I have always found pleasure in watching TED Talks, and in a way, being so well versed in the way that both regular TED Talks and TED-Ed has helped me in grasping the ideas presented during the past couple weeks. The article provided to us, written by Nayomi Chibana, describes a wonderful structure for an engaging Talk with storytelling as a mode of education. Number 6 (the STAR moment) is my personal favourite of the methods; building to a moment which encourages others to talk about your presentation like Bill Gates’ mosquitos is powerful. After reading this article I found that with my years of watching TED Talks, in addition to the seven masterful storytellers, I have a personal favourite or two to add to the bunch.

In the five minutes Will Stephan spends on stage, he claims to teach nothing. We as an audience understand that this is not true; he is doing a TED Talk and therefore should be teaching something. As we follow this extremely sarcastic presenter, he displays the various body language and tonal tricks that a presenter is able to utilize to convince their audience that they truly do have something to say. Moving across the stage, dramatic pauses, diagrams with easy-to-read figures, all of these are strategies that a person may use to engage the attention of an audience, even if they have nothing of value to say. Of course, Stephan plays this with humour, even leading to his own STAR moment when he reveals that even his glasses are fake. Rather than telling a story about a character, he becomes the character and uses that to his advantage.

Another great example of a storyteller TED Talk is Tim Urban’s Talk on procrastination:

Fittingly enough, his Talk starts with a story of how he procrastinated writing his senior thesis. I will refrain from any spoilers, but considering the title, I’m sure you can guess what happened. By making his Talk not only relatable (because who hasn’t procrastinated a paper before) but also funny and light-hearted, the poignant point Urban ends with becomes all the more memorable.

Something that may have helped these wonderful presenters is the use of a storyboard. As the author and artist of my own comic, I fully understand the importance of a storyboard and use them frequently. Being able to visually represent your ideas and carefully plot out the points you want to make to your audience allows you to make sure that your story is cohesive and well-rounded, and allows you to measure and balance the cognitive load that your audience might experience. Or perhaps they could have created a complex AI neural network that analyses all of the TED Talks out there and asked it to create a script for them. Though if you have seen the outcomes of AI neural networks that ‘analyze all of the Harry Potter books and then try to write a chapter’ and the like, then you may understand why they didn’t. Our AI as it is now is very good at simple, understandable tasks with definitive answers or goals, like subtitling, but it might not yet understand how to wield emotions to create or release dramatic tension, or how to pick the correct story to evoke the empathy of your audience. In that respect, Humans: 1 AI: 0 (for now).

https://visme.co/blog/7-storytelling-techniques-used-by-the-most-inspiring-ted-presenters/ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU&t=734s