The Happiest Conference on Earth: Mario Chamorro at TEDxBeaconStreet (Transcript)

Mario Chamorro – TRANSCRIPT

Thank you (Hawaiian) Aloha.

Guys, please think for three seconds how can you make world a happier place. Now, can’t you imagine one million ideas to make the world a happier place? Well, here is my story. So, in our event in TEDxNewHeaven, – which happened in April, in 2012, like two months ago – this was a TEDx event focused on happiness. Why? Because happiness creates social change. And why in TED? Because TED is one of the best platforms to share ideas and happiness is an idea that is worth spreading.

We had a fantastic set of speakers that approached the topic of happiness from different angles. For instance, we had Gretchen Rubin – who is a famous author – we had Charles Eisentein, we had Nima from the Government of Bhutan, and we had Javier from the Media Lab of MIT. But, we wanted to take this inspiration into action. So, here is what we did. What have you received when you go to any conference? What is the best gift that you received when you go to a conference? Maybe a cap, maybe one of those, I don’t know.

But we wanted to give something different, we wanted to create an unique experience. So, in order to do that, we decided to come up with this book called “A million ways to a happier world.” So our idea was that every single member of our audience could contribute with their own idea about how to make the world a happier place. We had the fantastic and kind support from Danielle Levitt – who is a fantastic photographer – so we installed this studio next to our stage, and we asked each of the attendees to come to the studio to take their pictures and they grow their own book. So here is some of the results.

Voice-over: Listen to more people. This is Nima. “Daily pie breaks,” why not? So with all these ideas, we decided to put it together in a book that we are currently producing: we have an illustrator, a designer, and we wanted to put it on online so everybody can access that book. We also launched a Kickstarter campaign with a bunch of friends in order to print this book and to give it to communities who didn’t have access to this kind of materials. So, that was our idea.