Conferenza

TED2009 - 'Catching Air' with Eureka, world's largest Zeppelin

Among the legendary gift bag shwag and door prizes at TED this year is a very special ride not available over North America for nearly three quarters of a century - a 12-person tour on Airship Ventures' Eureka,the world's largest and most modern Zeppelin.   

Originally, the 75 meter-long craft was scheduled to fly to Long Beach to circle over the TED conference and provide rides to TEDsters, including the door prize and a group of advisers to TEDprize winner Jill Tarter.  

But incoming storms late this week forced those plans to be abandonned.  

Instead, the company kindly offered me a flight over San Francisco Monday, including a thrilling three minutes circling 1000 feet above the Golden Gate, so I could provide photographs and film footage to TED.

The ship is the brainchild of husband-wife Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Alexandra Hall and Brian Hall, and arrived in late October in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it's housed at an airship hanger at Moffett Field, where the Navy's USS Macon and USS Akron were stationed in the mid-1930s.

The couple were inspired by a ride in a Zeppelin over Germany during the 2006 World Cup soccer championships, and the discovery of Zeppelin NT [New Technology], a new generation of rigid aluminum and carbon fiber airframes made in Friedrichshafen, Germany, the historic capital of Zeppelin construction.

The history of the airship and its journey from Germany to the United States are chronicled in the company's blog, here.  

Investors include frequent TEDsters Esther Dyson and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Investors

Because the airship did not make it to the LA area, which would have been its first non-transit tour to Southern California, the two-hour door prize flight will now be set in the Bay Area, for a similar tour as that pictured below.

 

Over Golden Gate, looking towards Marin.

Vessels travel under south end of Golden Gate Bridge.

 

The multi-billion dollar Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge, towards Oakland.

Downtown Oakland.

 

Palace of Fine Arts & Exploratorium.

Google-plex, with Solar PV atop roof.

 

Airship Ventures co-founder and CEO Alexandra Hall at the airship's broad rear window.

 

Eureka pilot Kate Board, the world's only female Zeppelin pilot.

Below: 

Gus Holweger, Community Ambassador for Airship Ventures, was raised in Friedrichshafen, Germany, the hometown of the Zeppelins of the 1930s, and the site of the current state-of-the-art production facilities for the Zeppelin NT:

{Photos by Sam Perry, courtesy of fellow TEDster Steve Elefant and the executives, investors and crew of Airship Ventures.}

Poster at Moffett Field HQ.

TED multiplies: TEDAfrica, TEDEurope, TEDGlobal unveiled

Three upcoming TED conferences were announced/confirmed from the TED stage today:

TEDAfrica: Cape Town, South Africa, as previously announced, will have the theme of "What If?" and run from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 2009. Details and registration here.

TEDEurope: Oxford, England, July 22 to 24, 2009. Theme: "The Substance Of Things Not Seen". Registration will be announced soon. The first TEDGlobal was held in Oxford in July, 2005.

TEDGlobal: Mumbai, India, November 2009. Details to follow.

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.

TED2008: TEDprizes to stream Live amid BIG Questions...

Our hosts at TED, which is taking place at its traditional home of Monterey, California, for what may be its last time here, have announced as excerpted below they will be streaming live Thursday the winners of the TED prizes for 2008 as they outline the wishes they want the TED community to help fulfill.

Quick note to the TED Community at large:

There's a huge sense of anticipation in Monterey and Aspen as TED2008 opens today. With 50 main speakers and another 50 shorter talks and performances, there's a real feast in store. For those of you who can't be here, here's how you can enjoy TED from afar.

First and foremost, we are opening up one complete session of TED free to the world, streamed live over the web. It's the dramatic session tomorrow evening when three remarkable individuals each unveil their TED Prize wish. ("One wish to change the world. No restrictions. Think big. Be creative.")

I invite you to join a global audience as Dave Eggers, Neil Turok and Karen Armstrong share their inspiring visions, followed by the uplifting music of Vusi Mahlasela.

You can see the live video feed here on Thursday, starting at 5.15pm US Pacific Time and lasting a couple of hours. You'll probably need a broadband connection to see the video properly. There's a button below the video to select a full-screen view.

Meanwhile you can keep up with the conference by checking in on the official TED blog, plus the brilliant blogs maintained by Ethan Zuckerman and our very own Bruno Giussani. We may have a few tasty surprises for you during the week.

You can also see a rapidly-growing gallery of pictures from the conference here. And Portfolio magazine has an impressive curtain-raiser on the conference here.

Best wishes from the all-abuzz TED Team.

TED2008 asks the BIG Questions?

The extravaganza which is TED began with a blast of Hamlet, out of the darkness on stage as delivered by Michael Stuhlbarg, a Tony award nominee actor of Shakespeare in the Park. Not just ANY soliloquy, of course... "To be or not to be."

This year's conference is about questions. BIG questions.

Chris Anderson, TED curator extraordinaire, then asks the audience to take a moment of silence to shift into the spirit of curiosity and intrigue and wit and soul-searching that is TED.

Minutes later, third generation paleoanthropoligist Louise Leakey is telling us "we're the only walking upright Ape that exists in the world today." Does that not seem to raise a big question? Well, consider this: many if not most species on the planet co-exist with many other related species, and in fact through three generations of research her family, as it happens, has demonstrated that there were multiple species of hominids at any one time, long ago in history.

Indeed, in 2001 Leaky and her mother, Meave, found a previously unknown hominid, 3.5 million year old Kenyan-thropus platyops at Lake Turkana in East Africa. This was found not far from where her grandparents, Louise and Mary Leaky discovered the bones of Homo habilis, one of at least three species who co-existed as recently as 90 generations ago - or roughly 1.8 million years.

That 2001 find, Leaky said, included "one of the most very special things you can do with your mother," as she showed the two of them brushing off the bones in making their discovery.

As much of the first session, there was plenty to entertain, shock and awe - including the actual human brain Harvard Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor shared from the stage, complete with spinal cord.

Near the end of the first session, "Who are we?" Anderson introduced astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who made a presentation recorded a couple of hours previously from his home in Cambridge, England.

"We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth," so it is naturally possible if not likely that it has arisen elsewhere in the universe. "Life appeared on earth within half a billion years of it being possible."

"We don't happen to have been visited by aliens...," he added, discounting observers of UFOs and the like as quacks. However, in answering Anderson, in a matter of seven minutes using his onscreen editing system,

"I think it quite likely we are the only civilization within several light years, otherwise we would have heard radio waves..."

But no one, including the marvelous and wide-ranging images of perennial TEDster and anthropologist Wade Davis or the nearly unfathonable graphics and factoids of artist Chris Jordan {we use 2 million plastic bottles every five minutes - do we?} could prepare anyone for the closing of Jill Bolte Taylor, as she described how she had been overtaken by a stroke on the morning of December 10, 1996.

The scientist described how she'd awakened with a throbbing sensation behind her eye akin in sharpness to eating a big bite of really cold ice cream, and that only after she'd worked out on an exercise machine and taken a shower did she realize the stroke was spreading.

At that moment, she had the actual forethought of mind [literally] to not only realize she was undergoing the stroke, at her home, but to ponder how rare it must be for a brain scientist to actually go through a stroke herself!

Then, no sooner had she thought that thought than "it crosses my mind that I'm a busy woman. I don't have time for a stroke."

She manages to reach a co-worker, after feeling an arm become paralyzed, and as she's being shifted from one Boston hospital to Mass General, she feels as a balloon letting out air that her energy was lifting from her body, and her spirit surrender.

"In that moment I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life," she said.

In vivid language, Taylor describes how she felt her spirit "like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria," surrendering to the notion either her physicians would save her, or not, and yet wondering if she would ever be able to fit that enormous feeling of euphoria back into her body.

Then, she enraptures the hall with the realization that she was indeed still alive, and the realization that though she could not at that time walk, read, speak properly or recall anything of her life, she would come to realize that since she was still alive, and could feel this nirvana, then logically others could do so.

Bolte Tayllor had described how the left brain is responsible for action and memory, while the right brain was the processor of the "here and now." Within her stroke-disabled body, she described feeling only a world of peaceful compassion in which she envisioned living people could control and dismiss left-brain calculations, to step to the right of their controlling left brain hemisphere to embrace a positive, humane world.

She described this particular stroke of insight into how we could lead our lives as what motivated her to recover...a process which took the work of eight long years to complete.

"Who are we? We are the light force power of the universe," she said, lauding the cognitive ability, humanity and manual dexterity she attributed to "50 trillion molecular geniuses" at work.

Little doubt, that was one of the grandest, most intense and most powerful beginnings of any TED conference, and, as Jill Bolte Taylor said of her own revelation, certainly worthy of TED's focus on "Ideas worth spreading."

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.

TED2007 - TEDprizes

This is the third year of TED Prizes, and perhaps the most spirited yet.

Each winner receives $100,000 to be put towards working with the TED community to establish a single wish that can make a change in the world.

- James Nachtwey, Photojournalist.

The most stunning images one can imagine in two dimensions must include those taken over the last quarter decade by James Nachtwey. His pictures of war, conflict and social strife since 1981 are not easy - far from easy - to view. But they are critically important.

Nachtwey has during his career as a freelance journalist reported from Northern Ireland, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatamala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil, and the United States.

His wish is for help for an un-disclosed "vital story that needs to be told," and to help device an innovative and exciting way to use news photography in the digital era to illustrate that story.

- Harvard Biology Professor E.O. Wilson presented his wish for a means for creating "an encyclopedia of life" seeking to make all information about life on earth, noting that only about 15% of a projected 1.5 million species on earth have even been identified. "It can inspire a new generation of biologists to continue the quest that started for me, personally, 60 years ago.

- Former President Bill Clinton noted that people who are not in office have more opportunity to make changes than ever before - and not just the hyper-wealthy, but also mass groups now able to organize using the Internet and electronic communications. The Tsnami response from the United States elicited contributions from 30% of U.S. households, with an average donation of $57, he noted.

Clinton's wish is for TED to help build a nationwide healthcare system in Rwanda as an example of a replicable system that could be introducted to other economically poor countries as well. "We have a chance to prove that a country that almost slaughter itself out of assistance," can build a sustainable, high quality rural health system for the whole country, where per capita income is less than a dollar a day.

Last year's winners:

- Larry Brilliant, who was named head of Google's philanthropic arm on the eve of last year's TED, whose wish was fulfilled with the creation of the NGO dubbed INSTEDD as an early detection, rapid response network for threats to humanity such as pandamic and a variety of disasters.

- Cameron Sinclair, whose wish was completed earlier in the day when his web site for architectural collaboration went live, and immediately attracted attention from thousands of architects, with dozens posting projects already within hours of the site going up.

- Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim is in the process of establishing a round-the-world film event, Pangea, for May 2008 in which the global community is welcomed to participate in a public film festival at major sites around the world. The Sapling Foundation, which owns TED, has provided additional support.

TED - Icons. Geniuses. Mavericks.

The second presentation brought us down to the cellular level - with tremendous animated graphics by medical graphics artists working with Harvard University's biology department. Courtesy of Ethan Zuckerman, one picture of what Bolinsky calls "the FedEx of the cell" delivering newly created biological components within the cell [photo courtesy of Ethan Zuckerman's blog, a great spot for live-blogging coverage, as always. Thanks, Ethan.].

The work is well encapsulated with a stunning three minute animated clip he shows of the inner life of a cell.

Did I mention that the theme this year is "Icons. Geniuses. Mavericks." though perhaps those concepts apply as much to the ideas and memes represented here, as much as to the presenters.

There was a high level of energy following the first session, more than on other first days of late, when many folks slowly drifted into Monterey.... and the Main Room was so packed for the second session that quite a few people decided to move back out to the more relaxed simulcast rooms.

"TED's gone Hollywood," said one multi-year TEDster. Yes, there is a pedominance of stars, many of whom were particularly enchanted with how Swedish medical demographer and scientist Hans Rosling's close of the first session... when he pulled off his shirt to reveal a muscle tank-top, then swallowed a sword of at least 18 inches on stage. For real, not just a stunt.

Well, it was not so long ago, that folks complained that TED had become mostly T (Technology), a little E (Entertainment) and lower-case D (Design). Kudos to Chris Anderson, June Cohen and others for restoring the Entertainment industry participation at TED... take it away....

TED 2007 launches in space, nanobio

The TED conference, bulging to its largest ever with some 1,200 participants and speakers, launched its 2007 edition in outer space, with an elegant journey via the Cassini space mission to Saturn's largest moon, Titan, presented by planetary scientist Carolyn Porco.

Titan is cold, roughly -350˚ Farenheit, and has been cloaked from scientists by the thick haze of its atmosphere of methane and other chemicals. However, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe returned images of rivers and water bodies, presumably of liquid methane, as it descended towards a landing on the surface of Titan. Porco declared these first pictures ever taken from a moon of the outer solar system should have been met by ticker tape parades throughout the United States and Europe, though of course it was not.

Porco also describes Enceladus, a moon roughly the size of England and Wales in which polar canals emit plumes suggesting liquid water under ground. She ends with a glorious image from a total eclypse of the sun from the other side of Saturn - explaining the outside the rings comes from the plumes of Enceladus, the tiny moon.

The talk followed a rambunctious parade of colorfully costumed brass musicians that started on stage, and emerged later in the two simulcast rooms downstairs from the Monterey Conference Center auditorium here.

Even the legendary TEDbags of gifts, pictured at the TEDblog site, are bigger and tougher than ever, including bright roll-on luggage.

TED goes...SUBSCRIPTION

As the global leadership elite, 2007 edition, meet in the snow-deprived Swiss resort of Davos to mark another round of World Economic Forum 'conversations', the East Coast-based West Coast mega-conference TED has announced it is shifting to an annual Membership model for its highly-prized seats to its Monterey conference and an increasing number of other events throughout the year.

Frankly, TED has gone from strength to strength, increasing to roughly 1,000 participants at the Monterey Convention Center, which many regard as a pretty apparent upper limit, even with the overflow 'simulcast' room replete with avant guarde Steelcase furnishings and haute art displays.

And this year's conference, shifting from late February for the first time since that became an established gig to March 7-10, has been effectively sold out for more than a year.

However, the "membership" also comes with a hitch - the pricing is bumped to $6,000 a year from $4,400, with a sweetener that some will consider long overdue - TED chief Chris Anderson is now structuring the arrangement so members can take a tax write-off based on the charitable portion of the membership - participation some had urged since Anderson began distributing grants, culminating in the highly successful TEDprize, now in its third year.

With the membership goes a regular Book Club, conference DVDs, early renweal rights, etc. and Chris writes that he plans to keep offering scholarships to deserving and particularly talented participants who require them, and to counter concerns about elitism, he also notes TED is committed to continuing to release content of its talks to the general public via the Internet.

Furthermore, a $1,000 associate membership, with all but conference attendance rights, will be established later this year to provide network access for those who value connection to TED without the annual extravaganza - for example people who cannot make the conference in a given year.

We expect a variety of opinions on this - Anderson notes Davos and the Clinton Global Initiative are events with much higher price tags - and yet he's also creating other, more 'special' categories for TEDdonors, who may provide at lest $12,000 a year, and TEDpatrons, who commit $100,000 for ten years of particularly good seating access in the Main Hall.

Given the changes in a conference which hosted Al Gore last year, and is awarding Bill Clinton a TEDprize this year, t's a good thing the Monterey event doesn't rely on good snow conditions to set the mood.