A very entertaining and insightful conference from ad man Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group, on TEDTalk. I particularly like the bit about Shreddies breakfast cereal and the process of creating intangible value.

The next great passion of Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson of TED Conferences aggregated advertising research from a number of authorities (e.g. Forrester, Nielsen, Yankee Group) and discovered the market value of one hour of attention is worth $1 in print, $0.25 on TV, and less than $0.10 on the Internet, suggesting that the industry has yet to figure out how to best capitalize on the nearly 2 billion people online (carrying over the interruptive ad model is not the way to).

To help figure it out, TED is inviting the business community to submit videos to the Ads Worth Spreading Challenge by February 7, 2011. Up to 10 winning ads/videos will premiere at TED2011 in Long Beach, CA, February 28-March 4, 2011, before 1,500+ thought leaders as well as subsequently appear on TED.com for free for one week in March. Winners will also appear on the YouTube homepage and as ads across YouTube content.

Appearing as post-roll after every  TEDTalks videos for a week, the company claims, is about 2 million impressions (views). That’s a pretty sweet deal! Learn more on how to enter here.

Pranav Mistry demonstrates the real-world application of his SixthSense technology which enables people to seamlessly interact with ordinary objects and digital objects using natural gestures. For example, your hand becomes as phone or a sheet of paper a laptop. Watch the video, you will be slackjawed by the time you reach 6:25.

As Mistry states at the end of the video, he plans to make available the software behind SixthSense open-source. Forget Derek Jeter or Lady Gaga, these are the people our kids should aspire to be like.