What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Malcom Gladwell is a world renowned author and speaker. Most of his work deals with the implications of research in social psychology. He is a two-time New York Times #1 best-seller.
Along with being a best-selling author, Gladwell often travels the country speaking at leadership conferences and seminars.

One of his talks can be found at ted.com and is entitled What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Although the presentation is not A technological masterpiece, it is still very entertaining and effective.

Gladwell uses the story of psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz to make a larger point about the nature of choice and happiness. Maskowitz is famous in the food industry for changing the way the food industry determined what the consumer wanted.

Gladwell gets his point across by explaining Moskwitz's ideas and illustrating their effectiveness. Malcom Gladwell is extremely intelligent and it is evident in his presentation. He is able to explain difficult concepts in a way that is easily understandable. One aspect that makes Gladwell's presentation so effective is that he is very knowledgable about the subject and his speech. Not once does he look down at a note card. His ideas seem to flow off the top of his head and yet the flow is easily followed. Gladwell also uses intellectual humor to keep his audience interested when things might be boring or hard to follow.

The presentation runs 17 minutes. However, I felt like it was about 5 minutes. This exemplifies the effectiveness of Gladwell's presentation. I was surprisingly engaged in a presentation that had no visual aides. It is a great example of how a story can be used to illustrate a point better than a list of steps to follow.

Presentation Overviews

Emily Oster gives a compelling presentation called "What Do We Really Know About the Spread of AIDS?". It was one of the first lectures I watched on TED. Honestly, the one thing that I took from the lecture was the graphs and charts that Mrs. Oster used while compiling her research for her points of view in the ongoing argument with the fight against AIDS in Africa. There could have been more pictures I thought in the presentation to show actual people in the country and the conditions they are living in that inhabit this terrible virus, but she mostly stayed very technical in her presentation and let the facts, charts, and research speak for themselves. Check out this video if you have need some ideas how to make a clear, precise graph speak in your presentations.


Moshe Safdie, world famous architect, gave a presentation "What Makes A Building Unique?" in another video I watched. It captivated me all the way through because he is a very good storyteller, added humor, and gave very thorough and detailed pictures of 4 of his major projects, including a Children's Holocaust Memorial and the Institute of Peace being built in our nation's capitol. It was a remarkable presentation that presented a great thinker's works of creative and construction, and the pictures added tons to the presentation - very much worth watching!