Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe

Why are TED talks 18 minutes long (or less)?

31st December 2011

My answer to Why are TED talks 18 minutes long (or less)? on Quora

I imagine it’s because enforcing a shorter talk time results in consistently higher quality presentations, by forcing speakers to carefully structure their talk and strip out any unnecessary details.

A similar logic holds for five minute “lightning talks”, which are extremely popular at technical conferences. Only having 5 minutes forces people to get straight to the point and stay there.

Posted 31st December 2011 at 9:47 am · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

This is Why are TED talks 18 minutes long (or less)? by Simon Willison, posted on 31st December 2011.

Next: What criteria should a company meet in order to have a 5 million dollars valuation?

Previous: What are the most practical beneficials for Python, comparing to Java?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe