TED - Day 1ch

TED.

For twenty-five years folks have gathered at an event called TED, short for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED has always been an eclectic group of thinkers, makers, and doers.

But three years ago, something changed. Until 2006, TED was an ultra-exclusive, invitation only event. A Who's Who in the world of Science, Technology, Architecture, Art, Music, and Innovation. TED was a private, almost secretive club that was held behind closed doors.

TED's three day event was a series of what was known as TED Talks - eighteen minute presentations that share new discoveries, raise complex questions, and explore groundbreaking solutions. TED was private, some might say elitist, and attendance, in addition to being invitation only, was costly.

In 2006, TED's new Curator, Chris Anderson, decided that the extraordinary knowledge and inspiration of the TED Talks could have a profound impact if they were shared more broadly.

The decision to put the heretofore private talks online was something of a bombshell within the TED community known as TEDsters. Would attendance still be exclusive? Would the event have the same cachet and importance? Would the ability for TED to connect people and make things happen be diminished by opening the doors and starting to share some of content with web viewers.

Three years later, the results are staggering and instructive about both the nature of the web and the potenial power of the web as connector of ideas and people.

What happened is that TED Talks have become a web phenomenon. Some of the most highly viewed talks include: "Jill Bolte Taylor's powerful stroke of insight" and "Jeff Han demos his breakthrough touchscreen" and "Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce", the site now gets more than 250,000 unique visitors per month.

And how has the sharing of content from TED impacted the event itself? Well, here too, there's extraordinary news. TED, which began today in its new larger home in Long Beach, California, is larger than any previous year. This year TED has a remote location in Palm Springs. And satellite video-viewing locations with TED associate members around the world.

Simply put, the passion and knowledge of TED is now being distributed widely using the Internet, and the TED Talks are now part of a permanent and accessible archive that is online and available to viewers from Kansas to Kenya. More than 90 million views since the Talks have been posted.

So, as folks gather in Long Beach to listen to talks from Bill Gates, and Juan Enriquez and P.W. Singer (all part of today's REBOOT opening session) - the challenges facing the planet will be front and center. But the emergence of a new connected world promises to move ideas faster and more widely than at any time in history.

At a time when ideas are needed to change the world, both the distribution and the wide interest in TED talks suggest that there is a hunger for knowledge, and an appetite for ideas that extends far beyond the Long Beach auditorium that will house the physical TED community for the next 3 days.

//photo: Bill Gates on stage with TED curator Chris Anderson, in Long Beach California//

Comments

[yodaveg]

TED is the perfect example of Web narrowcasting. First, the 18-minute bite is the ideal length for Web viewing. The 6-minute average Webisode length is more a function of production capacity than attention span. Eighteen minutes for a committed viewer is just about right.

The second factor is selectability. There are now 377 presentations to choose from. Any viewer is likely to find a couple of dozen of interest.

The TED conference might be about brilliant ideas. But the online success constitutes brilliant programming.

[Evelyn]

Also, FYI, http://www.ted.com/

[Evelyn]

Editing note: In this sentence, "Would the event have the same cache and importance?" you want the word cachet, not cache.

[magibrotherhood]

technology is hoarded coz it then provides an unfair advantage to certain groups----kinda dangerous.

[magibrotherhood]

Bill Gates on that gigantic screen above the stage in your pic looks just like that cr.eepy dude in "1984"--George Orwell novel-----­-------ick­.

[tsparks45]

Is the above photo of Bill Gates before or after he released a swarm of misquitoes into the audience?

[Shaddup]

Thank you, Steve. TED sounds right up my alley.

[MediaSlackers]

TED is amazing and wonderful, however it also seems to take up too much of my day at times. Steve - In case you didn't catch this, Virginia Heffernana wrote a rather appropriate piece in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago entitled, "Confessions of a TED Addict."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25wwln-medium-t.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

In addition, if you're on Twitter, the feeds have been coming in like wildfire from attendees of this year's conference. You can almost feel a part of it with all of the introductions and discussion that takes place.

[Steven G. Brant - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for reporting what's going on, Steve. FYI, my first TED was TEDNYC in 1997, and I've been two four others (in Monterey, CA) over the years.

Here's my question. Hope you can answer it...

You say Day 1's opening session was entitled REBOOT. That's the same metaphor (the computer that's crashed and needs to be rebooted) used by The Economist in their recent "Mountain Reboot" essay in the run-up to the Davos conference. Is anyone at TED saying "It's not 'reboot'. It's 'redesign'!" The old, independent, competition-driven world is obsolete. We need a new design for our economic system that's driven by the principles of interdependence and sustainabi­lity."

In a conference full of inventors and designers, I'm hoping that someone sees the state of the world from that perspective. Because if we keep talking as if what we have just needs to be rebooted (or the other popular analogy: that the blown engine in our economic automobile needs to be replaced), we will miss that the world has fundamentally changed. We are not in a "cycle". We are in a "new world". Kofi Annan knows this and said as much in his pre-Davos essay. But I gather he's not speaking at TED.

I look forward to hearing if anyone at TED is speaking in these terms. Thanks in advance for getting back to me (us) about this!

[moonbay]

I've been an (online) TEDster for a couple of years, and I can't get enough. I DO wish it was cheaper to watch from a remote location, AND I don't like the implication that only the wealthy have great ideas, but that's just because I'm jealous. I wish I was there. I love TED and what they do, who speaks there, the vital energy of leading edge ideas, the iconoclastic personalit­ies,..... I hope that with continuing work to publicize TED presentations and ideas, and a growing online community, that many of the TED ideas can reach practical application much sooner.

[Dukedraven]

I put off reading this story because I thought it was about the defunct airline. Anyway, it was a good idea to open TED up to everyone instead running it like a Mensa meeting. Technology is meant to be shared, not hoarded. Nice read, Steve.

[nolabels]

I FREAKIN LOVE TED!!!