Summer is just around the corner and some of you may already have plans to enjoy this season. A few of you may plan to avoid the sun altogether and stay indoors where it’s nice and cool. If you’re part of the latter group, I hope this post will change your mind.

With gas prices sure to be on the rise in the summer, traveling may seem like a challenge. In the 2009 TedxPeachtree talk by Mike McQuary on “What if Gasoline was $5/Gallon?,” he points out some of the reasons why we choose to drive less and find alternatives to entertain us at home, such as playing board or video games like top-sellers Monopoly or Grand Theft Auto. Even with the rise of gas prices, he challenges us to look past things that may be an inconvenience.

You’ve made up your mind to travel, but you still want to avoid the sun even after applying sun block. You’re reminded of the risks of skin cancer related to sun exposure. Richard Weller wants you to embrace the sun. In his talk titled “Could the Sun be Good for Your Heart?,” he shares his research on some of the positive effects of sun exposure.

You may find yourself outdoors in a park one summer day. Frisbees are flying in the air. Someone is grilling in a distance. Children are screaming. Dogs are barking. But the one thing that catches your attention is the bee headed in your direction. You take off a flip-flop, ready to defend if the bee decides to attack you. Noah Wilson-Rich gave a TED talk on “Every City Needs Healthy Honey Bees” and wants to remind you that “honeybees die when they sting you, so they don’t want to do it either.” The numbers of bees are declining and as a result over 130 fruits and vegetables crops are rising in prices. Next time you see a bee, think twice before you kill it.

Wherever you are this summer, make sure to capture those personal events. Cesar Kuriyama recommends you to take a one-second video recording to help you recollect what you’ve done on that day. In his TED talk on “One Second Every Day,” he talks about a personal project he created, recording his moments of highs and lows in a series of one-second videos. When he turned 30, he took off an entire year off to travel and spend time with his family and friends. He recorded the videos as a personal diary that helped him appreciate life and the times where it was good.

If you’re still not convinced to enjoy the sun this year, maybe Ben Saunders can convince you in his talk on “Why Bother Leaving the House?” He’s been living in a tent at the Arctic Circle for two percent of his entire life. Ben was the only human being in 5.4 million square-miles. During his near 12 years in the Arctic Circle, he’s learned that “real inspiration and growth only comes from adversity and from challenge, from stepping away from what’s comfortable and familiar and stepping out into the unknown.”

I can’t recall the last summer vacation I’ve taken. Maybe I should take Cesar’s advice and start recording my daily activities to help jog my memory. Traveling was quite challenging for me, because I was a college student without a personal car. If I wasn’t taking summer classes, I was working. Basically, I found excuses and ways to keep myself indoors. As I’m getting older, I, too, see that there’s more to life than what my home has to offer.  This summer, I’ve made up my mind to travel. I will be enjoying the sun in sunny California.

Emily Yang is the communications coordinator for Leadership DeKalb and is looking forward to her first TedxPeachtree event on November 8.

After having lived on the other side of the world for over 20 years, in 2009, I decided to come to the States to taste the feeling of leaving my comfort zone. Leaving the comfort zone was quite uncomfortable honestly. After her third attempt, I finally understood the simple sentence “How are you doing?” on the street from a friendly lady who tried to greet me. Apparently the slow-speed English learning tapes in my hometown did not prepare me well enough for the reality. With my heart in my mouth, I searched the web ferociously for good English learning websites, and that was about when I discovered TED. It did not take me long to step into TED Talks without captions from those with captions, not because my English listening ability improved at the speed of light, but because the talks transcended my original intention of purely picking up vocabularies and paved the way for a journey of exploration, from Simon Sinek’s golden circle to Boaz Almog’s superconductor, from Hyeonseo Lee’s escape from North Korea to learning how to move the whole body with the tongue with Maysam Ghovanloo at TEDxPeachtree 2012, where I finally made my first on-site exploration.

And….TED-Ed brought this journey of exploration to zenith. TED-Ed is a curated list of educational videos on a variety of topics, created under the collaborations between educators and animators. I am excited to share the news that as recent as Apr 30, 2013, TED-Ed won three Webby Awards. The Webby Awards, also known as “Oscars of the Internet”, is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile and apps. Award categories range from Arts to Community, from Shopping to Weird. Two winners are selected in each category: the Webby Winner, picked by judges, and the People’s Voice winner, voted by the public. Well known Webby Awards 2013 winners include Google Maps for iPhone and Songza, a popular music streaming service provider. TED-Ed was awarded both Webby Winner and People’s Voice in Education, and was selected as the Webby Winner for Best Practices. It’s quite a recognition that Webby witnessed the education revolution hatched by TED-Ed as my exploration ventured into this newly found territory. Did you ever wonder the mechanism of thinking? Let’s take a tour with Trevor Maber on TED-Ed to explore our brains.

Here, you can see “Watch”, “Think”, and “Dig Deeper” buttons alongside the video. The “Watch” feature is similar to a typical TED talk, which plays a video. Upon completing the video, by clicking the “Think” button, you will be prompted to questions, which can be either multiple choice or open answer questions. One cool feature, among other things, is that you can click “Video Hint” and the little video on the top right corner will replay the section of the lesson where you can find the answer. For example, Maber uses a ladder as an analogy to the process of our thinking (Ladder of Inference), and there are seven rungs in total. When I was asked for the mechanism of the second rung, by clicking the “Video Hint” button it reinforced my memory of that particular detail. If you are interested in learning more about the topic as I am, “Dig Deeper” can save you some “mousewalk” on the Internet. In this case, it demonstrates some hands-on activities, as well as points me to relevant websites, to help me better understand the Ladder of Inference.

The same ‘Watch’, ‘Think’ and ‘Dig Deeper’ format applies to every TED-Ed video. I was glad when I found on TED-Ed Susan Cain’s The Power of Introverts, a talk I had watched on the TED website over a year ago. Different from the previous video, this one is not an animation, but a typical TED talk video that allows you to see the speaker’s face. It’s like a recap for me but with additional resources provided in “Dig Deeper.” I can’t wait for the weekend to come to explore further on this topic. Life is a journey of exploration, and exploration continues with TED-Ed.

Grace Liao is a finance professional from Taiwan. When she is not researching public companies and industries, she enjoys reading and biking. Recently she has been trying to increase her running speed for the 2013 Peachtree Road Race.

Last week, I had an opportunity to catch up over coffee with 2010 TEDxPeachtree Speaker, Doug Glanville, who was in Atlanta to call a Braves game on behalf of ESPN, where Glanville works as an on-air analyst for its baseball coverage. Doug does far more than simply on-air analyst work for ESPN. He is also a freelance writer for the NY Times and Time Magazine and writes regularly about the human side of professional sports. Doug’s recent article in Time Magazine about NBA star Jason Collins (Collins recently announced he was gay in an op-ed for Sports Illustrated) has garnered several interview requests to get a fuller download on Doug’s unique perspective, which is widely respected  by the mainstream journalist community.

Doug’s TEDxPeachtree talk three years ago is still relevant today. In his talk, Doug told his personal story about how the sports world perceives well educated athletes who have a myriad of interests and how our society needs to remove stereotypes. In fact, TED is no stranger to sharing ideas around stories in this genre. Several months ago, TED published a TEDx talk about a professional model who gave a very candid talk about models who get special treatment based on fitting normative standards of beauty. And at TED 2013, poet extraordinaire Shane Koyczan gave a very emotional talk about bullying and how it’s ok to be different.

It’s time to rethink long-held stereotypes and begin breaking down cultural norms.  I, for one, believe this is certainly an “idea worth spreading.”

Al Meyers is the founder and co-organizer of TEDxPeachtree, whose inaugural event was held on December 4, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia.