TED OVERLOAD! Ever heard of TED talks? I think they are catching on pretty well these days, but if you’ve never heard of TED it stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. They are a nonprofit dedicated to “ideas worth spreading” where experts of any field give talks for up to 18 minutes on a specific topic.

I learn something from every ted talk I listen to/watch. Yes, they are also a podcast! Here’s a link to Ted radio hour through NPR.

Anyway, why is this relevant? Because I got to attend a TEDx live event in San Francisco and it was AMAZING, that’s why.

Now, I know what you might be thinking… A TEDx event. That’s not as cool as an actual TED event. Well, it’s also not as expensive and only one day long, which is all I could afford since I had to play hooky to go.

If you have been watching ted talks online and love them like I do, here’s a directory to search for upcoming TED events, they hold them across the globe so I’m sure you could find one near you. You can also find upcoming conferences tab using that link too.

Here is the list for the specific TED talks I saw during the day. (Maybe you can even spot me in the crowd!)

Around 04:45 on a Thursday, I hit the road for San Francisco. I was headed to the opera house right across from City Hall, it’s recently renovated.

I was sooo excited! I’ve been dying to attend a TED event for a long time since I first fell in love with TED talks. It was almost like I didn’t even skip school because I learned so much in one day. I saw 27 live TED talks. 27! The event started at 09:00, and we didn’t finish till almost 18:00 (6pm) that night. I didn’t even mind. I paid to attend, haha.

They provided snacks, drinks, coffee, and lunch, which was pretty awesome. It was all organic and actually tasted very good and was refreshing. The day was split into 4 different segments and there were between 7-9 TED talks in each segment. So we would go through and listen to a group of them and then have a break, which was really nice.

They even gave us badges we had to wear around, making it official. It was a lot of fun. And since it was San Francisco, a lot of the speakers were straight out of Silicon valley.

LUNCH BREAK. While we were sitting outside, the Blue Angles  were doing low slow fly by’s. I had no idea it was a fleet-weekend the same weekend I was up there.

At the end of the day, I met up with two different girls that I’ve met through GLT (Girls Love Travel), both of which did not live in San Francisco when I first met them. Caylee, who is now a flight attendant!! So happy for her, and Ella one of the girls that climbed to Havasupai with me. It turned into an awesome night at which point I sat on this amazing rooftop with Ella sipping whiskey and laughing about life late into the night.

Then ended up staying at an international hostel in downtown San Francisco, and met the sweetest girl from Mexico that was traveling on her own, and was a bit scared. Hopefully, I helped put her mind at ease for the last week of her journey. I taught her how to punch a guy in the dick and make it  hurt real bad if necessary ;).

Unfortunately, I only had breakfast with her the next morning, and then I was off to catch the ferry to Alcatraz…

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