Blame a pesky little dude called TED.

We’ll make an announcement about winners as soon as we have them. In the meantime, enjoy your weekends!

Yup, we have history with good ol’ TED, and this week, Ben, Mike Lacy, and Jason Port(o-Dog) are back in Long Beach to “rediscover wonder” and listen to inspiring TED Talks with luminaries from around the world at TED2011.

One of our favorite TED Talks comes from author Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for inspiring divorcées around the world to purchase round-the-world airplane tickets. In the talk, she speaks about the agony of creating, and proposes that every person has a “genius” within us. It’s a talk that resonates with us at HQ, and it’s something we wanted to share with all of you.

What are your favorite TED Talks? Tweet them to us, or share them on the forum.

The better question is, what is TED?

TED — which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — is an annual four-day conference that brings together the world’s leading thinkers and doers with the expressed mission of sharing ideas. The conference’s trademark is TED Talks, a series of 18-minute presentations that challenge the speaker — usually a celebrity or genius of some sort — to deliver the speech of his/her life. This year’s speaker list includes: Bill Gates, David Rockwell, Sarah Silverman, Eve Ensler, and Jamie Oliver, this year’s TED Prize winner.

Participation in TED is by invitation only, with only about a thousand specially-selected invitees per year. This week, Ben, Jason, and Mike are in sunny California attending TED2010, listening to aMAZing speeches and rubbing shoulders with celebs (literally — the other day, Mike tweeted: oh hi there cameron. diaz). That’s three Quirksters, which if you’re counting, amounts to 1/4 of our staff, which if you think about it, is a pretty good indication of how ridiculously talented/amazing/genius the people behind Quirky are. Just thought we’d show off.

Check out some of Mike’s reTweets on our Twitter page.

Photo credits: TED/James Duncan Davidson & Mike Femia.

Today, I woke up where tech startups are “supposed” to be HQ’d. We’ll see about that.

Outside of pretty frequent visits to the Apple Mothership in Cupertino, I’ve spent very little time meeting with start-ups out here.

Let it be known, I love New York (hence the B.I.G.), and I think it provides an amazingly perfect environment for quirky. I’m excited to see us grow in a place where design, business, and media all converge. It’s the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, after all.

As for the schedule… today and tomorrow, Mitch and I have action-packed days of meetings with all types of people… investors, partners, and friends. I’m excited to see what the business/start-up culture is like out here first hand. I’ve just heard the myths/legends.

If I had to guess, I’d bet everything is pretty much the same, besides the bagels.

Tuesday night, I’m heading down to Long Beach to meet up with Mike Lacy & Jason Port for a mind blowing second half of the week. We’ll be attending the TED conference, rubbing elbows with people with much larger brains and trophy closets.

Look for more from me during TED. I look forward to sharing some of the inspiration that gets sprung upon us with you.