One very excellent move on Dave Eggers’ part was the fact that he admitted that he was nervous. If you have the confidence to say that, then you also have to confidence to present a great talk. However, during the telling of his life stories, Eggers definitely uses the word “uh” too many times and gets slightly off topic occasionally. This TED talk is accented by funny one-liners that keep the attention of the audience quite nicely.
Almost every good idea starts as something that may seem ridiculous to the rest of the world. Dave’s idea starts with the building on 816 Valencia in California. He and some business partners decided to open up shop there as a publishing site for a couple quarterlies. For some reason or another, they all decided to open up a free English tutoring site. Hey, there were already writers there. Unfortunately, they had to sell something in order to keep their space and pay the rent. Someone made a crack about the new floorboards making the place look like a pirate ship. And so began the pirate supply shop/publishing office/tutoring center. People should be spilling in right?? Not quite. As Dave explained it, there was a sort of “trust gap”. This inspired them to hire actual teachers to do the tutoring. Soon, business was booming. The one on one attention has really been helping these kids. The creative atmosphere inspires them not to just finish their homework but to also start writing for their own enjoyment. This unique shop even started publishing a collection of works by these students. This causes the students to work harder and generate better pieces of writing because it is permanent up there on the shelf for everyone to see. Strangely enough, after these books were stocked, the pirate supply shop actually started making money. Eventually, other states started to pick up on this idea. New York has a similar space but, instead of pirate stuff, they sell everything you need to become a superhero. LA has something similar to a “7-11”. Think about it. This one little idea has become a full-blown epidemic. Amazing. How far could this go? Could it reach every continent? Every country? Well, just maybe.
For the past couple weeks, we have all been asking each other: What matters? This question is extremely hard to answer for the entire world as a whole. It would most definitely be ideal to find even one thing that matters deeply to everyone on the entire planet. Right now, that is not entirely possible. We can make fairly decent predictions, but can you think of just one thing? At the moment, the only way to answer this question is by asking the individual. So, what matters to HIM? What does Dave Eggers care about? Obviously, one of the answers is “education”. He wants children to not just get through school, but to have fun while going by with flying colors. He believes that this is definitely possible if the kids give themselves even just one chance to shine. Can kids do this on their own without having to be tutored or walked through every single step? Of course! They just have to have the desire to be great at something and then start down that path. But how are such young people so inspired to get up and go? Could the younger population possibly have a greater intrinsic drive? I honestly have no idea (I’m no scientist). However, I do know that there are so many more opportunities for my generation than there have been ever before. We can do music, dance, publish books, and basically do anything we set our minds to. Can anyone start anything as big as what Dave Eggers did? Most definitely! My fifth grade teacher is a great example. Every day, after the pledge of allegiance, he had us recite this line: I can do anything I set my mind to. By the end of the year, almost every single student believed this. It doesn’t take much to change a life. The question is not: Why are we doing this? The question is: Why not?
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