Manchester International School

Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

MIDDLE YEARS PROGRAMME
TED x TALK
What is a TEDx Talk?
Before you start the search for speakers for your event, it’s important to know exactly what a
TEDx Talk is. It also helps to understand the different types of talks worth spreading. That way,
you know what you’re looking for.
A TEDx Talk is a showcase for speakers presenting great, well-formed ideas in under 18 minutes.
Why under 18 minutes?
This short talk model works, since it only demands the audience's attention for a short period of
time, decreasing the chance of minds wandering or daydreaming about lunch. In fact, some of our
greatest TED Talks have been as short as 5 minutes long!
What is a great, well-formed idea?
It can actually be one of two things:
Something that’s new and surprising; an idea or invention that your audience has never heard
about.
A great basic idea (that your audience has maybe already heard) with a compelling new argument
behind it that challenges beliefs and perspectives.
In other words, an idea isn’t just a story or a list of facts. A good idea takes certain evidence or
observations and draws a larger conclusion.
Types of talks
When searching for speakers, you can keep in mind these seven different types of talks — not every
speaker’s talk has to be exactly the same.
The big idea
The talks that make one or two very strong points, and it’s important. Examples: Bryan Stevenson,
Onora O'Neill, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The tech demo
An onstage look at some clever new invention that the speaker was a part of creating. Examples: Tan
Le, Markus Fischer, Raffaello D'Andrea
The performance
Music, dance, magic, puppetry, or some other performance to captivate your audience. Examples:
Usman Riaz + Preston Reed, Arthur Benjamin, Pilobolus
The artist’s statement
In these talks, artists showcase their art and explain the meaning and process behind what they
create. Examples: Raghava KK, Liu Bolin, Aparna Rao
The “dazzle with wonder”
These talks are mainly about the amazement of science and discovery. Examples: Yoav Medan,
Marcus Byrne, Janna Levin
The small idea
These talks are not about one big, world-changing idea, but instead a very engaging take on an
interesting topic. Examples: Mary Roach, Joe Smith, Charlie Todd
The “issue” talk
These talks expose your audience to an issue that they may not otherwise know much about.
Examples: Rodrigo Canales, Lawrence Lessig, Rose George
Next: Create a theme
Rules to remember
TEDx Content Guidelines give you a set of standards to follow when it comes to TEDx Talks, so use
this as a guide. This includes:
No commercial agendas
No political agendas or inflammatory rhetoric
No religious agendas
No bad science
Make sure to know these guidelines.

The 5 Patterns of Popular TED Talks:

These results surprised us. The most pleasant surprise was that these tips are extremely easy to
implement for everyone in daily life. Here’s what we found and how you can use the tips:
#1 It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It
TED Talkers spend so much time and energy on what to say–the words, the script, the bullets. But is
how they say it more important? We found that there was no difference in ratings between people
who watched Talks on mute and people who watched Talks with sound. Yes, you read that correctly:
People liked the speakers just as much with sound as on mute.
This means we rate someone’s charisma, credibility and intelligence based on nonverbal signals. This
is surprising–we want people to focus on our words, but this experiment is no different from
previous research. Over and over again we find that how we say something is more important than
what we say. The question then becomes, how do we say something well? Read on to find out which
nonverbal signals were most important…
Bottom Line: Focus on your nonverbal just as much as your verbal.
#2 Jazz Hands Rock
Once we realized the importance of the TED speaker’s body language, we decided to look for
specific nonverbal patterns that the top TED Talks had different from the bottom TED Talks. One
thing became quickly clear:
The more hand gestures, the more successful the Talk. There was a direct correlation between the
number of views on a TED Talk and the number of hand gestures.
The bottom TED Talks had an average of 124,000 views and used an average of 272 hand gestures
during the 18 minute Talk. The top TED Talks had an average of 7,360,000 views and used an average
of 465 hand gestures—that’s almost double! By the way, Temple Grandin, Simon Sinek and Jane
McGonigal topped the hand gesture charts with over 600 hand gestures in just 18 minutes.
Why do we think this is? Our hands are a nonverbal way to show and build trust–studies have found
that when we see someone’s hands, we have an easier time trusting them. Also, when someone
uses their hands to explain a concept, we have an easier time understanding them. Speakers who
use hand gestures are speaking to their audience on 2 levels–verbally and nonverbally.

Bottom Line: To be a good speaker, let your hands do the talking.

#3 Scripts Kill Your Charisma
Nonverbal communication isn’t just about body language, it’s also about vocal cues. We had our
evaluators rate the TED speakers on vocal variety, or the amount of fluctuation in their voice tone,
volume and pitch. Again, the relationship was clear. The more vocal variety a speaker had, the more
views they had. Specifically, vocal variety increased the speakers’ charisma and credibility ratings. In
other words, speakers who told stories, ad libbed and even yelled at the audience like Jamie Oliver
in his TED Talk, captivated the audience’s imagination and attention.
Researchers who have studied teacher ratings have also found that vocal variety is important for
improving student evaluations (See Rocca, K.A.). When you are practicing giving your elevator pitch
or your next presentation, try saying your words at least 5 different ways. Practice putting emphasis
on different words, slowing and speeding up your pace and varying your volume on important
points.
Bottom Line: Memorized lines and scripts kill your memorability.
#4 Smiling Makes You Look Smarter
This finding is the only pattern that goes against the current research. Studies on smiling have found
that leaders typically smile less. Nonverbal scientists believe that smiling is actually a low power
behavior. However, in our research we found that the longer a TED speaker smiled, the higher their
perceived intelligence ratings were. Those who smiled at least 14 seconds were rated as higher in
intelligence than those who smiled for less. Doesn’t this seem counter-intuitive? When we think of
an intelligent person, we usually think of someone very serious. But even when TED Talkers were
speaking about a serious topic, like Sheryl Sandberg’s Talk on women leaders, smiling still helped her
intelligence ratings.
Bottom Line: No matter how serious your topic, find something to smile about.
#5 You Have 7 Seconds
We can’t emphasize enough the power of the first 7 seconds of any interaction you have. According
to our ratings, people had already made their first impression and decision about the entire Talk in
the first 7 seconds of the video. Researcher, Nalini Ambady calls this ‘thin-slicing.’ She says that for
efficiency purposes, the brain makes very quick judgments of people within the first few seconds of
meeting them. Typically, this happens before any words are exchanged. So yes, think about your
opening line, but also think about how you take the stage, how you acknowledge the audience and
how you deliver your first line.
I hope this research has shed some light on what makes someone charismatic and how you can
improve your own stage presence. Whether you are going to deliver the next top TED Talk or you
just want to make an impact in your daily life, take these 5 easy cues and make them your own.
More About the Experiment:
Participants were asked to rate TED Talks on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being low, 5 being high). They were
asked to rate the speaker’s charisma, credibility and intelligence.
We did this in 3 parts:
Part I: First Impressions
Previous research by Nalini Ambady suggested that we decide if we like someone in less than 7
seconds. We wanted to know if there was a difference for people who watched an entire 18 minute
Talk versus people who watched just the first 7 seconds. Here is an example of the 7 second trial
where participants watched a video like this and filled out a rating chart for charisma, credibility and
intelligence as they watched
Part II: Verbal or Nonverbal
Once we saw these surprising results’ role in (see #1 above) we wondered if the verbal content or
nonverbal presentation of the content had anything to do with the success of the TED Talk. This time
we had one group watch and rate the first 7 seconds of a TED Talk and a second group watch and
rate the first 7 seconds of a TED Talk on MUTE! It was like this:
Here’s what fascinated us at this point: All of the ratings matched the number of views. In other
words, the Talks that got the most views were also the Talks that got highest ratings in credibility,
charisma and intelligence whether or not people only watched 7 seconds or on mute. As we explain
in our 5 patterns:
Our research suggests that we decide if we like the TED Talk in the first 7 seconds–and it has very
little, if nothing to do with the words.
Part III: Patterns
Finally, we started to look for nonverbal patterns between the videos that ranked high in charisma,
credibility and intelligence. We felt since the results of Part I and II pointed us in the direction of
nonverbal, that’s where we would focus. Additionally, most of the previous research has been done
on the verbal side of TED Talks, but very little on the nonverbal side.
More Fun Patterns:
We also found that some nonverbal gestures were more important than others:
Credibility: Speakers who rated high in credibility had higher vocal variety and longer smiling.
Charisma: The most important thing for charisma was hand gestures and vocal variety.
Intelligence: Smiling was the most important factor for intelligence ratings (More than 14 seconds of
smiling seemed to be the tipping point for higher ratings in intelligence).
Small, But Interesting:
We only examined 50 TED Talks for these patterns, but it proved interesting nonetheless:
People in casual clothing typically rated lower than people in business or business casual.
Women who wore business clothing got higher ratings compared to men in business clothing (not
casual or business casual).
Speakers in darker colors got higher ratings than those in lighter colors.
More Fun Numbers:
Charisma was the name of the game. The most popular TED Talks rated 43% higher in charisma
compared to less popular TED Talks.
The most popular TED Talkers had 30.5% higher vocal variety than less popular TED Talkers.
For the charisma ratings, high TED Talkers used at least 240 hand gestures. In general, TED Talkers
who used less than 240 hand gestures scored lower on charisma.

Conclusion:
There is a lot more research that could be done in this area. We could look at differences between
men and women, across races and locations. It would be wonderful to compare these results to
different years and see if that changes results. However, this preliminary research is helpful,
inspiring and fascinating. What we perceive to be important about public speaking, charisma and
presence and what is actually important might differ more than we think.

Researchers:
Vanessa Van Edwards is a behavioral investigator and published author. She figures out the science
of what makes people tick at her human behavior research lab, the Science of People. As a geeky,
modern-day Dale Carnegie, her innovative work has been featured on NPR, Business Week and CNN.
Brandon Vaughn: While moonlighting with us, he spends his days working with data at Apple and
running his podcast, First Things. He is a whiz with numbers and loves finding patterns in big data.