, through TED.com.^[6] As of November 2011, over 1,050 talks are available free online.^[7] By January 2009 they had been viewed 50 million times. In June 2011, the viewing figure stood at more than 500 million,^[8] reflecting a still growing global audience.^[9] The website was designed and developed by experience design firm, Method^[10].

Background[link]

Bill Clinton addresses TED, 2007

Curator Chris Anderson in 2007

Robert Ballard giving an impassioned presentation on the importance of exploring the oceans at TED 2008

TED's mission statement begins:

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.^[11]

The TED staff is headquartered in New York City and Vancouver. The conference was held in Monterey, California until 2009. It was then relocated to Long Beach, California due to a substantial increase of attendees.^[12]

TED was founded by Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks in 1984, and has been held annually since 1990. Wurman, credited with having coined the term information architect in 1979, left after the 2002 conference; the event is now hosted by Chris Anderson and owned by his non-profit organization, The Sapling Foundation,^[2] devoted to "fostering the spread of great ideas." In 2006, attendance cost was $4,400 and was by invitation only.^[13] The membership model was shifted in January 2007 to an annual membership fee of $6,000, which includes attendance of the conference, club mailings, networking tools and conference DVDs.

Since June 2006, TED Talks have been made available online on the websites of TED, YouTube, and iTunes,^[14][15][16] and since late 2009, there have been free apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android, webOS and Windows Phone 7.^[17] In 2009, the TED website won the award for Best Use of Video or Moving Image at the 13th Annual Webby Awards.^[18] In 2012, TED Talks became available to stream through Netflix.^[19] TED.com won a Peabody Award in April 2012. ^[20]

TED Talks are transcribed and translated into a number of languages as part of the TED Open-Translation Project, which aims to "[reach] out to the 4.5 billion people on the planet who don't speak English," according to TED Curator Chris Anderson. At the time of the launch, over 300 translations were done by volunteer transcribers in over 40 languages.^[21]

TED 2011, The Rediscovery of Wonder, was held in Long Beach, California, from February 28 to March 4, 2011.^[21][22] The TED conference has a companion conference, TEDGlobal, held in the UK each summer. The 2009 TEDGlobal, The Substance of Things Not Seen, was held in Oxford, UK, July 21–24, 2009. 2010s TEDGlobal (again in Oxford) was themed And Now The Good News; in 2011 the conference moved to a new home in Edinburgh and was held from July 12–15 with the theme The Stuff Of Life.

TED Prize[link]

The TED Prize was introduced in 2005. In prior years, three individuals were each given $100,000 and granted a "wish to change the world," which they unveil at TED.^[23] However, starting in 2010, only one prize is awarded since "at least half of [the wishes] still require our engagement," and, "adding too many more risks dilution of effort."

Programs[link]

TEDxParis, 2009: one of many events now organized under the TEDx program

TEDxTimisoara Women simulcast organizers and some attendees, 2010

TED Fellows

The TED Fellows fellowship program brings together young world-changers and trailblazers who have shown unusual accomplishment and exceptional courage.^[32] The program targets individuals from the Asia/Pacific region, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East, though anyone from anywhere in the world, age 18 and over, can apply. TED keeps a directory of past Fellows available on its website.

TEDMED

TEDMED is an annual conference focusing on health and medicine. TEDMED is an independent event operating under license from the nonprofit TED conference.^[33]

TEDx

TED grants licenses to third parties to organize TEDx events in cities around the world.^[34] These one-time only licenses are free, but franchisees must be approved by TED and agree to adhere to a strict set of rules including format, duration, number of invited guests, agreeing that half-day events show "A minimum of two official, pre-recorded TEDTalks" and that all-day events "at least 25% of the total number of talks must be official, pre-recorded TEDTalks." Speakers are not paid and they must agree to give TED the right to edit and distribute their presentation.

According to TED these events were "created in the spirit of TED's mission, "ideas worth spreading." The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis. As of 2012, more than 3,200 TEDx events have taken place in 800 cities and 126 countries around the world.

TEDWomen

Popular topics for TEDWomen include gender issues and reproductive health.^[35]

TED Conversations

In 2011, TED released a new platform for sharing ideas. You can start conversations with the TED Community in one of the following 3 categories: Ideas, Questions, Debates. Conversations expire at a specific time.^[36]

Ads Worth Spreading

In 2011, TED released Ads Worth Spreading as a way to raise standards in the advertising industry.^[37]

TED Books

In 2011, TED released TEDBooks, books that are shorter than traditional ones with fewer than 20,000 words each, that aim to be long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to read in a single sitting.^[38]

TED Open Translation Project

Started in May 2009, the TED Open Translation Project^[39] makes TED's videos available in many languages, through translated subtitles, using technology partner dotSUB's crowd-based video captioning and subtitling platform.^[40] By the second anniversary of the project in May 2011,^[41] volunteer translators collaborated to complete over 18000 translations in 81 languages. The interactive time-coded transcript available on the TEDtalks pages enables accurate, content-based navigation in the videos, in any language, and make the videos searchable. The translations include the videos' metadata as well, such as the titles, and the descriptions, and the system generates a language-specific URL, that plays the video with the subtitles in that language by default. The project contributed to a significant increase in international visitors to TED's website, with traffic from outside the US growing 350%, 600% percent growth in Asia, and more than 1000% in South America.^[42]

Controversies and criticism[link]

Sarah Silverman

TED drew some controversy in 2010 when comedian Sarah Silverman was invited to speak at the conference, and in response to her speech about adopting a "retarded" child, TED organizer Chris Anderson posted to his Twitter account, "I know I shouldn’t say this about one of my own speakers, but I thought Sarah Silverman was god-awful…"^[43] Anderson later deleted his tweet, but Silverman responded via her Twitter account "Kudos to [Chris Anderson] for making TED an unsafe haven for all! You're a barnacle of mediocrity on Bill Gates' asshole."^[44] Anderson apologized for his tweet on his Posterous account, but also wrote "Call me stuffy, but I still think humor about terminally ill 'retarded' kids is an acquired taste... And not a taste I personally want to acquire."^[45]

Nassim Taleb

Nassim Taleb criticized TED for intellectual dishonesty and lack of substance in the latest edition of The Black Swan (2010). He calls TED a "monstrosity that turns scientists and thinkers into low-level entertainers, like circus performers." Taleb spoke at TED2008. He claimed that the curators did not initially post his talk "warning about the financial crisis" on their website on purely cosmetic grounds.^[46]

Sarah Lacy

Sarah Lacy of BusinessWeek and TechCrunch has criticized TED with claims of elitism. Lacy cites TED's $6,000 ticket price, poor treatment of less important attendees, and such events as a friend being "de-invited to TED after quitting an ostensibly prestigious San Francisco job" as evidence of her claims.^[47] Lacy did credit TED for moving the event to a larger venue in Long Beach and posting videos of its talks online for free.^[47]

Nick Hanauer

TED attracted controversy when it chose not to link the speech of venture capitalist Nick Hanauer's at the TED university on their website. The speech analysed the top rate of tax versus unemployment and economic equality.^[48][49][50] In a private email to Hanauer, Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, commented on his decision, noting: "Even if the talk was rated a home run, we couldn't release it, because it would be unquestionably regarded as out and out political. We're in the middle of an election year in the US. Your argument comes down firmly on the side of one party. And you even reference that at the start of the talk. TED is nonpartisan and is fighting a constant battle with TEDx organizers to respect that principle... Nick, I personally share your disgust at the growth in inequality in the US, and would love to have found a way to give people a clearer mindset on the issue, without stoking a tedious partisan rehash of all the arguments we hear every day in the mainstream media. Alas, my judgement - and it is just a judgement, and that's why my job title is 'curator' - is that publishing your talk would not meet that goal."^[51]

See also[link]

• List of educational video websites

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: TED

• Official website
• Official YouTube channel
• Financial Times. "Conference of cool". July 23 2010. Accessed 2010-07-23
• Guardian. TED – the ultimate forum for blue-sky thinking Sunday 4 July 2010 Accessed 2010-07-12
• Online spreadsheet of TED talks, ranked by PostRank engagement data
• Those Fabulous Confabs Feb 26, 2012

This article may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page. (April 2012)

Susan Cain
Born	Early 1968[1]
Occupation	Writer, former lawyer and negotiations consultant[2]
Language	English
Nationality	U.S.
Education	J.D. (Juris Doctor)[3]
Alma mater	Princeton University,[4] Harvard Law School[5]
Genres	Success, Management, Education, Psychology, Self-Help, Interpersonal Relations
Notable work(s)	Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (January 24, 2012)
www.thepowerofintroverts.com

Susan Cain is an American writer and lecturer.

Cain is author of the 2012 non-fiction book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which argues that modern Western culture undervalues the traits and capabilities of introverted people.

Early careers[link]

Cain attended Princeton University^[4] and Harvard Law School.^[5] She worked first as an attorney, and then as a negotiations consultant.^[2] Cain's interest in writing about introversion reportedly stemmed from her own difficulties with public speaking, which made Harvard Law School "a trial."^[6]

Cain left her careers in corporate law and consulting, for a quieter life of writing at home with her family.^[6] She wrote that she looks back on her years as a Wall Street lawyer "as time spent in a foreign country."^[7]

[edit] Motivation for Quiet

When asked what she would be doing if she were not a writer, Cain explained that she would be a research psychologist, saying she is insatiably curious about human nature.^[8]

Cain explained that in writing Quiet, she was fueled by the passion and indignation that she imagined fueled the 1963 feminist book, The Feminine Mystique.^[8] Cain likened Introverts today to women at that time--second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent.^[8] Saying that most introverts aren’t aware of how they are constantly spending their time in ways that they would prefer not to be and have been doing so all their lives, Cain explained that she was trying to give people entitlement in their own minds to be who they are.^[9]

Cain added that for her, Quiet was not just a book but a mission.^[8] Specifically, she said she was interested in working with parents and teachers of introverted kids and to re-shape workplace culture and design, and in particular replace what she terms "The New Groupthink" with an environment more conducive to deep thought and solo reflection.^[8]

An introvert's "Year of Speaking Dangerously"[link]

Cain speaking at the TED2012 conference ("not my natural milieu") with a prop suitcase,^[10][11] which was said to be a metaphor for the treasures, memories, activities and thoughts that make you you.^[12] Cain's own suitcase contained books.^[10][11]

The Chicago Tribune noted^[7] that Cain, a self-described introvert,^[13] grappled with her own introversion as a Wall Street attorney before writing Quiet.^[7] In contrast, Cain described the time of creating Quiet to be seven years of reading, researching, thinking—"total bliss."^[10][11]

Seven years in the making,^[2] Cain's book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, was published January 24, 2012.^[14]

Cain's research was published in articles in the year leading up to the book's publication and in the ensuing months.^[15][16] In her talk^[11] at the February 2012 TED Conference, Cain confirmed her April 2011 prediction that ensuing year would be her Year of Speaking Dangerously--for which the self-described introvert declared she would be training, "as if preparing for a marathon," to be the best and bravest speaker she could be.^[16]

Cain later wrote that her year of preparation had unfolded in "three stages of accelerating dread."^[17] Cain joined Toastmasters, and as her TED talk approached she scheduled a two-hour crash course with TED’s speaking coach.^[17] But saying her butterflies had turned into "gut-wrenching knots," Cain worked for six full days with an acting coach immediately before the talk.^[17] Three months after the talk, Cain wrote that she had metamorphosed into what she termed an "impossibly oxymoronic creature: the Public Introvert."^[17]

The publication of Quiet was accompanied by publication of Cain's related writings. Psychology Today published her blog series from March through December 2011.^[15] Eleven days before the book's January 24, 2012 publication, The New York Times published her opinion piece "The Rise of the New Groupthink,"^[18] two days after the book's publication date Time published her article "Don’t Call Introverted Children ‘Shy,’"^[19] and O: The Oprah Magazine's February issue included Cain's self-improvement-oriented article "Secrets of a Super Successful Introvert: How to (Quietly) Get Your Way."^[20] In March, Cain's work was featured in The Guardian ("Why the world needs introverts")^[21] on CNN ("Introverts run the world -- quietly"),^[22] and in The Daily Mail ("Revenge of the Introverts").^[23] In April, The New York Times published her essay, "An Introvert Steps Out," a retrospective on her Year of Speaking Dangerously.^[17]

Within one week of its publication, Forbes' Jenna Goudreau noted that Quiet was featured by several major media outlets and was shared extensively across the Web, Goudreau observing that readers said they felt validated and seen for the first time.^[24] Days before Quiet reached #4 on The New York Times' Bestseller List,^[25] InformationWeek's Debra Donston-Miller had noted that the idea of introversion and extroversion is being widely discussed right now due in large part to a new book whose author "is making the media rounds."^[26]

Selected work[link]

• Cain, Susan, "The Rise of the New Groupthink" (WebCite archive), Opinion section of The New York Times, January 13, 2012; appearing in print January 15, 2012.

• Cain, Susan, "Don’t Call Introverted Children ‘Shy’ " (WebCite archive), Time Psychology section, January 26, 2012.

• Cain, Susan, "Quiet: The Power of Introverts / How to thrive in a world that can't stop talking" Psychology Today, (WebCite archives for first, second, and third pages of list having links to 73-entry blog series, dated from March 7 through December 23, 2011).

• Cain, Susan, "Introverts run the world -- quietly" (WebCite archive), CNN.com, March 18, 2012.

• Cain, Susan, "Revenge of the introverts: It's often assumed extroverts do best in life, but a new book reveals quite the opposite..." (WebCite archive), The Daily Mail, March 25, 2012.

• Cain, Susan, Essay: "An Introvert Steps Out" (WebCite archives of pages 1 and 2), "Sunday Book Review" section of The New York Times, published online April 27, 2012. Version appeared in print on page BR27 of the "Sunday Book Review" on April 29, 2012.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Susan Cain

• ThePowerOfIntroverts website (WebCite archive)

• Cain's 'author' page on facebook

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: recently promoted AFC submission. Please help improve this article if you can. (June 2012)

Amy J. C. Cuddy is an American social psychologist known for her studies of the relations between stereotyping and behavior. She is Associate Professor in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School.

Cuddy studies the origins and outcomes of how people judge and influence each other. She has conducted experimental and correlational research on stereotyping and discrimination against various groups (e.g., Asian Americans, elderly people, Latinos, working mothers), the causes and consequences of feeling ambivalent emotions (e.g., envy and pity), nonverbal behavior and communication, and hormonal responses to social stimuli. Amy Cuddy was listed #1 in Time Magazine's list of "Game Changers, ...innovators and problem-solvers that are inspiring change in America".^[1]

She is a sought-after speaker on the psychology of power, influence, nonverbal communication, and prejudice.^[2][3][4]

Career[link]

Cuddy holds a PhD in Social Psychology from Princeton University, a MA in Social Psychology from Princeton University and BA in Social Psychology from the University of Colorado.

Prior to joining Harvard Business School, Professor Cuddy was an Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University,^[5] where she taught leadership in organizations in the MBA program and research methods in the doctoral program; and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, where she taught undergraduate social psychology. At Harvard Business School, she has taught MBA courses on negotiation, and power and influence, and in numerous executive education programs.

Research[link]

Along with Susan Fiske (Princeton University) and Peter Glick (Lawrence University), Cuddy developed the Stereotype Content Model (SCM)^[6] and the Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes (BIAS) Map,^[7] which focus on judgments of other people and groups along two core trait dimensions, warmth and competence, and how these judgments shape and motivate our social emotions, intentions, and behaviors.^[8] This work has been cited over 2000 times.

Cuddy’s research with Dana Carney^[9] (UC-Berkeley) focuses on how nonverbal expressions of power (i.e., expansive, open, space-occupying postures)^[10] affect people’s feelings, behaviors, and hormone levels.^[11] In particular, their research shows that “faking” body postures associated with dominance and power (“power posing”)^[12][13]  – even for as little as two minutes—increases people’s testosterone, decreases their cortisol, increases their appetite for risk, and causes them to perform better in job interviews.^[14] In short, as David Brooks summarized the findings, “If you act powerfully, you will begin to think powerfully.”^[15]

Her research has been published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Psychological Science, Research in Organizational Behavior, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, and Science.

Awards and Honors[link]

• TEDGlobal Speaker, 2012^[16]

• TIME magazine ‘Game Changer’, 2012^[17]

• PopTech Annual Conference, 'Talk of the Day' October 21, 2011^[18]

• Rising Star Award, Association for Psychological Science (APS), 2011^[19]

• Psychology Today, The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010 (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010)

• Cover story, Harvard Magazine, Nov-Dec, 2010

• The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2009, Harvard Business Review^[20]

• Michele Alexander Early Career Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

• Distinguished Alumni Award, Conrad Weiser High School, Robesonia, PA

Personal life[link]

Amy Cuddy grew up in a very small Pennsylvania Dutch town, Robesonia, Pennsylvania. She is a classically trained ballet dancer and worked as a roller-skating waitress when she was an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. When she was a sophomore in college she sustained a serious head injury in a car accident.^{[21][22][23][24]} Her doctors told her she was not likely to fully recover and should anticipate significant challenges finishing her undergraduate degree. She has one son.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Beninger, A. (2011). The dynamics of warmth and competence judgments, and their outcomes in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 31, 73-98.
• Carney, D., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21, 1363-1368
• Cuddy, A. J. C., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS Map. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (vol. 40, pp. 61–149). New York, NY: Academic Press.
• Cuddy, A. J. C., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2007). The BIAS Map: Behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 631-648.
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth, then competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 77-83.
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878-902

Elizabeth Gilbert
Gilbert at TED 2009
Born	(1969-07-18) July 18, 1969 (age 42) Waterbury, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist, memoirist
Nationality	American
Period	1997 – present
Genres	Fiction, memoir
Notable work(s)	Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Influences L. Frank Baum, Charles Dickens, Marcus Aurelius[1]
www.elizabethgilbert.com

Elizabeth M. Gilbert (born July 18, 1969) is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoirs, Eat, Pray, Love, which as of December 2010, has spent 199 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was also made into a film by the same name in 2010.^[2]

Early life[link]

Gilbert was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her father was a chemical engineer, her mother a nurse. Along with her only sister, novelist and historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Gilbert grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. The family lived in the country with no neighbors, and they didn’t own a TV or even a record player. Consequently, they all read a great deal, and Gilbert and her sister entertained themselves by writing little books and plays.^[3]

Gilbert earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from New York University in 1991, after which she worked as cook, a waitress, and a magazine employee. She wrote of her experience as a cook on a dude ranch in short stories, and also briefly in her book The Last American Man (Viking 2002).

Journalism[link]

Esquire published Gilbert's short story "Pilgrims" in 1993, under the headline, "The Debut of an American Writer". She was the first unpublished short story writer to debut in Esquire since Norman Mailer. This led to steady work as a journalist for a variety of national magazines including, SPIN, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Allure, Real Simple, and Travel + Leisure. As stated in the memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert made a career as a highly-paid freelance writer.

Her 1997 GQ article, "The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon", a memoir of Gilbert's time as a bartender at the very first Coyote Ugly table dancing bar located in the East Village section of New York City, was the basis for the feature film Coyote Ugly. She adapted her 1998 GQ article, "Eustace Conway is Not Like Any Man You've Ever Met", into a biography of the modern naturalist, The Last American Man. It received a nomination for the National Book Award in non-fiction. "The Ghost", a profile of Hank Williams III published by GQ in 2000, was included in Best American Magazine Writing 2001.

Books[link]

Gilbert's first book Pilgrims (Houghton Mifflin 1997), a collection of short stories, received the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. This was followed by her novel Stern Men (Houghton Mifflin 2000), selected by The New York Times as a "Notable Book". In 2002 she published The Last American Man (2002), a biography of a modern woodsman and naturalist, which was nominated for National Book Award.

[edit] Eat, Pray, Love

In 2006, Gilbert published Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Viking, 2006), a chronicle of her year of "spiritual and personal exploration" spent traveling abroad.^[4] She financed her world travel for the book with a $200,000 publisher's advance.

The memoir was on the New York Times Best Seller List of non-fiction in the spring of 2006, and in October 2008, after 88 weeks, the book was still on the list at number 2.^[5] Gilbert appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007, and has reappeared on the show to further discuss the book and her philosophy, and to discuss the film.^[6] The book was optioned for a film by Columbia Pictures, which was released as Eat Pray Love on August 13, 2010, with Julia Roberts starring as Elizabeth Gilbert.

Gilbert's fifth book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, was released by Viking in January 2010. The book is somewhat of a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love in that it takes up Gilbert's life story where her bestseller left off. Committed also reveals Elizabeth Gilbert's decision to marry a Brazilian man named Felipe whom she met in Indonesia.^[7] The book is a thorough examination of the institution of marriage from a multitude of historical and modern perspectives — including that of people, particularly women, reluctant to marry. In the book, Gilbert also includes perspectives on same-sex marriage and compares this to interracial marriage prior to the 1970s.

Literary influences[link]

In an interview, Gilbert mentioned The Wizard of Oz with nostalgia, adding, "I am a writer today because I learned to love reading as a child—and mostly on account of the Oz books..." She is especially vocal about the importance of Charles Dickens to her, mentioning his stylistic influence on her writing in countless interviews. She lists Marcus Aurelius' Meditations as her favorite book on philosophy.^[8]

Bibliography[link]

Story collections[link]

• Pilgrims (1997) (Pushcart Prize, finalist for PEN/Hemingway Award)

Novels[link]

• Stern Men (2000)

Biographies[link]

• The Last American Man (2002) (finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critic's Circle Award)

Memoirs[link]

• Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
• Committed (2010)

As contributor[link]

• The KGB Bar Reader: Buckle Bunnies (1998)
• Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction (contributor) (1999)
• A Writer's Workbook: Daily Exercises for the Writing Life (foreword) (2000)
• The Best American Magazine Writing 2001: The Ghost (2001)
• The Best American Magazine Writing 2003: Lucky Jim (2003)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site
• Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on nurturing creativity

Simon Sinek
Sinek, TEDx Maastricht 2011
Born	(1973-10-09) October 9, 1973 (age 38) Wimbledon, England
Occupation	Author, motivational speaker
Notable work(s)	Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Simon O. Sinek (born October 9, 1973) is an author and best known for developing "The Golden Circle" and popularizing a concept of human motivation.^[1][2][3] He joined the RAND Corporation in 2010 as an adjunct staff member, where he advises on matters of military innovation and planning. His first TEDx Talk on "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" is the 19th most viewed video on TED.com.^[4] His book on the same subject, "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action," (2009) delves into a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision-making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others.

He writes for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, FastCompany, CMO Magazine, NPR and BusinessWeek, and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, BrandWeek, IncBizNet. ^[1]

Early life and education[link]

A diagram of what Simon Sinek calls 'The Golden Circle' of human motivation

Sinek was born in Wimbledon, England; at a young age he moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, then to London, then to Hong Kong, before settling in New Jersey. He earned a BA degree in cultural anthropology from Brandeis University; he attended City University in London with the intention of becoming a barrister, but left law school to go into advertising.

Career[link]

He moved to New York and joined Euro/RSCG, an ad agency, where he worked on the MCI account. He then joined Ogilvy & Mather, and was later recruited back to Euro/RSCG, where he worked on accounts for Oppenheimer Funds, MCI, NASDAQ and DISH Network. In 2002, he started his own company, Sinek Partners. ^[2]

He has appeared on MSNBC^[5] and Marketplace.^[6]

In October 2009, he released his book “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” , and in December 2011, the book topped the list of best sellers for corporate America according to 800-CEO-READ.^[7]

Community and civic affairs[link]

Active in the not-for-profit world, Sinek works with Count Me In, an organization committed to helping one million women-owned businesses reach a million dollars in revenues by 2012,^[8] and he serves on the Board of Directors for Danspace Project, an organization that fends for advancing art and dance.

He lives in New York and teaches a graduate-level class in strategic communications at Columbia University.^[1]

Books[link]

• Sinek, Simon (2009). Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Penguin. http://books.google.com/books?id=iyw6ul1x_n8C&pg=PT113&dq=%22Ron+Bruder%22&hl=en&ei=GrH6TdKfG6rSiAL_-bWZBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Ron%20Bruder%22&f=false. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Simon Sinek website
• Start with Why, website
• Sinek Partners