TEDxUCU x Intelvision: Knowledge Is the New Money, and That Is Why We Support Events Like TED
What's new: The original 2023 story is kept and lightly edited, TED and TEDx facts are checked against TED's own pages, and our learning benefits are brought up to date.
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- Intelvision supported TEDxUCU, held on 3 September 2023 at the Ukrainian Catholic University, where UCU graduates and representatives spoke on business, science, education and culture.
- TEDx events are organized independently by local volunteers under a free license from TED; more than 4,000 take place every year.
- Inside the company, Intelvision refunds courses, platforms, books and events, supports certifications and runs weekly English lessons.
This post first appeared in October 2023, after Intelvision supported TEDxUCU at the Ukrainian Catholic University. The original story is below, lightly edited.
Why do so many of the busiest people in business and public life protect time for reading and thinking, even when every hour of their day is booked? Because learning is the best investment of our time that we can make. Or, in the line usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
Lifelong learning is the habit of continuous self-education and skill improvement. Without it, it is hard to stay relevant in the labor market, and in software it is close to impossible. Yet most of us find excuses not to keep learning: there is no time, it is not interesting, it is difficult, it is not relevant right now, I will start on Monday, in September, after New Year. The reality is simple: if you stop upgrading your skills and gaining new knowledge, the market leaves you behind.
At Intelvision we know the value of knowledge. That is why we run internal training, compensate our employees for external courses and support them through certification programs. We also support educational initiatives. One of them, TEDxUCU, took place on 3 September 2023 at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), and Intelvision was one of its supporters.
TEDxUCU: what the event was about
TEDx events bring the TED format to local communities. According to TED, they are organized independently by local volunteers under a free license granted by TED, follow TED's format and guidelines, and combine live speakers with recorded TED Talks. More than 4,000 such events are now held every year.
TED's purpose is to spread ideas that can change things for the better, and TEDxUCU followed that spirit. The 2023 speakers were graduates and representatives of UCU. Each of them shared ideas from business, science, education and culture with the audience.
For us, supporting the event was a simple decision. A company that sells engineering expertise depends on people who keep learning, and a university event where people share ideas across disciplines is exactly the kind of place where that habit starts.
What is TED and why it is worth your time
The first TED event took place in 1984, organized by Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks. According to TED's own history, it featured demos of the compact disc, the e-book and 3D graphics from Lucasfilm, and the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot showed how to map coastlines using fractal geometry. The conference became an annual event in Monterey, California, in 1990.
In 2001, Chris Anderson's nonprofit Sapling Foundation acquired TED, and Anderson became its curator. The first TED Talks were posted online on 27 June 2006, and that decision turned TED from a conference into a global library. TED now reports more than 11 billion lifetime TED Talk plays.
Today scientists, philosophers, musicians, entrepreneurs, engineers and many others use the format to deliver one idea in a short, focused talk. The topics range from science and business to the global problems of humanity, and the audience is just as varied. Being invited to speak is an honor, and the talks are free to watch on the official TED website.
Why spend time on them? Three reasons we think they are worth it:
- Breadth. Engineers spend most of their learning time going deeper into their stack. A good talk from another field is a cheap way to see a problem from a new angle.
- Communication. A strong talk explains a complex idea simply. That is the skill engineers need when they explain an architecture decision to a client or a board.
- Habit. Lifelong learning is built from small, regular steps, and a talk fits into a lunch break.
How we support learning at Intelvision
Supporting events like TEDxUCU is one part of how we invest in people. The rest happens inside the company, and it is written into the benefits we publish for our team on our careers page:
- Refunds for professional growth: we refund educational courses, learning platforms, books and events.
- Certification: we help colleagues obtain professional certifications relevant to their role.
- A personal development plan for each employee, based on what they want to achieve in their profession.
- Periodic reviews based on technical evaluation and English level.
- Weekly corporate English lessons, because our engineers work directly with clients in English every day.
Our ties with UCU go back further than this event. In 2021 our team met UCU students to share how a company grows from a startup into an established software provider, a story we told in Intelvision inspires UCU students.
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