VIDEO: Gary Carter, Learning to kiss

Posted by Monique van Dusseldorp on December 17, 2009 at 10:00 am

TEDxAmsterdam: Gary Carter from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.

Gary Carter is Chief Operating Officer of FremantleMedia, one of the largest independent entertainment brand companies in the world. His responsibilities include the management of the central creative functions of the company across all genres and platforms, as well as the management of the overall strategic development of the group.

In his TEDxAmsterdam talk, he presented his world from two very different angles. He started with the world from the perspective of FremantleMedia, a world of target audiences and formats, ”universal” stories and a search for the greatest common denominator; but then, in a move that surprised many in the audience, he turned to his own family and the world of his son.

He showed how different his son’s world is, how the views and interpretations of that world differ too, and how wide the range of human experience can be. Garter concluded that our differences are actually what matter most. As part of Gary Carter’s talk, Albana Shala read her poem ‘Learning to kiss’, and the talk ended with a beautiful rendition of the song Learning to Kiss (music by Jonathan Cooper, lyrics by Albana Shala. performed by Paulien Adriana, Marius de Vos and Kevin Walton, from the CD: Jonathan Cooper: The Madness of Kisses and with pictures by Ania Dabrowska)

Reports and links From Sanoma’s TEDxAmsterdam Channel, Joris van Heukelom’s interview with Gary Carter

“Gary Carter gave a perplexing speech, titled, ‘Learning to Kiss’. He wove together his professional life, producing targeted television, with the personal story of his son’s autism. It became a very compelling and touching celebration of acknowledging ‘human difference’.” from frog design, The theatre of TEDxAmsterdam

“With that problem solved, we heard from Gary Carter, COO of Freemantle. This is the company behind the X factor and he explained how demographics were responsible for its development at quite brilliant length. He switched from statistical segmentation to poetry and from the mass-market to his autisitc son, who is “not representative, and not represented”. His thesis took the idea that maybe “difference just is difference” and is actually much more important than the commonality humans share. This was presented as a positive: difference unites more than similiarities. The talk closed with a acapella rendition of the poem, Learning to Kiss, that he opened the talk with. It was a free-wheeling yet completely in command performance.“, Wired, Our Man in Amsterdam

As a bonus, a studio-recorded version of ‘Learning to Kiss‘ (follow link)