TED Wrap
WRITING & PRODUCING // EXPERIENCE DESIGN // LIVE EVENTS & WORKSHOPS // JOKES
In 2015 and 2017, Baratunde Thurston and I worked together on the intellectual and comedic high wire act that is the final TED Talk of the five-day conference.
Our mandate: humorously recap the 70+ talks delivered that week so everyone in attendance leaves on a high note.
Our process: watch every talk, take 80 pages of notes, write jokes every night, build a massive deck, finalize content with only a few hours to spare, have Baratunde remarkably deliver a 19-minute recap entirely from memory with no speaker notes. (That last part is when I relish in my role as behind-the-scenes writer/producer.)
Both times we did this were a blast. An exhilarating, exhausting, mind-melting blast.
This opportunity also allowed me to live out a dream I never knew I had: use TED’s sprawling million-dollar LED screen to display a 100-foot hot dog as part of a stupid joke told to many of the world’s smartest people.