My second MCN conference presentation was the conference round up session where a group of us got 7 minutes each to recap on a conference we attended during the year. I got TED. No I didn’t get to attend, but I watched it on TV – well, the web at least. I’ve never been to a TED conference but I’ve been near one. We hosted a TED event at the Getty and I accidentally “lost my way” and found myself in the conference. There were lots of people who looked affluent, intelligent and important, but apparently I did not, so I was invited to leave.

In case you don’t know TED, which stands Technology Entertainment Design, is a conference and a community. Its grown to include many disciplines and global and political themes. The annual conference by which it is most widely known by, is held in Long Beach California, gets 1,000 attendees and is normally sold out a year in advance – something most conference organisers would give their left nut for. The conference is a four-day event, with 50 speakers who each get 18 minutes. There are filler pieces of performances, comedy and poetry, but the real draw is the visionary talent that speaks there.

There is also TEDGlobal which is TED’s twin annual conference now held in Oxford, UK – Jolly Good. It has the same format but a more international theme. TEDIndia, a one-off conference “celebrating and exploring the beckoning future of South Asia” just wrapped in Mysore, India.

The annual TED conference is an expensive conference weighing in at $6,000, some say its elitist, including TED, if you check they’re website.

If you’re poor, or just not up to TED’s standards, you could attend the TEDActive conference which is the pauper’s version of the annual conference. Its a live simulcast of the Long Beach conference, its intended to give you the same content of the conference, at the same time, but it keeps the riff raff away from the important people. Watching the conference on T.V. will set you back $3,750, but it is at the Riviera Hotel in Palm Springs. TED’s parent organisation, the Spalding Foundation, is a 501(c)3 which means your membership is tax-deductible.

TED have franchised out their conference format calling it TEDx. Like the Starbucks franchise, they’re on every street corner, 80 are planned before the end of next year in the U.S. alone. I think that makes the MCN conference much more elitist.

If you really are in the poor house and have 10 equally poor friends, you can become a TED Associate Member for less than $1,000. That allows you and your 10 poor friends to watch the live conference webcast from the comfort of your own PC – assuming you’re not too poor to own one.

But even if you have $6,000 that doesn’t get you into the conference. You have to apply to register, then they’ll invite you to the conference, assuming you have correctly filled in your Assistant’s details on the application form and answered some ego-deflating questions such as What have you achieved? Other questions include, What are you passionate about? and Can you share a memorable anecdote that will tell us what makes you tick? Funny you should ask, I was once near a TED conference…

So, is TED worth $6,000 to attend? The only reason for going is to network, because you can watch it all from the comfort of your own home on your expensive PC that you were able to afford from not going to the conference. And even if you did go, don’t think you’ll be able to get close to any of the affluent, intelligent and important people, because they’ll spot you a mile away.

I highly recommend these 18 minute presentations:

• Pattie Maes/Pranav Mistry MIT MediaLabs Fluid Interfaces Group
• Tim Berners-Lee on the next Web (anything that starts “When I invented the Web…” has to be compulsive viewing…)
• Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset
• David Merrill, Inventor of Siftables, interactive mini-PC tiles
• Ed Ulbrich: Digital Domain, How Benjamin Button got his face

Not from this year’s conference but one of my favourite TED videos:

• Ken Robinson: Schools kill creativity