Movement of vision

A friend of mine in DC turned me on to Technology Entertainment Design (TED). It is one of the most exciting projects I have come across and you are strongly encouraged to visit the website.

TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first TED included the public unveiling of the Macintosh computer and the Sony compact disc, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractals and AI guru Marvin Minsky outlined his powerful new model of the mind. Several influential members of the burgeoning 'digerati' community were also there, including Nicholas Negroponte and Stewart Brand.

But despite the stellar line-up, the event lost money, and it was six years before Wurman and his partner Harry Marks tried again. This time the numbers worked. TED has been held regularly in Monterey, California, ever since, attracting a growing and influential audience from many different disciplines united by their curiosity, open-mindedness, a desire to think outside the box... and by the sense of community arising from their shared discovery of an exciting secret. (TED has never had an advertising budget or a PR campaign.)

Meanwhile the roster of speakers broadened to include scientists, philosophers, musicians, religious leaders, environmentalists and many others. Those who have spoken at TED include Bill Gates, Frank Gehry, Jane Goodall, Billy Graham, Herbie Hancock, Murray Gell-Mann, Larry Ellison. Yet often the real stars have been the unexpected: Li Lu, a key organizer of the Tiananmen Square student protest, Aimee Mullins, a Paralympics competitor who tried out a new pair of artificial legs on-stage, or Nathan Myrrhvold speaking not about Microsoft platforms, but about dinosaur sex.

For many of the audience TED had become one of their intellectual and emotional highlights of the year. That was certainly true for media entrepreneur Chris Anderson who met with Wurman in February 2000 to discuss the conference's future. Wurman, at age 65, was ready to pass on the reins, and agreed to sell. The agreement provided for a transition period during which Wurman would continue to run the conference through TED 12 in February 2002.

TED is therefore now owned by The Sapling Foundation, a private non-profit foundation funded by Anderson in 1996. He will be personally managing the conference, and has pledged to stand by the principles that have made TED great: the same inspired format, the same breadth of content, the same commitment to seek out the most interesting people on earth and let them communicate what they are passionate about, untainted by corporate influence.

The story continues...

www.ted.com