Alexis Ohanian › Comments

"Psst, it's http://reddit.com/r/gadgets" - Alexis Ohanian

"Thanks! I had the mask leftover from Halloween and knew it was a smart investment once we did the "It's a map" ad." - Alexis Ohanian

"You can be sure that I'm going to lord this over him when he's done his next spontaneous meetup in the middle of nowhere with thousands of readers in attendance... oh, damn... you win again, Randall." - Alexis Ohanian

"A while back, Chris Anderson (TED) reached out to me to learn best practices for engaging the reddit community. He was fascinated by you all and wanted suggestions for how to give you the best possible experience with TED content. We started doing reddit-powered interviews with TED speakers (I love the Hans Rosling one) and it wasn't long before I ended up fulfilling my fanboy dream to attend TED (Oxford). I went again to this most recent TED in India and saw the open application for TED attendees who wanted to speak. I learned long ago that there's no risk in submitting an application and they thankfully only wanted a few sentences and a link to past speaking gigs. Here's what I sent: > Hi Lakshmi, > I thought I'd give this a go :) > +The tale of Mister Splashy Pants: a lesson for non-profits on the Internet. How Greenpeace took itself a little less seriously and helped start an Internet meme that actually got the Japanese government to call off that year's Humpback whaling..." - Alexis Ohanian

"I'd like to think so ;) but I'd always prefer to leave people wanting more if I can be that lucky." - Alexis Ohanian

"> However, the powers that be on Reddit really thought it was neat and stuck with it long after even the least fickle redditors had grown tired of Mr. Splashy Pants. By 'stuck with it,' do you mean changed the logo? Because that's all we, 'the powers that be on reddit,' did to propagate it. I'm also curious to know how you measure how 'even the least fickle redditors had grown tired of Mr. Splashy Pants.' The original message Greenpeace wanted to communicate was something to the effect of "Greenpeace visitors, you know how important it is to save Humpbacks, so help us give a name to the one we're tracking who will symbolize our struggle" -- the anonymous people (from reddit and beyond) who drove this internet campaign were not tuned in to this message, but achieved the desired end." - Alexis Ohanian

"Indeed! My mom must have bought me a half-dozen biographies of him. Democracy in America was a fine read, too, but I was actually [named after this guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) - believe it or not." - Alexis Ohanian

"Huzzah! I've met a few who masquerade as "Alex" - encourage them to own the name :) it guarantees a character-building childhood." - Alexis Ohanian

"I think even you'd concede that "you command ZERO respect" is a bit hyperbolic, but frankly, I hope you wouldn't judge a speaker based on attire alone. Or if you did, that you'd have the common sense to choose less profane language when demanding someone act mature. Or was that irony lost on me?" - Alexis Ohanian

"Was there something unsettling that you saw in our source code to lead you to think that? [(We're open source](http://code.reddit.com), you know.)" - Alexis Ohanian

"Aye. It was in Mysore, India." - Alexis Ohanian

"I'm getting old :-/" - Alexis Ohanian

"Lots of practice + only 4 minutes = secret to success! :)" - Alexis Ohanian

"I couldn't ask for more. You having possibly learned something is pure gravy." - Alexis Ohanian

"I deserve a scarlet letter "A" on my chest (in Arial, of course)." - Alexis Ohanian

"It's much harder to illustrate that with a cute alien doodle. Baby aliens = crowd pleaser." - Alexis Ohanian

"Typically, I don't rehearse a presentation more than once after finishing the slides. But given the limited amount of time I had (and they stress that you keep it under the allotted time) combined with the honor of being on the TED stage, I can assure you that I spent the entire morning of the talk rehearsing over, and over, and over in front of my laptop." - Alexis Ohanian

"Really? I think we could get Chris Anderson (TED) to do one..." - Alexis Ohanian

"Wha? Please provide a link." - Alexis Ohanian

"I'd just like to point out how pleased I am that this headline is beating [my comparatively bland one](http://www.reddit.com/r...)." - Alexis Ohanian

"To be fair, Steve [spez] did all the programming of reddit. I've spent the last 4 years just drawing the alien. And rehearsing my TED talk." - Alexis Ohanian

"Thanks, but you've got to admit, Gary Busey is a bit overexposed on TED as it is - he's got more talks than Hans Rosling." - Alexis Ohanian

"I only had 3 minutes, and they're real sticklers for not going over. I didn't want the giant hook to yank me, but I had a lot of story to share. My dad told me the same thing... I thought us MTV-generation-kids were all about the speed-talking ;)" - Alexis Ohanian

"Bonus! redditors have started a [TED.reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/ted/) you oughta subscribe to it (if you're into the TED-thing) and know that official TED folks will be participating, too, so also consider it a great place to give some feedback." - Alexis Ohanian

"That's really just a testament to how well we've hid behind the alien. No worries, there's nothing insulting about being mistaken for a girl - unless you'd already seen a video of me, hehe. And it's not the first time it's happened to me, nor will it be the last. But I'm doing what I can to bring the name over to team XY." - Alexis Ohanian

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