At seven in the evening seem bags under Jamie Olivereyes has acquired bags of their own. He looks as if he has not slept in days. It may well be, for he has just spent an exhausting two-and-a-half months filming in Los Angeles for his new series, where he was banned from each school in the city, and moments earlier he had bounded to the stage TED ideas of the Conference and delivered a 6-minute talk about the progress of his food revolution.
"It was really hard," he told me. "I mean how to summarize a year in six minutes?" But he did it, why he flew in from South Beach, Florida, and delayed his return to the United Kingdom, it is because "there is more power in this room than there are in the Capitol Hill and Downing Street combined. These people can get things done. "
"The room" Long Beach Convention Centre, South of Los Angeles, terrace theatre and "people" is the 1350 persons pay more than £ 4,000 to participate in the four days of talks by some of the most interesting and dynamic people on the planet. A year ago of Oliver received the award in the TED, a $ 100,000 award that comes with the option to make "a desire to change the world" and a community of people who commit to make it happen. He then announced his wish was to "educate every child about food" and "empower people everywhere to fight obesity". It was a call to arms, a mission, a detailed breakdown of how food and food-related diseases are the major killers in America. It has since been seen by more than a million people on Ted.com and galvanized the TED audience to action.
Last week he told me: "it was just amazing. All these people, you have just begun to put up their arms and offer me all this stuff. Not only money, but all kinds of things. This truck. The Home Page. All kinds of things. It was incredible. "
We sit in the truck, which he has parked outside. It is an 18-wheeler Big Rig and has been transformed into a mobile kitchen travel United States hosting roadshows and cooking workshops. Money to pay for them was donated minutes. And drag force Oliver has been able to win, the five permanent kitchens he has opened in the United States, the political pressures he has been able to use, has been in any card part due to his involvement with TED.
Because it is difficult to assess not only the power of people in Long Beach last week, nor their wealth – boasted some dinners a handful of billionaires each – but also their creativity and commitment. These people are behind some of our age of the biggest technological breakthrough — Bill Gates from Microsoft and Sergei Brin and Larry Page of Google for starters; researchers working at the forefront of human knowledge; and activists, environmentalists, artists, film directors and training people all endeavour to change their particular corner of the world.
Or as Oliver puts it: "there are an awful lot of brains out there." There is, and it is reassuring to know they are working on some of the world's most difficult problems, coming on an occasional basis with ingenious solutions. From Google's prototype self-driving car, where audiences got to accelerate around an obstacle course to Aaron O'Connell, quantum physicist, whose research has shown that "objects can be in two places at once", to the amazing moment when Anthony Atala, professor of regenerative medicineis called a colleague from the back of the stage and showed from a human kidney "which we printed earlier". Atala uses ink-jet printers to make human bodies with cells rather than ink. Bodies, which have been properly fixed to people like Luke Massella, who was born with spina bifida, and went on stage, suitable for healthy students.
It is not all about finding the cure for cancer or solve global hunger: unequal performance poet or New York indie rock band (Antony and the Johnsons) around, but sometimes it feels as were asked questions about the limits of the human conditioneven. From Daniel Tammet, a surprisingly high functioning autistic and savant, who explained the patterns and colors, informed how he perceives the world that Ed Boyden, a pioneer in optogenetics, includes who discovered how brain cells can be verified with the light, and whose work research into how memories can be downloaded, or transferred in the human brain.
There is a surface gloss and glamour to TED: all have their own Cameron Diaz moment (mines is on coffee bar) or the Goldie Hawn moment or Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore at the moment-but in this context, it is more exciting when, on my next trip to the coffee barI find myself standing next to Daniel Dennett, the great American philosopher of mind.
He has given three TED talks in his time "and you know, I have written some very well-selling books, but the effect of having these conversations online has been tremendous. I get emails every day from people who have seen them, far more than I can answer. And I have been struck by TED from being where dotcom millionaires would get this very elite and completely closed party and, in this amazing force of knowledge.
The last speech was by Roger Ebert, U.S. film critic and screenwriter who has lost his jaw and ability to speak – cancer, but through his wife, and speech software program, he told how computers had given him back his voice. "I can communicate as well as I ever," he said, and computers the power to connect us together was forming "a global consciousness".
These are big words, but in a room, as a Canadian doctor, Bruce Aylward, explains how and why he is working to eradicate polio and Jack Horner, an American paleontologist, how he is trying to reverse engineer a dinosaur from a chickenthey do not seem to be large.
Back in his cooking truck sees Oliver close to collapse. He has only committed to spread his food revolution in the next 20 years: "because that is how long I think it needs."
When he won the award in TED last year, some considered him an unlikely choice. He does not exactly match the rocket-scientist mould. But what TED recognised in its own way, Oliver is so radical activist as anyone, and it came, he says, "at precisely the right time. It just gave me the support in really needed. " It also means that just possibly he might succeed.
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