JUAN ENRIQUEZ on Meetings

On TED: TED—Technology, Entertainment, Design—is a conference that was pretty obscure in California about, oh, eight years ago. It has now become one of the most important conferences in the world … because it went open-source. So now any person who speaks at TED can get hundreds of thousands if not millions of video hits, and it’s the equivalent of publishing a book.Andthe bar of how you teach stuff and how you explain it has gotten really high because of conferences like this, to the point where the idea behind TED, which is to spread ideas, has now led to thousands of independently organized TED events, almost around the planet. Andit’s just changing and rais- ing the bar on how you communicate information, how you teach.

On staying relevant: There’s every variety of meet- ing and conference in the world. So there’s this enormous ecosystem, and I think what you’ve gotta do is, you’ve gotta be very clear about, what are you trying to do in this meeting and when are you trying to do it? So, probably there are meetings where you want to keep it closed, you want to keep it small, you want to keep it off the record. And then there are meetings where the more coverage

you get, the more people you have coming to your meet- ing, the better off you are. Whether that be virtual or that be [in-person] — and of course there’s everything in between those two poles. What is becoming apparent is that the bar for speakers andtransmitting information and being clear about information is getting to be higher and higher.

Andthe other thing that’s happening is more and more

people make mistakes because they project historical trends, when what you really want to do is you want to say, “Hey, you know, given discontinuities that I’ve seen here and here and here, what does the world look like that’s really different?” So I think being able to reach out- side of your comfort zone, bringing in people who might not necessarily be on topic, but which — to change the paradigm of how the people see the world, sort of as a sta- ble anchor — may be very useful to get them to think about how their own worlds or specialties or things may change. It may not be directly their topic, but, boy, have we seen a lot of discontinuity in almost everything. And hav- ing conventions that begin by shifting a little bit of the com- fort zone so that people are willing to consider new ideas or new structures [is important].

The United States was well-positioned to take economic and technicaladvantage of the digital revolution. Do you think the country is similarly positioned to take advantage both economically and technologically of bioscience? Yes, it is. About 50 percent of the information being generated in biosciences is being generated by the U.S. So the U.S. is, I think, still the dominant world power in this. But there are peoplewho are coming along very quickly in this stuff.You’re going to have some competition from scientists in other places; you’re going to have some very fast followers. And the countries that really focus on educating their kids in this new language will become relevant and dominant along with those that applied digital code.

Is this some of what you’re going to be discussing at PCMA Convening Leaders? Yeah. One of the things I’m going to try and do is give them a general framework to understand why the transition from read- ing andwriting andABCs to ones and zeros is so powerful, and generated most of thewealth created over the past 30 years.And then why the ability to read and write life code is now such a powerful trend, and howit begins to move across countries and regions and sectors of the economy.

What can the average person do to help encourage what you’re advocating? I think the key component of what I would like to do duringmy talk is to, in very simple, non-science terms, just give people a little bit of a map so that everything they’ve been hearing about cells and organs and plants that are different and animals that are different and gene codes that are different and [so on]—I mean, all of us are being bombarded by all this information.And it seems like thousands of loosely connected pieces. But there’s an overall framework, which is we’re beginning to understand how life is written, how it’s copied, and how it can be rewritten. What I want todoin the 45 minutes I’ve got with this august

group is tosay, “Here’s a frameworkso that the next time you see the news or the next time your kid comes home with a question or the next time that you’re faced with a choice or with a ques- tion, that you begin to have the framework to think about it.” And you’re going to have to think about it, because you’re

going to be making decisions about your health, your kids’ health; you’re going to be making decisions about your food, you’re going to be making decisions about where you make things, how you make things, where you work, about where to invest, aboutwhoto back, and about what you believe in and what you don’t believe in. All of those aspects are going to change for this stuff. And then I want to give you some resources so that if you’re interested you can continue to learn about this world, which is I think the most extraordinary adventure humans have ever been in.

Hunter R. Slaton is a senior editor of Convene. 76 pcmaconvene October 2011 www.pcma.org