TED is a information/communication phenomena the venue for which blossomed in the last few years from an elitist Monterey, California conference to include a vast level playing field – a broadband audience of hundreds of millions.
TED Talks broadcasts TED Conference segments online to the world – sharing often personal, always excellent 18 minute presentations from very specialized speakers – representing the best and brightest (and the best communicating) in their area of expertise.
The topics are vast and varied but Technology, Entertainment and Design are the main pools from which prized speakers are pulled, hence the name TED.
Currently many TED Talks are translated in over 50 languages (including Urbu and Swahili), by volunteers organized by TED.
TED has taken seriously their mission, their motto: ideas worth spreading. The very dedicated TED team has devoted itself to that mantra in the best way: learning, exploring how to spread ideas – ideas worth spreading.
The next logical step, of course, was to invite people to organize their own TED, on their own turf. So TEDx has been birthed. Adopting the excellent TED branding, TEDx may be licensed for free by qualified organizers. A TEDx may be as simple as a living room of people watching, discussing existing TED Talks to a themed conference with invited speakers. In the past 7 months there have been almost 300 TEDx events in 25 languages, 60 countries. And as many are anticipated in the next 7 months, for a total of 47,000 attendees. There are three TEDx’s in Singapore alone.
I just returned from TEDIndia where I met many whose introduction to TED was through TED Talks and who were organizers of a TEDx in their region. Having been to many TEDs I can see these innovations are changing the audience at TED: ratcheting up the number of attendees (including 120 TED Fellows) dedicated to positive social change.
TED is a small nonprofit owned by the Sapling Foundation run by Chris Anderson, who considers himself, not the owner or controller of TED but rather its curator. This monicher speaks volumes about his egalitarian mission and the future of TED.
We launched this our Web site this weekend. Please check it out (and the kids, collaborators and schools we are working with) and let me know what you think. Future blogging will be about our initiative to help kids see their role in our participatory democracy. We are also on Tumblr as Citizen ME Citizen WE and on Twitter as Citizen WE.
I’m not a big fan on design contests. They are usually abusive of entrants, the results unsatisfying for just about everyone: There are lots of losers, only one winner and the judges often wish they’d never agreed to participate.
