My first TED

At the end of the first day of TED 2010, my first TED ever, I left feeling that TED was a clubby, elitist gathering. That clubby sentiment was underscored by the fact that ‘TEDsters’ are a loyal bunch with many attendees returning repeatedly—often sporting the previous year’s TED bag as a badge of honor.

The event was marked by a strong Silicon Valley contingent, and perhaps as a consequence (some of the Valley’s most prominent tech philanthropists give generously to TED) I found the technology component of TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) a bit over-represented in the presentations.

The aura of TED is absolutely influenced by the list of ‘incredibles’ that attend: the incredibly wealthy like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, and Bill Joy; the incredibly powerful such as Al Gore and David Cameron; the incredibly famous like David Byrne, Meg Ryan, Glenn Close and James Cameron; and of course, the incredibly influential, Philipp Stark is a good example. The ‘incredibles’ are everywhere. It’s remarkable really to stand in line for a coffee next to Al Gore, David Byrne, Philipp Stark and Meg Ryan. I found myself strangely at a loss as to the appropriate ‘etiquette’ when around these people…I so wanted to go up to Byrne and thank him for the enormous pleasure he had bought into my life. But I didn’t, I’m still too British I guess.

Given the sheer volume of presentations (more than100 over the course of four days) I was really impressive at how the curator, a somewhat aloof Chris Anderson, managed to keep people’s bums glued to their seats. He created an event with great pacing from the rapid-fire three-minute intermission presentations, to the eight-minute TED U talks (probably my favorite sessions overall) and the 18-minute main event presentations. The presentations were interspersed with energizing music, largely c/o Thomas Dolby, but also featuring appearances from David Byrne, Nathalie Merchant and the brilliant Jake Shimabakuro. The net result was long days that slip by quickly and effortlessly, and as they did, my appreciation of TED grew. I have attended many conferences, a lot of them are dead boring, TED was not.

On the presentation front there were many highlights: Jamie Oliver (http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html ) had a passionate showing on the need to improve the eating habits of Americans, particularly children. His presentation on occasions felt like a performance, but his energy was infectious. Seattle-based biochemist Mark Roth (http://myprofile.cos.com/mroth) hit a great balance between humor and science when presenting his research into the potential benefits of suspended animation in helping victims of traumatic injuries. Dan Barber’s (http://www.bluehillfarm.com/) informative and hilarious “Story of Two Fish,” about sustainable farming practices included the crowd pleasing line, “What’s sustainable about feeding chicken to fish?!” The young artist Raghava KK (http://www.raghavakk.com/biography.html) won my prize for the biggest personality; his presentation outlining his young life so far was a good mix of incredible authenticity, humor and drive. During Stephen Wolframs (http://www.stephenwolfram.com/) presentation, I had the impression I was witnessing pure scientific genius, right there and then.

There was also a phenomenal presentation of Microsoft’s new augmented reality mapping technology from Blaise Aguera y Arcas (http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html) including a real time video call to the Microsoft team standing in Seattle’s Pike Place market. The live video feed was spliced real time into the ‘street view’ of Pike Place Market from the mapping software. My mind was full of potential applications for this great piece of software. It’s a must see talk. I was also introduced to the graphic artistry of Marian Bantjes, stunningly complex and beautiful work, wow (http://www.bantjes.com/).

Generally speaking, I would have liked to see more design at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. It felt quite underrepresented.

As the conference came to a close I felt sad. The clubby feeling was still present but subsiding, the elitist sentiment had evaporated, and I was left with a deep appreciation of the effort and commitment of the TED team in bringing to life a pretty unique event. I hope to be back next year.