TED

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TED Conferences, LLC

Type	LLC
Founder(s)	Richard Saul Wurman[1]
Headquarters	New York City, New York, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Owner	Sapling Foundation[2]
Slogan	Ideas worth Spreading
Website	www.ted.com
Alexa rank	1,075[3]
Type of site	Academic conference
Registration	Optional
Available in	English, multilingual subtitle, transcript
Launched	1984
Current status	Active

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading."

TED was founded in 1984^[1] as a one-off event and the conference was held annually from 1990 in Monterey, California.^[4] TED's early emphasis was largely technology and design, consistent with a Silicon Valley center of gravity. The events are now held in Long Beach and Palm Springs in the U.S. and in Europe and Asia, offering live streaming of the talks. They address an increasingly wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture. The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, educator Salman Khan, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many Nobel Prize winners.^[5] TED's current curator is the British former computer journalist and magazine publisher Chris Anderson.

From 2005 to 2009, three $100,000 TED Prizes were awarded annually to help its winners realize a chosen wish to change the world. From 2010, in a changed selection process, a single winner is chosen to ensure that TED can maximize its efforts in achieving the winner's wish. Each winner unveils their wish at the main annual conference.

Since June 2006,^[1] the talks have been offered for free viewing online, under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license, through TED.com.^[6] As of November 2011, over 1,050 talks are available free online.^[7] By January 2009 they had been viewed 50 million times. In June 2011, the viewing figure stood at more than 500 million,^[8] reflecting a still growing global audience.^[9] The website was designed and developed by experience design firm, Method^[10].

Background

Bill Clinton addresses TED, 2007

Curator Chris Anderson in 2007

Robert Ballard giving an impassioned presentation on the importance of exploring the oceans at TED 2008

TED's mission statement begins:

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.^[11]

The TED staff is headquartered in New York City and Vancouver. The conference was held in Monterey, California until 2009. It was then relocated to Long Beach, California due to a substantial increase of attendees.^[12]

TED was founded by Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks in 1984, and has been held annually since 1990. Wurman, credited with having coined the term information architect in 1979, left after the 2002 conference; the event is now hosted by Chris Anderson and owned by his non-profit organization, The Sapling Foundation,^[2] devoted to "fostering the spread of great ideas." In 2006, attendance cost was $4,400 and was by invitation only.^[13] The membership model was shifted in January 2007 to an annual membership fee of $6,000, which includes attendance of the conference, club mailings, networking tools and conference DVDs.

Since June 2006, TED Talks have been made available online on the websites of TED, YouTube, and iTunes,^[14][15][16] and since late 2009, there have been free apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android, webOS and Windows Phone 7.^[17] In 2009, the TED website won the award for Best Use of Video or Moving Image at the 13th Annual Webby Awards.^[18] In 2012, TED Talks became available to stream through Netflix.^[19] TED.com won a Peabody Award in April 2012. ^[20]

TED Talks are transcribed and translated into a number of languages as part of the TED Open-Translation Project, which aims to "[reach] out to the 4.5 billion people on the planet who don't speak English," according to TED Curator Chris Anderson. At the time of the launch, over 300 translations were done by volunteer transcribers in over 40 languages.^[21]

TED 2011, The Rediscovery of Wonder, was held in Long Beach, California, from February 28 to March 4, 2011.^[21][22] The TED conference has a companion conference, TEDGlobal, held in the UK each summer. The 2009 TEDGlobal, The Substance of Things Not Seen, was held in Oxford, UK, July 21–24, 2009. 2010s TEDGlobal (again in Oxford) was themed And Now The Good News; in 2011 the conference moved to a new home in Edinburgh and was held from July 12–15 with the theme The Stuff Of Life.

TED Prize

The TED Prize was introduced in 2005. In prior years, three individuals were each given $100,000 and granted a "wish to change the world," which they unveil at TED.^[23] However, starting in 2010, only one prize is awarded since "at least half of [the wishes] still require our engagement," and, "adding too many more risks dilution of effort."

Programs

TEDxParis, 2009: one of many events now organized under the TEDx program

TEDxTimisoara Women simulcast organizers and some attendees, 2010

TED Fellows

The TED Fellows fellowship program brings together young world-changers and trailblazers who have shown unusual accomplishment and exceptional courage.^[32] The program targets individuals from the Asia/Pacific region, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East, though anyone from anywhere in the world, age 18 and over, can apply. TED keeps a directory of past Fellows available on its website.

TEDMED

TEDMED is an annual conference focusing on health and medicine. TEDMED is an independent event operating under license from the nonprofit TED conference.^[33]

TEDx

TED grants licenses to third parties to organize TEDx events in cities around the world.^[34] These one-time only licenses are free, but franchisees must be approved by TED and agree to adhere to a strict set of rules including format, duration, number of invited guests, agreeing that half-day events show "A minimum of two official, pre-recorded TEDTalks" and that all-day events "at least 25% of the total number of talks must be official, pre-recorded TEDTalks." Speakers are not paid and they must agree to give TED the right to edit and distribute their presentation.

According to TED these events were "created in the spirit of TED's mission, "ideas worth spreading." The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis. As of 2012, more than 3,200 TEDx events have taken place in 800 cities and 126 countries around the world.

TEDWomen

Popular topics for TEDWomen include gender issues and reproductive health.^[35]

TED Conversations

In 2011, TED released a new platform for sharing ideas. You can start conversations with the TED Community in one of the following 3 categories: Ideas, Questions, Debates. Conversations expire at a specific time.^[36]

Ads Worth Spreading

In 2011, TED released Ads Worth Spreading as a way to raise standards in the advertising industry.^[37]

TED Books

In 2011, TED released TEDBooks, books that are shorter than traditional ones with fewer than 20,000 words each, that aim to be long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to read in a single sitting.^[38]

TED Open Translation Project

Started in May 2009, the TED Open Translation Project^[39] makes TED's videos available in many languages, through translated subtitles, using technology partner dotSUB's crowd-based video captioning and subtitling platform.^[40] By the second anniversary of the project in May 2011,^[41] volunteer translators collaborated to complete over 18000 translations in 81 languages. The interactive time-coded transcript available on the TEDtalks pages enables accurate, content-based navigation in the videos, in any language, and make the videos searchable. The translations include the videos' metadata as well, such as the titles, and the descriptions, and the system generates a language-specific URL, that plays the video with the subtitles in that language by default. The project contributed to a significant increase in international visitors to TED's website, with traffic from outside the US growing 350%, 600% percent growth in Asia, and more than 1000% in South America.^[42]

Controversies and criticism

Sarah Silverman

TED drew some controversy in 2010 when comedian Sarah Silverman was invited to speak at the conference, and in response to her speech about adopting a "retarded" child, TED organizer Chris Anderson posted to his Twitter account, "I know I shouldn’t say this about one of my own speakers, but I thought Sarah Silverman was god-awful…"^[43] Anderson later deleted his tweet, but Silverman responded via her Twitter account "Kudos to [Chris Anderson] for making TED an unsafe haven for all! You're a barnacle of mediocrity on Bill Gates' asshole."^[44] Anderson apologized for his tweet on his Posterous account, but also wrote "Call me stuffy, but I still think humor about terminally ill 'retarded' kids is an acquired taste... And not a taste I personally want to acquire."^[45]

Nassim Taleb

Nassim Taleb criticized TED for intellectual dishonesty and lack of substance in the latest edition of The Black Swan (2010). He calls TED a "monstrosity that turns scientists and thinkers into low-level entertainers, like circus performers." Taleb spoke at TED2008. He claimed that the curators did not initially post his talk "warning about the financial crisis" on their website on purely cosmetic grounds.^[46]

Sarah Lacy

Sarah Lacy of BusinessWeek and TechCrunch has criticized TED with claims of elitism. Lacy cites TED's $6,000 ticket price, poor treatment of less important attendees, and such events as a friend being "de-invited to TED after quitting an ostensibly prestigious San Francisco job" as evidence of her claims.^[47] Lacy did credit TED for moving the event to a larger venue in Long Beach and posting videos of its talks online for free.^[47]

Nick Hanauer

TED attracted controversy when it chose not to link the speech of venture capitalist Nick Hanauer's at the TED university on their website. The speech analysed the top rate of tax versus unemployment and economic equality.^[48][49][50] In a private email to Hanauer, Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, commented on his decision, noting: "Even if the talk was rated a home run, we couldn't release it, because it would be unquestionably regarded as out and out political. We're in the middle of an election year in the US. Your argument comes down firmly on the side of one party. And you even reference that at the start of the talk. TED is nonpartisan and is fighting a constant battle with TEDx organizers to respect that principle... Nick, I personally share your disgust at the growth in inequality in the US, and would love to have found a way to give people a clearer mindset on the issue, without stoking a tedious partisan rehash of all the arguments we hear every day in the mainstream media. Alas, my judgement - and it is just a judgement, and that's why my job title is 'curator' - is that publishing your talk would not meet that goal."^[51]

See also

• List of educational video websites

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: TED

• Official website
• Official YouTube channel
• Financial Times. "Conference of cool". July 23 2010. Accessed 2010-07-23
• Guardian. TED – the ultimate forum for blue-sky thinking Sunday 4 July 2010 Accessed 2010-07-12
• Online spreadsheet of TED talks, ranked by PostRank engagement data
• Those Fabulous Confabs Feb 26, 2012