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Ted you've done so much does science engineering
entrepreneur if you were to go to a career day
what would you tell the kids in the classroom about what it is you do
I have no idea what I'd tell them
so I don't have a very
nicely put together a presentation like I might add from David
and I'm a little bit out of my element here but I'm not an educator and
I don't think I have like some amazing message about education to
to share or convey but I was willing and I am passionate about education so I said okay
now I'll be here I'll have to apologize in advance if I don't have any
really well prepared or pithy
ideas about it so what would I tell what was the question about
alright alright career day when you've been invited in to talk to the kids
about what it is you do
get them excited about what you do what would you say you know I honestly don't
even know how to describe what I do
people say what you do and I you know I well I'm an
entrepreneur
or I'm a business owner sometimes I use that one when I find it is a government thing
and I have to sign for my life or driver's license a business owner
or I'm the founder of a company or
technologist or scientists I am trained as a scientist
and I practice technology so
and I think I roll it all together and say I'm a creator
a creative person and I've always taken the path in my career and what I do
you know where can I be the most creative what things that can I do
what can I find to do that is creative and I think that's probably how I'd
boil it down well part of the discussion is to take you back and if you can imagine
you are no longer entrepreneur engineer but you are five years old
and you tell your parents okay this is what I want to be when I grow up
right when I was 5 I wanted to be a mad scientist that was my
mad scientist okay so I um
I had no idea where I was going at that time but I knew I had an
interest
in science and math and things like that I wasn't a
a math geek but I was always creating things I was making things
I had some of my earliest memories I remember
in grade school I was really young the librarian would come down the hallway
and pulled me outta class when the typewriters broke
because I had this ability to go in a library
there's old you know good old typewriters and actually had mechanism
I'm not that young I look a little younger but not that young
and I had this ability to get them to work again
you know I'm really good my hands I just somehow had this sense of
being able to zero in you isolate and zero in on the mechanical problem
in a machine and get it fixed quickly so I'm
that was great that was very supportive for me
I'm my you know my parents were I'm the product of a broken home my
parents divorce
I was the last the youngest of 4 and my other three siblings were
up and out in college
and right around that time when I was the last in the nest
my parents were going through this divorce so it wasn't a particularly
you know supportive and nurturing period of life for me
I was kind of on my own and being I think the youngest kid you get left kinda
to your own devices as you're not drinking the Clorox from underneath the sink
you're okay and so the combination of being the youngest and the divorce
you know it was really great for me to get asked to go fix the typewriter
yeah it was like wow I have you know I can do something well I
I'm they value it and I was really proud to be able to do that so that was
a
an early an early experience that shaped me
so you talk about being left alone and right now we have a lot of programming
in schools
after school activities lots of technology did you have alone time with
that part of
your creative process did you find ways to entertain yourself yeah
although man I watched way too much TV I remember my sister I would come
home from school
and my mom is off working and we would just watch TV all afternoon
which is sad but true and it was junk TV it was all the commercials and everything
and I don't know I you know it should have damaged me
irreparably for the rest of my life the kind of hours of crappy TV that I watch
but somehow I got over you maybe I could have been even more successful if I did
not watch that much TV
you like three hours a day easily was there a TV show that
influenced you no it was like whats on
click we didn't even have a clicker so I turned on and just
zone out
so if you think about what you asked santa for back then right
what were the toy and things that were on your wish list I was a boy
you know it was usually like gear and stuff like little cars and airplanes
I was really into remote control airplanes and I actually would scavenge
parts whenever a thing you know electronic or mechanical thing
broke and was gonna get thrown away out of our household I'd grab it
and I'd take it all apart into its constituent pieces and save them
in this sort of box I had my box of parts and I'd concoct a new things out of it
I find you know I had this one metal fire truck that passive
and you know axles and I motorized it and let it
fly across the floor hit my mother in the ankles that was the end of that
but you know so those were the sorts of things I liked to play with
I designed a tic tac toe game
out of electronics it never worked because actually
because I didn't have integrated circuits so I was trying to
wire it so it always
indicated when somebody had won thats actually impossible
just wires and conductors so that was a failure
and I worked you know let's talk about failures because so much is about
getting the A
and it seems like you had a few of those along the way you know I actually
was a
a solid solid B-minus student I'm
through all the way through high school I barely got into Columbia
I mean I was fairly motivated and reasonably smart but I
wasn't an aspirational student at all
I was not turned on by my classes particularly
some of them yes I did have some teachers who were the key
I think and only it only took one or two in my young years to
give me enough inspiration to get me through it was only
even going to college I remember I crammed for the biology
the entire semester at Columbia in two nights and got a B on
the exam and I didn't even go to class really I kind of attended classes but I didn't
do much else
I just wasn't into it and learning biology from a textbook
being crammed down very very passively I just
was inspired by it and it was only in my junior and senior years in college
finally that I got to design things and use these
core skills that had been sort of forced to learn you have to learn
mathematics and you know all the way up through ordinary differential equations
and you have to learn physics although I did like a physics a lot
and you have to learn chemistry and have to have a piece of biology those
you know yes there's value in all those but I just wasn't synthesizing them
and and I really believe more in synthesis
then analysis I'm not an analyst I'm a synthesizer
and at now that I finally in junior and senior years in college
I took mechanical engineering and I had a capstone senior design project
finally I could use these things and and synthesize something and create
and from that is when I started to really accel
so other designer and a scientist you have an opportunity to redesign the 21st
century classroom
and you think back to these experiences that weren't so inspiring
what would be your message to educators just from your own personal perspective
of
if I had to go through that program or class I would have done this differently
right so I have a few are key words actually around that
I'm I think and I don't think I have any great epiphany you haven't heard before
I'll probably just reinforce them I'm you know I think that experiential learning
is huge I think I synthesis based learning
is much more exciting to me than analysis based although you have to have
analytical skills
I think the idea project based courses or
class projects and team-based it's not all about
the core content but increasingly in our world I think
that teamwork and collaboration are crucial
and and solving real problems as a context for education
is great it's usually motivating and I think you can still get all those
fundamentals
kinda through the back door you know my my education was very traditional
Columbia was very traditional
my high school it was like you're gonna you're gonna you know
you're gonna you know eat and digest what's in this book and it was just
of course that's a way to get the fundamentals
but I since I've taken courses in my
my PhD that were just flipped completely where
where you know we're going to design a new bicycle as a team
we're going to divide the class into teams of five students each
and you're going to design a bicycle and you're gonna at the end of the semester on
this date there's going to be competition
to see who has the fastest bicycle and you're gonna make it out of paper
you can't use any metal you know go for it
that was an awesome course I loved it and
you know we ended up yes studying a lot of the fundamentals about materials properties
and physics and locomotion
and the stuff you need to get that the fundamentals but it was in this context
of
a really awesome awesome fun project that
they'll I guess I have a competitive streak cuz I just wanted to win
you know the team work where there was a lot of dynamics we had blow-ups and fights
we had great collaborative
moments and you know that upper layer was
was so much more fun for me and it motivated me to learn all those
fundamentals
I think that's a message I would have
I think at that at the end the day also
problem-solving is huge I think
and I see it a lot with younger people today
in school and young you know Y generation of my
staff are younger you know having
a chance to go solve an important problem
you know motivates everybody it motivates me and if you can help somebody or
solve a problem for society
that just trumps everything now its you know going out and making a million
dollars
yeah that's nice but can I solve a huge problem for
for society I think that's big and you can get do that in the classroom it doesn't have to be
curing cancer you can do something smaller in a day
in addition to the courses what would be as you think back to your
you said there were a couple of teachers who inspired you what would be the
message to teachers about the
the connection and the communication with students
I don't know if I'm qualified for that I liked some of the
thoughts about
I do believe that each student has their own
situation you know and that's why I love you know small classrooms my
five-year-old benefited from being in a classroom in pre-k
last year with only eight students and
I could just tell the difference in
the bandwidth that our teacher was able to have
with our kid 1/8th of the time versus 1/16 or 1/20 of the time
so you know I see that there's this value of having the bandwidth the time
and obviously each person is going to have their own
place that they're at and I'm sure it's one the biggest challenges of
teaching
and also in the workplace you know I try to do that with my employees now I'm not
a teacher
I'm an employer and I have a team you know of about 12 people that I manage every day
and
I try to think about where they're at today
I thought that was on um Monday I'll be
we're going to talk about the progress we're making a little bit more
because not as fast or well I hadn't realized that
as much I suppose that's part of what inspires me and
and my team to do what we do is to innovate and to make progress towards
that innovation
great now you are experienced as a parent so tell me what are some of
the fundamentals that you try
to use with your own family in raising a child who will
reach their fullest potential and have a creative household
I encourage my my fourteen-month-old is really too
young to
to get into that I think although I'm a believer that
let him walk around and fall and hurt himself within reason
you know I think a bump and scrape here and there is good my
my wife doesn't agree she's more protective so I keep an eye on the
gate that
would fall down the stairs and the stove and
other little smaller and the electric outlet but other things around
you know for my fourteen-month-old to walk around
you know it's okay you know climb up on a chair and fall off
there's carpet its okay it's not going to be that bad I'm a believer in that
So that's at that age and then my my five-year-old
actually I really you know if he finds a dead bird on the ground I'm gonna say
lets boil that sucker up
because I'm sure any idea
that he comes at me with I'm like let's do that he's like let's build a skyscraper
tomorrow well
let's think about that like what do we need to start with what are we going to use
for materials and I don't say
you can't build a skyscraper tomorrow
I'll let him figure that out you know on his own if that's where we're going to go
I'll just be sure okay let's think about what it's going to take to do that
and as we close out if you think about
classroom environments and even in your own team environment
what kind of environment would you say maybe if you had a magic genie to say this
is what a classroom looks like
at what age level aah there you go let's go for 10
age 10 well I I did look at schools for my five-year-old
last year was our entry year you into the school system
and that was the first time for us we you know took that
journey of investigating all the local schools and whatnot
and I have to admit that the
the Montessori model where there's a lot of cool stuff lying around
I like that although I was very impressed by the Quincy school
here was a public school also just this great
you know open environment open floor plan
with just all kinds of cool stuff lying around
it was all geared at the right height for the age group of kids
you know walking and being 6-foot-1 you like this this whole
everything in this whole room is only three feet tall then you realize well
thats because it's designed for their the height of the people using it
so I like an environment that's open and creative
for the older group I remember at Stanford I took some of these great
capstone courses in design and I'm
you know the best spaces and I see these in architecture schools too
are the
kinda the big open space where everybody has a bit of a studio
desk area and there's just stuff everywhere at Stanford at the
design group
you go in there and they deliberately leave behind lot artifacts
from previous projects
so there's stuff hanging from the ceiling and it's just you walk in and it feels very
creative open collaborative
areas for your for your own work and then
lots of open collaborative work we actually just redesigned our space cuz we expanded
so we we left the majority of it being an open
space where we just have some tables and and sofas and
then crammed in the back corner are like desks in a line
just to minimize the space over there because we felt you can be your desk but
we do a lot of collaborative work so
why not have cool areas to hang out work on
on the sofa for a few hours during the day so Ted everyone wants to know
are they out there know you were this Science Officer and Editor for UFO
Hunters
can you tell the group that's watching do they exist
I can tell you but then I'd have to kill you
no actually my line is an now if I told you that there weren't any
you know but the government wouldn't let me
say that you know there were so but if I tell you there are
you know I forget how the line goes but if I practice it I hadn't
I can't tell you the truth but
that whole show I stumbled into I was
finishing up at MIT I was getting my company started I was getting ready to leave a
perfectly well paying job
start a company kind of a crazy idea doing mosaics with robots and
I got a email from History Channel they were looking for a PhD
scientists from MIT who could fly and scuba dive and I happen to fit the bill
and I don't know exactly how they triangulated on all that
and at first sight I spam junked it as like this one is
one of those silly things and something about it made me
it was a bit too well-crafted and actually the next day I took it out my spam box
and was just like
maybe I'll just look into it for giggles and I have a cousin who's at NBC
and I forwarded it to him is this legit and he wrote back and I know the production company
they do great work you should do this a lot of people would
give their left arm for the opportunity and
I was like wow ok why not and so I
did the TV show for two seasons to support my startup company
because I had no income so I did it had a small TV career
for a while and it was it was bizarre because I was actually on screen I was a
host
and the second season I was also the producer science producer
and I don't I've never acted in my life I don't know how to actually be
terrified
to to try to act but it was a reality documentary so they said
just get in front of the camera be yourself and be a scientist and talk about
the case so that's what did for I think something like twenty six
cases episodes and I definitely did not find
you know alien bodies or spaceships made out of unobtainium
that to me I'm a physical kind of science guy sadly I need
physical proof never found that I so I'm not convinced
but I found huge amount have circumstantial and
credible evidence that there are you aliens that come
you know fly to earth it's not enough to believe it but it
start to make you think twice about it because you talk with police officers and
rocket scientists and space shuttle astronauts and
and government officials although I'm not sure that's
credible there but airline pilots with 15,000 hours have
of commercial airline experience who are gray-haired senior
and these aren't you know waco quacks on the side these are legitimate people
who have no reason
to make this stuff up and yet you're sitting there talking with them
and they're describing I was on you know space shuttle
mission 24 orbiting the Earth and I looked out the window and
an alien vehicle flew up next and hovered
flew around the vehicle we did some maneuvers if followed us and then flew
off again
and you're like okay you know I could
alright yeah he did not occur you know but this is it comeback
like a religion that person I had thought the UFO thing was was
moreover French kinda thing said that does leave me
kinda kinda wondering about the whole thing and and then aside from that
there's a fascination a that your the whole UFO phenomena turns out
is an amazing social science I mean it like one in four people
in america not as america round-the-world you think they've seen
your phone or have like a close-knit family member sure
I a close family member who have a lot of people think about this
it's not it's not a a tiny Matt minority people on the friendships it's pretty
predominant throughout society that made me more interested in
and lastly there the whole the whole
TV production industry is is area
something to to observe I it's alright it's pretty
amazing pretty crazy how they how the Christie
ted thank you for not only sharing with us the
kinda your pathway but opening up up to
the future possibilities they're out there at home so I was gonna raise
creative kids think somebody here thank you guys think