Conferenza

TED2008 - RSW returns to the TEDstage!

Richard Saul Wurman has just been invited to the stage for a conversation with Chris Anderson...a remarkable TED moment. Surrounded by a Sputnik satellite, Guttenberg Bible and other artifacts from Jay Walker's library, RSW, or Ricky as he's known to many long-time TEDsters, began with some tears, then described how marvelous it was to take the stage as part of a session dubbed "is Beauty Truth?"

RSW's return was particularly poignant as he and TED curator Chris Anderson had participated in some bitter feuding over the conference for more than half a decade after Anderson acquired it from its creator - a feud RSW announced had recently and finally ended - and also because Anderson has announced he's pulling TED out of Monterey next year, determining the ever-growing audience to have outgrown the facility here.

"It is true we've had an acrimonious relationship the last four to five years, and we don't now, and that's beautiful" Richard Saul Wurman said.

RSW has often described the TED conference, which he began in 1984, as "the ultimate dinner party" he always had wanted to have... and while he and three others in the audience were there at that first TED, it has created a huge following and inspired both a year-long community of attendees and a slew of TED "Wannabe" conferences.

Richard said he had realized much of the period of acrimony resulted from misunderstanding, and he only recently came to learn how may attendees had come to believe that TED had changed their lives (for the better!). Many had attested to Richard that TED had given them license to engage in wondrous new undertakings in their lives.

In the meantime, RSW had launched a one-time rival, called eG, the entertainment gathering, in the Los Angeles area. MIT's Michael Hawley revived in a second edition of eG last December, and now promises to make it an annual event.

The TED conference is now doing some collaboration with eG, and is expected to distribute some of the eG presentations as part of its "TEDtalks" offering of past conference presentations.

Adobe - Illustrator and Photoshop and Acrobat were all announced from this stage, as was (Sun Microsystems Inc.'s) Java (programming language), even before it had a name, RSW recalled.

"This is the best conference that every happened, and the clones are nothing... well the clones, they are interesting, too, and they give people license to do other things..." he said.

Anderson and Wurman embraced, and said they were collaborating to create the 25th anniversary conference next year, which will be staged at a larger theater in Long Beach, California, under the theme "The Great Unveiling".

"The picture has already been taken," said Chris, at Wednesday night's opening gala, when your co-respondent commented this was a picture that needed to be made! Nonetheless, they were willing to mug again, and RSW could be heard praising the excellence of what he'd witnessed at the opening sessions - welcome words not only to Chris Anderson, but to all tedsters, young and old.

EG'07 - Comic Interstitial Interludes

eg's team have picked out a hearty selection of interstitial segments, including the Sony Bravia color rabbit commercial (see also this one - and this), and a host of wonderful New Yorker cartoons distributed via Ringtones.

Enjoy.

EG'07 - the Master - RSW

{Photograph: Richard Saul Wurman prepares for a professional photo session against the travertine backdrop of the Getty Center.}

A wondrous stroke of eg - entertainment gathering was having Richard Saul Wurman take the stage at the outset of the third and final day. Following what he described as the "Trash Talk" of Chris Jordan, who has turned monumental photographic compilations of post-consumer detritus into scale-evocative artwork, RSW began with praise for the speakers, volunteers and Michael Hawley's premier event in the role of producer.

As some participants have noted over the last two days, this year's eg really has lived up to what RSW had for years said was his objective with TED - to treat it as a huge dinner party to which he would like to invite people of great genius to share discovery and discussion. This has been, as he called it, "a celebration of conversation," without grandiosity or technical hindrance. "They have not made a computer that nods," he said, referring to the importance of face-to-face interaction.

Wurman concluded by introducing another phenomenal new project that grew from his interest in the growing mega-cities about which comparable data is not available or well understood, much less accessible in a usable and useful manner. The project, 19 cities in the world which will have 20 million people in the 21st century, can be seen here. As is classic with projects Wurman has developed, the graphics are clear, and I recommend bookmarking the website to watch its progress.

Perhaps the one most difficult task which has been a challenge on the second, and now the third, days of eg is clock management. To his credit, Hawley has been kind to speakers running overtime, though gourmet chefs serving Monday's dinner did force some readjustments. Only a small handful of occasions did he mount the stage and start taking slow, small, polite steps towards the speaker to urge a speedy conclusion. Ironically one of these 'offenders' was RSW himself, who beseeched Michael to ignore the talk-ending tactics Richard had suggested for a couple minutes so Richard could finish with a romp through his latest project.

EG'07 feeling in your feet, building Cathedrals with 2 fingers

Michael Hawley has already delivered, as promised, a number of the "magical moments" connecting of synapses and themes between presenters long devised by Richard Saul Wurman as the genesis of the so-called "TED moment".

As Donald Jackson, HRH's Royal Calligrapher, lead 500+ attendees in the packed auditorium in scripting a stylized letter "A" with one hand in the air in front of us, he told us it was important to feel the motion in our feet.

A session later, magician Jamy Ian Swiss expressed appreciation for Jackson's remarks in telling the audience the trick to good magic could also include what happens in your feet. Swiss then proceeded to explain one of his card tricks - "I have a surprise for you," which he said takes most of his students six months or more to learn. He compared it with romantic comedy, and focused on the moment of 'Aristotelian catharsis' which he described as critical to the success of an entertaining trick.

In a different sort of catharsis... Hawley offered a screening of Michael Lawrence's elegant work in progress, the Bach Project. A collaboration among a number of terrific musical artists in homage to the great composer, the film includes music and interviews with some of the most successful contemporary artists, such as Bobby McFerrin. "Bach with two notes, one with the right hand, the other with the left, he can build a Cathedral, said Joáo Carlos Martins, the Brazilian pianist and conductor.

What more suitable metaphor for an event taking place within architect Richard Meier's $1.2 billion travertine-coated Getty Center stone edifice perched on a hilltop above Los Angeles.

EG'07 soars to life above L.A.

The bold, audacious, grand phantasmagoria of eg '07, the entertainment gathering, has just kicked off with the strings of the violinists of the Colburn School here at The Getty Center, perched in its sunshine-bathed peak overlooking the City of Angels.

We are delighted to bring you coverage of this second edition of the conference created by TED founder Richard Saul Wurman and presented this year by Michael Hawley, who has announced he intends to make it an annual extravaganza delivering magical moments from an ecclectic mix of creative minds and performers.

As a classic reacquaintance with the spirit of discovery that had inspired TED over two decades, Hawley has assembled a wondrous constellation of familiar and new. In his first session alone, he followed the superb violin strains with an update by former Microsoft CTO and gourmet chef Nathan Myhrvold of his reflections on the meaning of "cute" in the animal (and human!) kingdom, then turned to two 'newbies' UK Royal Calligrapher Donald Jackson and snow crystal photographer Ken Libbrecht, a physicist at Caltech.

Jackson had the whole, packed auditorium waving our arms and 'feeling' the motion of calligraphy in reproducing a stylized "A" in the air, while Libbrecht's photographs of single snowflakes ranging up to 10 mm in size, as well as exotic crystalline shapes.

Following this were some animated New Yorker cartoons sketches from the site ringtales, and a discussion of how they came to being, and Golan Levin's observations and experiments with media formats - ranging from concerts of attendees' cell phones as the sole musical instrument, but choreographed and seeded with ringtones supplied as they arrived at the concert, to voice-generated environments and self-creating face montages.

Jonathan Harris, who also spoke this year at POPtech, closed off the first session with his terrific presentation on the emotions and demograpics of people's feelings as expressed on the Internet. His parsing allows one to search, for example, for women who feel lame in their 30s when it's raining, as well as individual statements like "I feel as though I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe." Harris focusses on small scale personal stories, as well as diving into larger stories in the physical world, such as a narrative-selectable rendition of a whale hunt in Alaska. Harris ended with a superb series he had collected in Bhutan capturing people, their life's wish, and their sharing of what makes each person happy.

Last year's assembly at the nearby Skirball Center boasted a sense of irreverence and punctuation for RSW, who had vowed it would be a last shebang of his virtuoso gatherings, scheduled as it was practically on the eve of TED. This year, TED helped promote the conference to its own community, and committed to distributing videos of some of the presentations down the road, in a manner presumably similar to the popular TEDtalks.

RSWurman's EG offers an encore!

For all of us who are fans of the events and designs of Richard Saul Wurman, news two years ago that he was producing EG2006 [the Entertainment Gathering] at the Skirball Center north of Los Angelesbrought hope of a new series of intimate, high brainwave events, in the tradition of TED [Technology, Entertainment Design] which he'd painstakenly created and led through its sale in 2002 to publisher Chris Anderson.

As that event approached, Ricky (as he's known to dearest admirers) disappointed many when he said this was a one-off, and not a series. So, it is with great anticipation and joy that word started slipping out a few weeks back that The Entertainment Gathering will have (at least) an encore at the Getty Center in Los Angeles December 2-4 under the leadership of Michael Hawley, the gifted MIT professor who became known to RSW's crowd as much for the genius of his piano performances as for his professional accomplishments.

"To be honest, I'm a bit weary of high-end packaged conferences, but I never tire of spending great time with incredible people," Hawley wrote to a friend who inquired about his objectives. "I'm designing EG to be the kind of conference I would beg to attend."

Featuring stalwarts of past gatherings like physicist Brian Greene, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myrvold, philosopher-comic Emily Levine and perennial favorite musician Jill Sobule, this edition also inclues concert pianist Leon Fleisher, Toy inventor Caleb Chung and Donald Jackson, the calligrapher to Queen Elizabeth II. And, of course, Wurman as "himself."

No doubt the event will be as extraordinary as ever, and Hawley hints strongly there will be plenty of room to spawn those special moments like occured last year, when on the spur of the moment Bill Nye (the science guy) and Blair Tindall tied the knot in an impromptu wedding in the middle of the conference on the urging of Pastor Rick Warren, who presided over the ceremony.

"So, what I'm aiming for is an event that will be a breeder reactor for magical, wonderfully unexpeted connections like these," he wrote, in an email distributed to several potential attendees, referencing the wedding and other magical moments of EG2006. "I am keeping EG intimate (no overflow room); it isn't an orgy."

Hawley adds that he is agonizing over each presenter, among them many national treasures and people of unique talent, as well as over each attendee, saying he aims to be in touch with each attendee personally to help insure he brings out the best of the best.

Presuming this event builds on the brilliance of the past - and there's every reason to believe it will - participants will certainly celebrate Hawley's almost incidental comment that he intends to continue EG as an annual event, as what he terms "a great big cherry on top of the sundae of LA" - a notion and venue he attributes to RSW himself.

Aspen IdeasFestival Eyes World-Changing Ideas

Following close on the heels of Fortune's Brainstorm, Aspen Institute's second annual IdeasFestival kicks off tonight with a plenary session entitled "Ideas that Change the World," an echo of the theme of February's TED2006 in Monterey, California.

Although occupying many of the same Aspen Institute venues as last week's Brainstorm, and sharing marquee speakers like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, IdeasFestival takes a broader and a more political and cultural tilt, with former President Clinton, George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove as well as the likes of film director Sydney Pollack and TV producer Norman Lear taking the stage.

The seven-day event, which earned our 2005 Rookie of the Year Conference award last year, was preceded (like many previous days here) by heavy downpours and earthshaking bolts of lightening, as if the Olympic gods were heralding the arrival of myriad luminaries at Aspen Meadows.

The kickoff included a performance by Anna Deavere Smith, who has been a MacArthur Fellow and was recently named the first Aspen Institute Harman-Eisner Artist in Residence, as well as Architects for Humanity founder Cameron Sinclair and Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of the global nonprofit venture fund Acumen. All three have bean presenters at TED.

Lawrence Krauss, the Case Western Reserve University professor of physics and astronomy, also wowed the sold-out crowd with a quick romp through the vaguaries of string theory and the properties of 'empty space' in outer space, as he had done at greater length at the PUSH conference in Minneapolis last month.

TED 3 Themes - Doing Good and Doing Well to TED's Drumbeat!

Al Gore's coming back!

The man whose presentations served ostensibly as bookends for his first TED conference used the bully pulpit of the stage as TED2006's final speaker to announce he was coming back - no, not to politics, but to TED. Next year.

And that, coming from a man who likes to quip it's not been long since "I used to be the next President of the United States", says a lot about the transformation not only of the former vice president to the causes of averting global climate change and warning of media complacency, but also of TED.

TED2006 will likely go down as a remarkable year of consistent rhythm - a seamless alignment of the conference's original concentration on "Technology Entertainment Design" with TEDsteward Chris Anderson's vision of a world meeting social causes, often through inspired efforts of individuals commited to making a difference.

Not that Anderson will slow in his ambitious efforts to keep evolving the TEDconference and trying new ways to increase the velocity of productive communication between members of the TEDcommunity - whether through electronic introductions, the new TEDuniversity or various lunches, galas, beach parties and the two-years-running nighttime beachfront drumming session, this time sans Mickey Hart.

The three trends

0. Climate Change. Al Gore has been on a crusade for planetary preservation, warning influential audiences from Los Angeles to New York of the devastating potential impact of global warming. Allowed to break from TED's rigid 18-minute limit on talks, Gore was allocated a full one-hour Bonus Session on the opening day. With the disarming power of a sharp wit many had not expected and an up-to-date fact-filled slide show he made a compelling case global warming is fact, while doubt about is fiction. Afterwards, many who had doubted global warming were instead suggesting he needed a strong name for it - like global crisis or catastrophe. It's thus smart that Gore's releasing a film this spring, with "Pulp Fiction" producer Lawrence Bender who also attended TED, along with teams of surrogates to take the talk out to the country. Gore's was a sharp contrast to the presentation at TED2005 by Bjørn Lomborg, of skeptical environmentalist fame, which ranked climate degredation towards the bottom of priorites dubbed "bad projects" as decided by an assembly of experts.

0. Youth, Innovation and 'Upgrade Paradox". A variety of speakers addressed the issue of innovation, creativity, educating youth and our future. Sir Ken Robinson argued creativity is as important as literacy, and said we train it out of our youth. Zany astronomer Clifford Stoll suggested those who want to know the future 20 years out should ask kindergarten teachers, not technologists or futurists. Neil Gershenfeld of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms described how his $20,000 mobile fab labs are used by young children, who are often bedazzled and spend hours learning to build complex technical systems. Finally, NYTimes tech columnist David Pogue described the "upgrade paradox" by which well-meaning, consenting (presumably) adults work to "improve" a piece of software so many times "you finally ruin it."

0. One Person Can. Over and over, speakers came to the stage demonstrating what a difference one person can make, whether it's the pioneering aviation of Burt Rutan, the video game worlds of David Perry, the natural animal-human interactions photographed by Gregory Colbert, or the aggregation of many individual testaments to violence of the Witness project as presented by musician Peter Gabriel.

The three themes - Ways to Get There

0. Doing Good and Doing Well. Green is the new... There was Al Gore, who professed that work to stem global overheating will create new jobs and businesses, and Bronx environmental activist Majora Carter, advocated ecological restoration projects, installing green roofs and improving traffic flows could create jobs ["Green is the new Black," is a phrase she uses to fight bad urban planning in predominantly African American neighborhoods]. Both argued economic incentives are crucial. Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla cited similar success of economic incentives in Brazil, where adoption of "flex fuel" ethanol consuming cars has surged to 70% from 4%.

0. Ignore Assumptions. Live Forever (Nearly). Sprout New Limbs. In addition to the scorn of conventional education suppressing creativity, presenters argued we are often tied down by our own assumptions. Aubrey De Gray of Cambridge University suggests it is time to do away with ageing, which he says kills 90% of Americans and that extending lives of those destined to die of old age currently costs $200 billion in this country alone. It may seem unusual unless you, like De Gray, expect humans to naturally live to be 1,000. Similarly, regenerative medicine pioneer Dr. Alan Russell asked if a newt can regenerate a lost limb, why can't humans?

0. Look out for Patterns along the Way. Futurist Erik Peterson of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies spoke of the challenge of population growth, governance, and information flows among the challenges we face over the next 20 years. Soon thereafter, Hans Rosling of Stockholm and Gapminder offers an engaging and graphic demonstration of the importance of drillng down into data and trends, and not overgeneralizing. Finally, Stanford biochemist Paul Berg, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, offered a fairly professorial walk through his recombinent DNA work. A couple of minutes from the end he launched into how identical twins' same genetic makeup can interact quite differently depending on the environment - worth a talk in its own right.

The three people

0. Larry Brilliant. Crowned as head of Google's foundation on the eve of TED, Brilliant energetically declared himself "the luckiest guy in the world" not for gaining that post, but for having seen the last case of smallpox in the world when he helped lead the eradication efforts. Furthermore, the maverick public health campaigner and former technology CEO aims to garner support with his $100,000 TEDprize to create a "Early Detect, Rapid Response" system that might stand a chance of halting avian flu before a pandemic spreads. He dubs this INSTEDD - International System for Total Early Disease Detection.

0. Cameron Sinclair & Jehane Noujaim. Yes, this will make it four people, yet Sinclair and Noujaim each deserve not only their individual $100,000 TEDprizes, but commendation for their efforts to raise the profile of innovative, humanitarian grassroots design and of independent, humanitarian films with their own famous TEDprize wishes.

0. Al Gore. Some Republican-leaning attendees spoke vehemently afterwards about how they felt two quips Gore made about the two presidents Bush, respectively, undermined his contention that Climate Change was an ethical, moral and spiritual issue, not a political one. Nonetheless, Gore won over many with a quick humor few saw in his public performances, his earnest climate campgain, and his frank assessment of his own political acumen. Asked by Anderson if he would run for president again, Gore noted that aside from election as vice president, he had run four times nationally and lost. To which one audience member blurted out "you won!" "Yeah, there is that," was Gore's reply.

The TED moment

TED has always been famous for its TED moments of amazing revelation.

This year, one such moment from off stage was recounted by Chris Herot, who found himself sitting on a bench in front of a tank of large fish during the TED gala evening at the Monterey Aquarium where he joined actress Meg Ryan and string theorist Brian Greene as they were deep in conversation around the origins of the universe and the concept of a larger purpose to existence. Also participating was Thomas Stat of the design consulting firm IDEO. "And in a moment that could only have occured at TED, not one but two people brought up what the Dalia Lama had told them about the topic in personal conversations they had had...," he reported.

The one complaint

TED2006 inserted itself smack in the middle of a broad trend of social entrepreneurship which has attracted innovators and philanthropists alike. Some long-time TEDsters still complain, as in recent years, there is 'less' of the T E and D in the TED experience, and that may very well be true.

Nonetheless, there was no lack of Technology at hand than engineer and pilot Burt Rutan or MIT D Lab head Amy Smith, or nor any shortage of intrinsic Entertainment and performance skill in Serena Huang, the 11-year-old violinist who also showed pluck at storytelling, saying she chose the instrument over the piano because with the violin she could hide it if she wanted to get out of practice, nor any shortage of Design sophistication with Joshua Prince-Ramus, architect of the Seattle Central Library.

Anderson's leadership is ambitious - he's announced a further TEDglobal conference in 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania, which some believe may require him to build a highway for participants to get there.

Yet, in a world of rapid change and literally dozens of fresh ideas for innovation and investment, an even greater challenge TED community faces is its impact outside the Monterey Conference Center and a four-day event. One can envision a far greater reach for TED, if it is able to preserve the intimacy of the event itself, while opening its flow of ideas more fully to the world. This could include greater public access outside even the amply-appointed simulcast room - which would also challenge the drumbeat of critics promoting open-source conferences.

Final thought

TED has resided for more than two decades among the pantheon on the top of the premier conferences, and deservedly so. Like any event or institution, conferences face a challenge of reinvention and remaining relevant. As Shel Israel noted in his interview with Tom Abate in last week's San Francisco Chronicle, TED's rhythm is beating to a younger and more hurried drumbeat than it had under design maestro Richard Saul Wurman, who founded and nurtured TED for years.

Under Wurman, TED was described by some early attendees as a form of "show and tell for adults" which involved into a "show and tell with geniuses for adults." Under Anderson, it is self consciously moving from the "Cirque du Soleil for the mind" he envisioned in acquiring TED to a "Cirque du Soleil for the mind, with humanitarian intent," much to the applause of an audience willing to plunk down $4,400 14 months in advance to ensure a spot in the conference's Main Hall.

TED is as strong as ever.

Finally, congratulations to 2005 TEDglobal (Oxford, UK) producer Bruno Giussani for his excellent liveblogging of all sessions, here, and ditto to the copious Ethan Zuckerman, who turned over his entire website to TED for four days of live blogging in which he estimates he wrote more than 19,000 words in 45 postings. Blogger Verite, indeed!

Up next for TED2007? "Icons. Geniuses. Mavericks." What more could you want?

TED - Halftime Report

Since assuming the stewardship of TED - Technology Entertainment Design - Chris Anderson and his Sapling foundation have
accentuated the humanitarian opportunities to leverage design, entertainment and technology to profoundly improve the world and the human condition.

This year's convocation has become the most seemless integration of the four-day, $4,400, 1,000+ participant extravaganza with noble causes which could truly and literally save humanity.

Under the mantle "The Future We Will Create," TED2006 is taking Chris's vision to a new level while deepening the conference's associations with influential long-time TEDsters like the partners of venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Byers & Caufield and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and the founders of high tech blockbuster companies like Kleiner-backed Google and Amazon.

The main highlights of the first half of the conference were unquestionably Wednesday evening's 'Bonus Session' with former Vice President Al Gore on the coming global crisis from climate change, and the distribution Thursday evening of the three TEDprizes, whose winners each was allowed to make one 'wish' to be granted by the TED community:

- Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity to generate radically improved designs for cost-effective shelter, desires a community to embrace open source design for improving living standards for all,

- Jehane Nojaim, the documentary film-maker whose film "Control Room" explored the U.S. war in Iraq and coverage of the conflict by al-Jezeera television network, wishes to bring the world together on one day every year through the power of a simultaneous screening of film and

- Dr. Larry Brilliant, the public health maverick who played a leading role in eradicating Smallpox, wants help building a powerful new early warning system "to protect the world form some of its worst nightmares," including Avian flu.

Brilliant arrived at TED immediately after being named to head Google's charitable foundation, also played a key role recently in helping the venerable venture firm Kleiner Perkins establish a $200 million fund dedicated to preventing pandemics and reducing their potential impact.

Kudos to play-by-play session reports by our friend Bruno Giussani, who produced the more intimate TEDglobal event at Oxford, England, last July.

Session One - History's Arrow - Demographic Directions and glimpses at Future Scenarios [hint: we may want to wake up, strap on seatbelts, and consider avoiding catastrophe].

Session Two - [Don't Hold your] Sharp Intake of Breath - of which the troupe of delighting [HIV/AIDS-orphaned] Ugandan dancers totally rocked TED.

Day One Bonus Session - Al Gore.

Session 3 - Small Miracles.

Session 4 - Links within a Flattened World,

Session 5 on Pastor Rick and Skeptics,

and, of course,

TEDprize Winners.

At the end of Day Two, Anderson also announced TEDglobal 2007 will be held in Tanzania June 3-6 - presuming of course we're not strickent by a global pandemic, a surge in global warming, a conflagration of international strife, etc.