TED Community » Ellen Cheng

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About Me

An authentic storyteller, a humble learner of nature. Partly rational, adoring professionalism, logic and self-discipline, while partly emotional, pursuing perfection, extreme and self-expression. While emotions are always conflicting reasons, I try to blend the oppositions to realize oneness.

Location:
China, Beijing
Current organization:
TEDxFactory798
Current role:
Curator
Gender:
Female
Areas of expertise:
Curation, User Experience & Design, Development studies, Chinese History, Comparative politics, Internet Product Development
I am:
Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Designer, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Event planner, Idea generator, Marketer, Project manager
Languages:
Chinese, English
My website links:
Blog, LinkedIn, Objectified
Universities:
Peking University, Beijing, China
TED conferences attended:
TEDActive 2012, TEDGlobal 2011
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TEDCRED 500+ TEDx OrganizerTED Attendee

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Internet product, Mobile/Tablet reading experience, Content and Curation, User experience, HCI, Internet, Political reform and Democratization, History, Biographies, Oil painting, Art, Running

An idea worth spreading

All of these roles—product manager, curator, and creative director—have common soul. I am a curator in TEDx, but I am also a product manager, since my goal is to create the most extraordinary User Experience for my target users—-they are speakers, audience and the community. But what makes one extraordinary is to dig out The Undiscovered Desire and The Detached Self of our users, or ourselves. The Undiscovered Desire means stretching ourselves, realizing our potential, exceeding our expectations, and fulfilling our desire, even we haven’t discovered them yet.The Detached Self identifies us as who we are. When we are working so hard to reach our edge, to realize one side of ourselves, we usually end up ignoring the other side. Our “Self” is detached. It presents a great tension, since we need to get the detached self back, to regain balance and oneness. So the extraordinary, no matter what they are called, share the same elements. That’s what make them icon.

Talk to me about

Reasons conflicting emotions. The edge of our life and the world. The power of oneness. The empowerment. The relation between story and data. What makes a great designer.

My TED Story

As a TEDx curator and TEDx ambassador---I am creating the most extraordinary experience for speakers, audience and community, and hopefully to empower and inspire more people like I was empowered and inspired. As I moved on in TEDx world, I learned that “authenticity” is the most significant element, for everyone to start conversation and communication. While there are still so many times I was so lost on why I did TEDx and I have genuinely undergone serious crisis on I was doing, I’ve been learning to take the less road less traveled and quest the meaning behind TEDx. Among all the philosophies I’ve produced over why TEDx, the one stands out most is “TED has been giving out meanings, while TEDx has been seeking for meanings”.

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