Some things are worth the wait: Diary of a TED talk

It's 6:30pm on a Monday and I'm standing off-stage waiting for someone to call my name. A small microphone hugs my face, held up by bendable metal wrapped around my left ear. A wire snakes down my back before tucking into the waist of my pants.

"Our next speaker," the voice of Helen Walters, Head Curator at TED, begins from the stage, "describes himself as a writer and entrepreneur, which if anything downplays how much his existence has impacted other writers and entrepreneurs. Please join me in welcoming..." Then she says my name.

Music plays. A crowd claps. A producer next to me in a headset makes sure I have a clicker in my hand, then gently pushes my back. "Go!" she says.

I step from the darkness, then lightly jog to the side of the stage. I pause, then begin up three steps to a circle of red carpet in the center of a big room.

This is really happening.

Forty-eight hours earlier I'm in the same theater. This time it's empty except for a couple-dozen crew. People are setting up chairs. Random videos project onto giant, movie theater-sized screens. Audio of a woman talking incessantly plays from dozens of speakers. A famous scientist asks if someone can turn it off. "Unfortunately not," someone says. "They're testing the sound system." The scientist looks frustrated.

"I'm sorry about the noise," TED's speaker coach says to us. "But this is the only time we can be here and we want you to get used to this room. This is your theater this week."

Two dozen of us — all speakers, all still strangers to each other — nervously watch and listen. We have the honor — though maybe now we're doubting this status — of giving a talk on this stage in the coming week. Something for which we'd all been preparing for at least two months — some longer. It had felt so far away. Now it felt so real.

The speaker coach points out the screens, clock, and other key spots in the room. The small table where you could leave your confidence notes to check out while you pretended to get a drink of water during your talk. Only if you need it.

Then, the big moment. "Everyone follow me," she says, turning towards the stage. "It's time to go up there."

The first TED I attended was in 2012. Back then TED Talks were just starting to go online, and the conference's reputation was rising. That year I remember watching Bryan Stevenson's famous talk about racial justice, someone 3D-print a human liver, and grabbing a random seat only to realize I was sitting between Bill Gates and Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons).

That first year I was too intimidated to do much but cower in the corner and hope not to be noticed. I was one of the younger attendees, and my cofounder Perry was already established in the TED community. I was fringe.

I didn't mind my wallflower status. The rooms were full of impressive people doing impressive things. Of the many places where I've felt I never measured up, TED ranked right up there alongside the backstage artist area of Coachella and every time I've gone to Sundance among the places where I've been most uncomfortable for no good reason beyond status anxiety.

Since that first TED I've attended five more. None as socially awkward as the first, but also none that much more comfortable either. Even as many friends were invited to speak and had their careers wonderfully lift off as a result, the stage and community felt distant to me.

Where I did meaningfully win was meeting my wife at TED. Infinitely better than a talk, obviously. But I still dreamed of being on-stage. In the mid 2010s, there were few bigger flexes for "making it" as a public intellectual. My ego craved the validation. Each year when the TED lineup was announced I secretly hoped my name would be on the list — a surprise addition so surprising not even the speaker knew.

No matter how much I wished for it, no invitation came.

If we think about the key archetypal content forms of the first three decades of the internet, the TED talk is surely among them — and perhaps the most prestigious form of all.

A perfect information capsule, each TED video offers a narrativized visit into the worlds of futuristic science and technology in a consistent three-arc structure: an opening story with a surprising, often personal introduction; a detailed-for-the-layperson description of some area of science and tech; and a grand reveal of some possibility we hadn't yet anticipated. The stories often pay off with video-ready moments — a drone levitating; Bill Gates letting loose mosquitos in the theater; numerous startling tech demos.

A TED talk was a perfect popcorn nugget taking "ideas worth spreading" from lab benches and the halls of academia and bringing them to desktops, TVs, and phones of curious people around the world.

The best of humanity and the best of the internet rolled into one.

It's February 2025. A friend who used to work at TED tells one of their former colleagues there about a secret project I and others are working on. You should hear what Yancey is doing, my friend tells them. You're going to love it.

Now here I am on a video call with Helen Walters, TED's head curator.

"I've heard a little bit about what you're up to," she tells me, "but I want to hear it from you."

So I tell her the idea. How it started. Why it started. Where it might go. I didn't tell a fancy story, just explained it. Someone wanted to know about my project so I was telling them. I knew why she was asking, but I tried not to think about the implications.

After a half-hour of questions and conversation, Helen finally says it. "I think this is wonderful. We'd love for you to present it at TED. Opening night. You and I will work on it together. What do you think?"

My face simultaneously breaks into a smile and tears. "Thank you," I struggle to say. The tears come harder. I nod again. "Thank you." I cry more.

Helen looks at me with compassion. "What's going on right now?" she asks.

It takes me a moment to compose myself.

"I've always wanted this, but as much for ego as any other reason. Then I stopped wanting it. I've been off doing my own things. And now it shows up."

I get emotional again.

"It's like the universe is telling me, after all of this, that I'm ready..." I say, thinking about numerous struggles and doubts.

"You are ready," Helen tells me. "You're going to be amazing."

She gives me instructions to start working on a ten-minute talk. She'd like to see a first-draft as soon as possible. We're already late in the process. I take notes, thanking her profusely.

When we get off the call I sit in silence for a moment before getting emotional yet again. I fall to my knees on the floor, overwhelmed. I look up at the ceiling, repeating "Thank you" over and over again. The universe has given me a tremendous opportunity. It's only given me this because I'm ready for it. I'm determined not to let it down.

In the weeks leading up to the event, I draft 18 different versions of my talk. The first is autobiographical. This draft is quickly returned by Helen with many edits and redlines. The note in her email is cutting: "I find myself less convinced by this than what you told me on our call." Ouch.

I get to work on another draft, then another. Slowly I see the arcs take shape. Helen keeps the notes coming. They're specific and never sparing. We're in a steady dialogue through Google Doc comments, discussing which examples I should cite, where proof statistics are needed, and, perhaps most important, how I would open the talk. I am endlessly grateful for the feedback, and fully submit to the process without ego or defensiveness.

Three weeks later it's time for my first dress rehearsal in the TED offices in front of their team of curators. Early on a Monday morning I enter an atrium where a mock TED stage is set up. Chris Anderson is there — my first time meeting him — and the other curators, including Helen. I stand and give the talk from memory. No slides. It lasts a little over ten minutes.

Then come the notes. Areas they find less convincing. Parts that are confusing. An example that doesn't land. A question about how I started it. The comments leave the overall talk intact but identify places that don't pass the smell test. Good shape but more revisions are needed. Just four weeks to go.

The twenty speakers — roughly a third of the total crop of this year's conference — follow the TED speaker coach to the stage. The last step onto the platform feels significant. A small step for a human, but a big one — we all hope — for our causes and careers.

We stand together on the circular red carpet, lights sparkling in our eyes, as we take in the room. The speaker coach shows us again the screens, the clock, and how to make eye contact with the crowd. "Don't just scan or turn your head back and forth," she tells us. "Don't think about the cameras. Make eye contact with a person for one thought, then move to the next person. Give your talk to the people in the room, not the cameras or the people watching at home later. That's what makes it feel special."

We look out at the thousand empty seats rising up in the empty half-amphitheater. I try to imagine each filled with a person I'm making eye contact with. It's a jolting thought.

"I want you all to get a feel for being up there," the coach continues. "This is your stage. So let's try something."

At the count of three, she tells us, we should all start giving the first two minutes of our talks all at once, all together. We laugh awkwardly. Really? Before we can ask if she really means it, she starts counting.

Suddenly the stage is filled with a cacophony of voices. Next to me a woman from Nairobi begins to tell her story. Behind me a man howls like a wolf. I try to remember my lines, but with so much going on it's harder than I expect. I try to shrink my awareness.

Stay focused, I tell myself. Remember what you're here to do.

In the weeks leading up to the talk, I balance iterating on the draft and memorization. Whenever I walk around where I live in New York City, I put in AirPods with nothing on, start the timer on my phone, and repeat the talk as I walk — as if I'm on an especially animated phone call.

Each commute to and from work gives me three tries. Things go well, though my attempts keep stubbornly coming in almost three minutes over my allotted time.

One night my wife asks me to give her the talk like I would on-stage. I awkwardly stand in the kitchen and do it. When I finish, she's silent. "You sound too much like you're giving a speech," she tells me. "I don't think it works. You need to sound more natural, like you're just talking."

I'm disappointed but can feel she's right. I start imagining the speech is less oratory and more conspiracy. Less stage actor projecting for the back seats and more screen actor creating presence with subtlety. My tone stops trying to convince and becomes simpler and more peer-like.

Then, just a week before, a breakthrough. We go out to dinner with two friends, one of whom is an 88-year-old painter. My wife asks me to give my talk to him. In the middle of a loud Chinese restaurant I give the exact words of my talk, but as a dinner table conversation with a friend rather than a proper speech. Even while using the same words, I feel the context and tone become more natural.

When I finish, I ask Paul, our 88-year-old friend, if he understood it. "Yes, I think so," he told us. "It sounds very exciting."

My wife turns to me: "That was your best one yet."

Twenty-four hours before the talk, something miraculous happens.

After rehearsal and a dinner with the other speakers the night before, I'm buzzing with energy. To burn it off I go for an hour-plus walk around downtown Vancouver listening to music — not rehearsing. I needed a reset.

When I wake the next morning, the miracle. Somehow my brain has decided on a simple idea: this isn't your first TED talk. This is your third TED talk. When you did it before you already did the nervous thing. It wasn't going to happen again.

This thought was a total lie. It was my first talk. I was nervous. And yet... I don't know how else to explain it, but it worked. I've done this before, I thought. In a way I had. I'd visualized it. I'd rehearsed it in front of the curators. It was a lie to myself, but it conveniently did the trick.

I relaxed and felt a sense of calm. From that point forward, part of me really did feel like I'd been there before. I told other new speakers the same thing. We didn't need to be nervous. We were third-timers. This was old hat. The idea was empowering and fun.

As my feet touch the stage, I feel the buzz of people and energy. For twenty minutes I'd been pacing around the dressing room. Now here I was.

At the top of the stairs I turn to Helen, smiling and thanking her for, well, everything. After all of this, here we were in front of everyone. It was hard to believe.

I take two steps forward and see my brown shoes sink into the red carpet. I lift my eyes to the room and make out the faint outlines of people everywhere. A soft backlit glow that feels almost like what you'd imagine Heaven might be like.

My heart is calm. My breath is normal. My voice feels steady. Not an ounce of me feels unsure. I briefly interact with the audience, introducing my wife in the second row to the crowd to her surprise and embarrassment. I tell the audience we'd met here at TED eleven years before. They should keep their eyes open if they're single. The crowd oohs. The energy lifts just a bit more. She and I smile at each other.

I stand there a moment longer, looking around the room. Ready.

For the next ten minutes and no longer, I patiently tell my story. Like the TED talks you know, it's a narrative that takes several twists and turns, building to what I hoped would be the satisfying reveal of a new idea. When the moment arrives, the crowd unexpectedly cheers and claps. Better than I'd ever let myself hope.

I feel my words gather strength as the talk builds towards the end. The audience comes along with me. Together we're exploring something both fundamentally new and so obvious it feels like we've known it forever. It's in the air: this might be another TED moment to remember.

At my final sentence, energy shifts. Applause. People standing. The lights brighten. A smile across my face. My eyes lock with my wife in the second row. The moment holds. Then releases.

Some things are worth the wait.

What about the talk itself? What's the new idea I shared?

For that, you'll need to be patient. The video will go online in the coming weeks, and I'm going to preserve the surprise until then.

Stay tuned, my friends...