How I Got and Lost a TEDx Talk

I have already written about this topic once before when I decided to write about my experience with Thought-Leader and why I felt their program, while helpful, wasn’t quite worth the cost. After that article, several people reached out to me to express their gratitude because they were thinking of signing up for the program (which has increased in price to over 10,000 dollars), and they were glad that an insider was able to tell them what it was really like to be involved.

This article is much less about the Thought-Leader program and much ore about the TED organization itself. I won’t bury the lede on this: I was pulled off of my TEDx talk that I had landed in April. If you want to find out why that happened you can keep reading.

What Am I Doing?

I will say upfront that I did the research in February that I should have done way back in 2022 when I started this TEDx journey. I made the mistake of jumping into something I didn’t entirely understand at the outset. One of the mistakes I made was not doing my homework on TED as an organization, or what the process for getting and giving a TEDx talk really was in reality. The simple fact is that I should have found someone in my network who had given one and found out what the process was really like.

When I paid for Thought-Leader and started doing the trainings to get my talk together. I wrote out what “sounded to me” like a TED talk. After all, TEDx is really just a local TED event, but the format is the same. No trouble (I thought foolishly). That first talk practice did not go well. I know some people struggle with their idea or their talk, but I did not. The coaches did not like my talk, and I was sent away to rewrite into the format they had designed for a TEDx talk. This would be a mistake of sorts and would set me up for problems down the road.

TEDx is Complicated

Getting a TEDx talk is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes a lot of time, energy, and commitment. This goes all the way through from the application through to the day you walk on stage. Most TEDx events require you to attend speaker training. In the event I was going to speak at, there were 3 training sessions, and you were required to attend at least 2. TEDx talks are required to be memorized or at least using a teleprompter or cue cards. No notes are allowed, which is why all TED talks have the same look.

There are a lot of TED and TEDx events, but each event only has 10–12 slots. It’s a very exclusive club. This means that in any given year, there are about 200 events across the United States, leaving anywhere between 1800–2000 slots for people. There are also events that are dedicated to youth, college students, women-only, and other speciality events that can narrow the field based on your demographics.

For your talk to really go wide, it has to be reviewed by the TED review committee to be published. I think this even applies to TEDx YouTube channels. This means that if your talk doesn’t pass, it basically doesn’t go out in any meaningful. There is a multistep vetting process that begins with the local organizer of the TEDx event and goes all the way up to the TED review committee. In this way, it’s a bit of a mean girls club. If they like you and what you’re doing, you pass. There are rules, but they are left intentionally vague so that any content can be rejected at any time, for any reason.

Getting a TEDx stage is so complicated that there is a whole cottage industry that has grown up to help people navigate the esoteric world of TEDx talks. That’s where Thought-Leader and many other coaches have begun to make quite a bit of money. TED isn’t helpful on this either. The event pages are challenging to find, and the applications vary wildly by event. Most people are rejected simply for not doing the application right.

Applying to events can be difficult. There is no guarantee that you can get into your local TEDx event. There may not be a local TEDx event. I applied nationwide, looking for an event to speak at because I had the luxury to travel to give the talk at my expense. However, there are many events that try to focus on local people (which is great!) but that means there are far fewer events to apply to. There are also events for Youth, Women, and College (students). As I’m not a part of any of those populations, that reduced the number of events I applied to speak.

Topic Problems

The only regret I have about this whole process is that I wish I had picked a different topic that really had nothing to do with politics or my new political theory. I probably should have given a talk on a more milquetoast topic like writing. Trying to delve into politics, which was already difficult, was a mistake. I foolishly believed the Thought-Leader staff that I was in the clear, when the reality is that nothing matters until TED (local organizer and review committee) gives you the final blessing. Even then, that is no guarantee that your politics will pass muster.

When it comes to political talks, TED is really a “mean girls” organization. If they like you, then it is far easier to get your talk approved. This is also true for science and medicine. The bar is high, especially for anything to do with neurology and/or neuroscience. If they don’t like you or think your talk is mediocre, then it’s far harder. This dynamic is what happened to Nick Hanauer.

https://youtu.be/bBx2Y5HhplI

The real issue with the talk, according to TED Curator Chris Anderson via this Medium article, “Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, believed the talk to be too politically controversial. Aside from this, it is widely accepted that the talk was categorically mediocre.

Hanauer spends most of his time trying to explain why the rich don’t create jobs. TED curator Chris Anderson explains why Hanauer’s talk, despite tapping into some timely and pressing issues, “…framed the issue in a way that was explicitly partisan. And it included a number of arguments that were unconvincing, even to those of us who supported his overall stance. The audience at TED who heard it live (and who are often accused of being overly enthusiastic about left-leaning ideas) gave it, on average, mediocre ratings.”

Obviously, TED has regulations on talk topics. TED stands for Technology, Education, and Design. Most of the most well-known TED talks having very little to do with current events for a reason. Dissent Magazine complained in 2012 that TED was stripping politics out of public life and reducing the political struggles of people by simply not talking about them at all.

It is very challenging to work within systems when you have a mind of your own, your ideas, and your thing that you want to do. This is another area where a few minutes of Googling by me or searching Reddit would have revealed everything. It became apparent to me, based on responses and other online reading, that TED expects you to conform to their way of doing things. One of the other coaches at Thought-Leader said as much and we’ll get to that a bit later in this article.

How I Got Fired

I landed my talk in December. I had found another spreadsheet of events online to apply through, and I found this event on the East coast and didn’t event apply, I just emailed the organizer. She replied that she was having an informational the next day and that if I could come, to attend. I went and she sent me the application. I filled it out using the information I had on hand and landed the talk right around Christmas. It was a nice Christmas present for me. The first meeting for the event would take place in January, and we would begin our speaker training in February. I did not anticipate any difficulty along the way because I just spent a year in a program to prepare me for this moment. I fully thought it would be smooth sailing to the event in April.

Just to be sure of things, especially around my “controversial” topic, I spoke to the local organizer about the topic of my talk, and she signed off on it…or so I thought. Fast-forward another two months and the content was finally reviewed by her speech coach, and he rejected it. I got an email late on Thursday night, and I was devastated. She acted like I had not read the policy and didn’t know that there might be a problem. The communication was terse, unkind, and unhelpful.

I replied immediately, asking for clarification. I sent an alternate draft. I insisted on meeting with her as soon as she was able. I met with the organizer on Friday, and we had a productive, if difficult conversation. I was surprised to be having the conversation considering I was already working on the cue cards because I can’t memorize things and there would be no teleprompter. I figured out what had happened. I was distressed because the event was 6 weeks away, and I had been working so hard to refine this speech, and I was sad to lose al the work I had put in doing this program. I’m also very busy in other aspects of my life, and I’ve spent months working on this, and to have to do a rewrite at this point would be difficult.

I decided to go look at the big Ted website and see what the political talks were really like, and I found various types, but I also discovered through my research that much of whether a talk is deemed “too political” or not is very subjective. Even for well-known people like Nick Hanaeur (whose talk was pulled), it’s all subjective and really is based on “quality” and how much they do or do not like it. I probably should have done that research a while ago.

On Saturday, I contacted the speech coach. In full disclosure, I started that conversation with the following phrase, “I’d like to talk for 5 minutes with the man who ruined my life.” We had a 10-minute conversation that did not go very well, and he reminded me that I could give whatever talk I wanted but that it would never “see the light of day” because Ted wouldn’t publish it.

Then he asked me why I had said he ruined my life, and I explained my situation and my journey to this point. It has taken a lot of time, expense, and stress to get to this point, so a rewrite was simply devastating. There was no other way to put it, it was just devastating for me. He did not like this answer. I was heavy-handed. I could have handled it differently, and I probably should have been way nicer about it. After a few phone calls and driving around, I went home, printed out all the stuff I had for my talk and started gluing things together.

I anticipated that he would be reporting me for my words and the conversation, so I was not surprised when I got the email on Sunday morning that I had been canceled from the event. I will not post the whole email for privacy reasons, but one quote stood out to me, “Our team is too small to deal with your big emotions.” Based on the other email addresses on the thread, I might be black-listed from the whole TED organization, but that is mere conjecture on my part.

Fallout and Replies

I was a ball of emotions the whole weekend over. I didn’t sleep for days. I’m writing this article only a week after this all happened. It is still fresh in my mind, and that’s probably why I’m writing about it now.

I posted about my experience in the Thought-Leader community forum. The response was interesting, and it really contained the information that I should have had from the start. I think it is a giant oversight for Thought-Leader to not be clear on the whole process from the very beginning. I will admit, I should have done more research but I also paid a lot of money to an organization to guide me through this process and in their eagerness to unload my wallet, they failed to explain what it actually takes to get a TEDx talk.

TED is a large, complex organization. It is no surprise that there is a pile of expectations of anyone connected to the most valuable brand in public speaking today. TED is a billion dollar organization that holds the attention of the most prominent people on the planet. Entire careers have been created from a singular viral moment.

One of the Thought-Leader coaches replied and some of her quotes were rather telling, “Yes, it is very true that the organizer and speaker coach has the final say about your talk. Rewriting is part of the journey all the way until you get the final go ahead to memorize which can be as little as 2 weeks away from the event. I remember the start of your journey here and as a fellow autistic individual I found it tough to bring the idea I HAD to the program and have to scrap it once I found out what a TEDx talk format really is. It also took me a long time to let go of what I WANTED to do and learn the best format to land a talk through this program.”

This person also hosts events and has spoken multiple times, and she also said, “So we do our job of vetting talks and telling you what we think regarding the TEDx rules we have to follow.”

I felt like this reply was the thing I needed to hear, but also confirmed exactly what I had learned along the way. I said, “This is exactly what I’m talking about and this is exactly why I’m no longer going to pursue a TEDx talk. I have an idea worth spreading and I joined this program in order to do that, and I went through this program to be able to make it happen. I can handle rewrites. I’m a writer/editor, and I work at a book publishing company. I will admit, I thought that I had followed the format and shoe-horned my idea into the format that I was asked to follow, only to find out that was not the case.

I will say that I definitely could not memorize, and I had gotten accommodation for cue cards, but I definitely need more than 2 weeks to practice such an important talk. I’ll admit I didn’t really understand that, and I wish I had understood that along this whole process too.

I did some research about “political talks” on TED and found out a great deal of information. It is very subjective, and I just have to accept that. The reality is, TED is a big organization with many moving parts. I was a team player until I wasn’t, and now I’m out of it. This was supposed to change my life and power my public speaking career, and it certainly isn’t that and isn’t going to do that. I’m moving on now to other things. This is not what I had hoped it would or expected it to be, and I think it is best for me to move on. I just don’t want to be involved anymore. I’m good.”

Final Thoughts

I have multiple thoughts about all this. On the one hand, the pressure is off. I also lost a nice sum of cash on something that didn’t work out for me. I’m a bit hurt that TED/TEDx isn’t more accommodating of people who have experience, their own ideas, and want to talk about them. “Ideas worth spreading” doesn’t really have any salience when everything is decided by multiple committees to decide if you’re allowed to spread that idea.

I should have been nicer to the speaking coach. He was doing his job. I should have done more research into TED/TEDx and not blindly trusted Thought-Leader. For that amount of money, I should have been exhaustive in my research about what exactly it was that I was getting into.

It has been my dream to have a public speaking career since I started The Cameron Journal and I knew it would be a big lift to get the job done, but I thought this would be a pathway to growing my brand both personally and otherwise. And that was certainly a possibility, but I found out that to do that you have to completely divorce yourself from your thoughts and ideas. I was not willing to do that. I was willing to play the game until I wasn’t. Obviously, we all make decisions. I think it would have been easier to deal with if the email communication from my local organizer had been a little nicer and less condescending. I wish both her and the speaker coach had communicated earlier about what the process was. I would have pushed to have my content reviewed more quickly so I could have handled the situation.

Ultimately, I walk away from this experience with lessons learned. From now on, when I get involved in organizations, I will gather as much data as possible and make sure that it is really for me. I was too focused on getting on the platform and being in that group than to understand what it really meant to do that. In some ways, it was the perfect trap for someone like me. Ah well, at least I got a new powder blue suit out of it.