LeWeb3 - TED's June Cohen: The special place of storytellers

(Running notes from the LeWeb3 conference in Paris.)

From the keynote speech by June Cohen, TED's Media Director, talking about storytelling:

It's a great moment to be working on the Web, and to explore not only technology, but behaviour - how people are behaving online. Through new technology, we are reviving ancient forms of media.
There are 110 million blogs online. We are so accustomed to similar statistics that we forget how extraordinary that is. What we consider "traditional media" today (newspapers, books, TV in historical terms have really been around for a very short period. Throughout all of human history, media happened between people -- around the tribal campfire, passing on stories, in Victorian cafés.
Media has the potential to bring us together -- and the idea that media are packaged and brought into our living rooms through a TV set is a pretty depressing idea, provoking isolation and losing of contacts. Most people, when they sit watching TV, what they really want is just some company.
When we look at the blogging phenomenon, we tend to focus on celebrity bloggers. But they don't interest me as much as the 99% of bloggers who don't make a dent in the mainstream cultural trends, but are just being themselves, at the center of their own life, with their friends around them.
When we talk about social media, inevitably we have to ask: what happens to big media? The answer, really, is simple: big media will become smaller. The amount of time we dedicate to that kind of media every day is going to  be less.

What's interesting, is the storytellers. People with the capacity to tell stories, to inspire us: they have a special place in society. They are those who can change the world. In my position at TED I could glimpse the edge of a trend that's really interesting. I'm not sure we understood back in 2005 when we decided to put the TED talks online with a high quality of production that the magic of a live event can transcend the room, but if you have a persuasive speaker and you edit it well and present it well it's quite amazing what happens, not only in terms of numbers (1 million visitors a month to the ted.com website currently, 25 million downloads since the site went live) but the emotional aspect of some speeches, viewers sending in comments like "Hans Rosling changed the way I look at the world", etc. (watch Rosling's TED speeches) Every time I watch talks like those by Majora Carter (video) or Wade Davis (video) something happens, you get mesmerized, you get carried along with what these people are telling you, and if you sense they are authentic you open up to them intellectually and emotionally and spiritually, sometimes it's almost physical. Davis said that "language is not just a collection of words, but an old growth forest of the mind…". It's not quite rational, but it's something that evolved with us: when someone looks at you in the eyes and persuades you of his ideas, it has a great pull.

What's important is the potential for social impact. A persuasive person who can articulate her thoughts can sway your mind. But they can only do it if they have the platform for it. For the last 50 years, this has been brought into a box, speech has become synonymous with boring, TV has become a package of soundbites, it's impossible to make a real argument on TV. In the 1960s, McLuhan used to say, "TV engages you, it won't work in the background", but nothing is further from the truth today, TV is background. At least in the US, the TV environment of the 1960s gave way to leaders like JF Kennedy and Martin Luther King who mesmerized alot of people; while today we have boredom in the living room and the people-ization of news. Personal media is a different story. When you're watching on your laptop/iPod, it feels as if that person is talking to you. You made the time, you "called" for it.

This is a huge opportunity. At this moment, we have this rather extraordinary opportunity to connect the inspired leaders and communicators and thinkers and doers of our day with the broader audience. And all of this can be accomplished without big media, big business or even big government.