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Imagine you are invited to give a TED talk at the big conference in Long Beach. But just as your talk on the topic of the "unexpected" gets underway, you're plagued with that Apple computer "spinning beach ball of death" and your total AV package is frozen. Gulp.
That's exactly want happened to speaker Colin Robertson, whose presentation was derailed...with unexpected results.
[SPOILER ALERT]
Okay, so Colin isn't Colin, and the TED talk gone awry, if you haven't watched the whole video yet, was actually an Improv Everywhere "scene" put on with the help of the TED organizers.
After the initial awkward phase, and the audience clearly feeling bad for the guy on the stage, the presentation started to get a little ridiculous.
The crowd started to catch on that something was not right as the error messages starting piling on top of each other. Errors from older Mac operating systems starting popping up, one accompanied by the classic “eep” sound. Then two additional spinning beach balls appeared. At this point, performers secretly placed in the crowd popped open umbrellas that looked exactly like the spinning beach ball.
Ultimately, the "skit" made use of rainbow wigs, streamers, and people dressed up as a human "spinning beach ball" to make the point, and the joke: The unexpected can be wonderful!
