Oh my, it’s not everyday I wet myself in slack jawed “Did I just see what I just saw” response to a presentation, but by both its content and its presentation style, I am blown away by one of TED’s latest talks posted.
This is from MIT Cognitive Scientist, Deb Roy, detailing – and I mean detailing – his son’s word development.
I promise you, you have not see visual display of data like this – ever. No wonder he is turning it into a commercial venture.
Stop what you’re doing and look below, and enjoy (Oh and after, go to the TED page itself here and scroll down through the comments, quite a few negative and unimpressed, and then read Deb’s reposte):
Les Posen's Presentation Magic 
The graphics he used were impressive, and I thought he did a great job describing these complex graphics (unlike anything we’d ever seen before) without losing touch of his topic on language/learning.
Aside from the content, there are two pieces of advice I’d give him to improve. First, the real water example gives his wordscape and worms life. Later, as he kept describing all of these analyses and visuals that they can create, I kept wanting to interrupt him and say “okay, give me an example.” And when he finally gave Obama’s speech as an example, it still was unfulfilling to me because he didn’t complete the story … what insights did they discover? The other thing, to me, is a very annoying tendency to begin the vast majority of his sentences with the word and or, less frequently but still enough to be noticeable, so.
I think this is where the TED 18 minute rule proves a challenge for some. As impressive, as the data visuals are – and they do set new benchmarks – there was often a disconnect between what Deb was saying and what we were seeing. Perhaps because each if the startling effects wasnt always properly setup in my mind, such was there newness and I struggled to make sense of it all. This is the sorts of criticism mentioned in the TED comments section for this presentation. The connectors AND SO might suggest his own awareness of this shortcoming with time limits impeding his smoothness, or perhaps this is his behavior under performance pressure.
I thought this presentation was amazing. Thanks for posting and sharing!
A wonderful and amazing presentation … something new that I’ve seen for the first time in many years!. Thanks.